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Learn to COOK - Dok Suni
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $21.86
Your Save: $ 8.09 ( 27% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.59519
EAN: 9780312192617
ISBN: 0312192614
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: 1998-10-15
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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In Dok Suni, Jenny Kwak offers a loving and delicious introduction to the most exciting cuisine in the food world today-- Korean cooking. Whether you are one of the millions of Americans who are already devotees of the spicy, healthful, home-style world of Korean food or you're trying it for the first time, Dok Suni will delight with flavorful, authentic, easy-to-prepare specialties and a taste of the family traditions that come to life in every dish.
Ranging from hearty and spicy soups (said to heal whatever ails you), barbecued beef favorites, and rice and noodle dishes to seafood and chicken specialties and the irresistible appetizers and side dishes that make every Korean meal complete, the recipes include: sautéed Korean vermicelli with vegetables * ginseng chicken in broth * spicy stewed crab * beef barbecue with sesame-salt dipping sauce * Korean dumplings * seafood pancake * stuffed zucchini * hearty kimchi soup * among many others.
More than a recipe collection, Dok Suni (the name means "strong woman") opens the door to an entire cuisine. Sprinkled with handed-down fables, secrets for easy preparation, and loving salutes to an immigrant mom who worked hard to make it in America and shows her love through her out-of-this-world kitchen creations, the book is a truly passionate celebration of Korean cooking and eating.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: 3 1/2 star book
Comment: I bought this book in part because I thought it was so funny that Director Quentin Tarantino (whose films I've never seen but only heard about or seen previews of) would write a cover blurb for it.
Most of my favorite Korean dishes are here. The muted color photos are in the middle of the book and contain finished dishes, not step by step process photos.
The cover title is misspelled. It should actually be "Doh Suni" or "Dough Suni."
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent recipes, good stories but only a few pictures
Comment: I am a korean who has grown up eating korean food for at least one meal of the day, for my entire life. In addition, i've eaten at countless korean restaurants... So i can, at least, say that I know what korean food 'should' taste like.
PROS: I've tried about 10 of Kwak's recipes so far, and they have all come out very authentic and tasty. She includes a good mix of very common dishes and more advanced dishes, with a good number of pan-chan recipes. Her ingredient lists aren't excessively long like some other cookbooks, but some of the ingredients might require a trip to the korean store (beef dashida powder). Her memoir type style and her personal touches add alot to the enjoyment of the food. Sometimes it sounds like she's reminiscing about the recipes with tears in her eyes. Some could consider these digressions unnecessary, but I found it adds 'soul' to the recipes. And the family pictures are a real nice touch.
CONS: There are pictures of food, but only in the context of telling her family story. They mostly show up in the glossy insert sections in the middle of the book. There are no individual pictures that accompany each recipe. For koreans this might not be a problem, but if you're new to korean food, you might need to see what the finished dish 'should' look like. Secondly, I just wish there were more recipes. Don't get me wrong there are alot (about 77), but wanted more soup and meat recipes and less rice porridge dishes and sweet, snack-type foods. Well i guess my second point isn't really a 'con' because all the 'major' recipes are here. Now that i trust her cooking, I just want more of it, that's all. Lastly I wish she included a table of contents that includes the name of each recipe in a single list. The table of contents breaks down by category, then you have to flip through the entire category to find the recipe that you're looking for. (My copy has about 20 post-it notes on it now). Although I think this may have been deliberate, because the book reads like a memoir, so there are personal stories associated with many of the recipes.
Jenny and her mom own Dok Suni, which is a korean restaurant down on the lower east side of manhattan. Naturally, the food is excellent and it has a good reputation for 'cool' or 'hip' korean food. Although the decor is a bit...hmmm, eclectic? The recipe for the jalapeno fried chicken served at the restaurant (probably the most popular dish) is included in the book. For Dok Suni fans, this should justify the cost of the book itself.
Given the reasonable price of the book and the personal stories that add 'soul' to the recipes, i would highly recommend this book. I just wish there were more pictures. I can't wait for the follow up book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I keep coming back.
