Anger Burger

“The green onion and the garlic are like friends!  Always friends.”¹

I have a powerful love/hate relationship with cooking shows.  Mostly I hate them, even the ones I like.  For example, I like the way Giada De Laurantiis cooks, but I get burned out on watching her giant, smiling balloon head in very short order.  And even though I think cooking is a sexy craft, I find myself rebelling against the hyper-affluent, homogenized landscape of the modern cooking show, even modern food photography, all bright-white and staged to look casual.  These worlds of the Food Network, I can’t put myself in them.  Sunday doesn’t belong there and neither do you.

Enter: Maangchi!

Maangchi is an internet sensation, a simultaneously charming and all-business antidote to all that Gwyneth Paltrow driving around Spain bullshit.  Don’t believe me? Check it:

How cute is she?  As a button, I tell you. I can also tell you one thing for certain: if you and I suddenly appeared in her kitchen with her, she’d waste no time handing us knives and having us get to work along side her and that is the kind of kitchen I love.

And those leaves she’s using?  Are the Korean variant of shiso, which I’ve professed my love to before here on Anger Burger.  The Korean version, often called “sesame leaf”, is much bigger than the Japanese version and has a tougher leaf and different flavor, more minty than basil-y.  The way she uses a leaf to scoop up rice at the end of the video?  Oh man, I’m literally uncomfortably full from my own dinner and I still want some of that.

Long live Maangchi.

¹