Comment: I was introduced to Korean food by some good friends. Most of the cooking was done by their grandmother who couldn't even speak English. A problem when I started asking how to cook it. I was so hooked. Then I moved and all I knew was you needed salt, garlic, and red peppers to make Kimchi.
Then I found this book. The recipes in here tasted exactly like what I had eaten at my friends. From the Bulgogi and Kalbi to the many types of Kimchi. My favorite part has been the soups though. They taste so refreshing. The only one I didn't like was the seaweed soup. The rest have my family asking for more, even the children. I use it so often my pages have notations and bookmarks throughout.
I have bought more Korean cookbooks but when I want some good food I always find myself coming back to this one. The others just don't measure up. As a result I have recommended this book to everyone I know and none of them have been disappointed. In my opinion Korean cooking is the best in the world and this book will teach you how to cook it for yourself. Spread the joy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Clarification on earlier reviewers Beef Satay dilemma
Comment: To the reviewer who gave this 3 stars because he or she couldn't find "beef satay" for the Cold Buckwheat Noodles recipe: If you were following the recipe for Noodles in Cold Beef Broth, the author CLEARLY states in parentheses, directly after the ingredient SATAY BEEF, "see Page 5." If you had gone to PAGE 5, you would see where the author explains that BEEF SHANK is BEEF SATAY. If you WEREN'T following the recipe for Noodles in Cold Beef Broth and your college degree was for English, it might just be useless, because there is no recipe titled Cold Buckwheat Noodles in this book!
For the rest: I didn't give this 4 stars only because I like my recipe books to have pictures & this one doesn't have many. Even though I know what most of the finished recipes should look like, I simply like to have my mouth watering over delicious-looking food at 1 in the morning when every Korean restaurant is closed. (Food masochism.) But the recipes in this book are pretty easy to follow and it should intimidate no one who is trying to cook Korean food for the first time. My mother was Korean & I was raised on this stuff--Korean food is Heaven to me, and you too will get there easily with this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Authentic, but friendly with culinary amateurs
Comment: Let me start out by admitting one fact: while I've grown up eating Korean food, I've never dared to try my hand at cooking it until only recently. My mother was an undefeated cooking whirlwind in our kitchen and when it came to the point where I thought I'd like to learn from her, I realized I would need more help than her 'a pinch of this' and 'a handful of that' pointers.
Jenny Kwak has written a book that seems to have been made just for amateus like myself, who are willing to test the waters but unsure of where to start. The common complaint I've heard with most Asian cookbooks such as this one is the difficulty of finding ingredients and the level of skills that the writer assumes. Let's be real here. Who knows what it means to ferment pickled cabbage in subzero temperature (and yes, I've actually read this in another book)? Dok Suni starts out with a couple of helpful pages entitled, 'Mom's Shopping List', where she lists ALL of the more-than-average ingredients she uses in the recipes to follow. She gives a nice description of what it is, what dish(es) they are used in, and its name in Korean (which is nice because now you can go into an Asian grocery and ask for it by name if you can't find them yourself).
The recipes themselves are, according to my very Korean mother, practically perfect in their authenticity. Instead of veering towards the more fancier (read: more difficult and not necessarily better tasting) dishes, Kwak has written up the simple staples of the Korean diet. Each recipe includes all of the ingredients WITH AMERICAN MEASUREMENTS. A lot of recipe books out there use grams and mg, which can get pretty confusing for us with our cups and ounces. The steps are easy enough for an eleven-year old to follow (and I would know because my younger sister proved it), and Kwak also includes a short but personal story about some of the dishes, which is a nice touch.
Interspersed throughout the recipes, she has longer stories of the story behind the cooking on a whole, which makes the cookbook more than a smattering of recipes; it is a memoir. Though I haven't counted how many there are in all, it is enough to fill roughly 130 pages. I can say that I've bookmarked at least 90 percent of them. The couple that I've dabbled with so far came out great, even if I botched up the recipe just a little.
In my overall opinion, Kwak has put together a fantastic book that couldn't be easier to follow and I haven't regretted my purchase in the least.
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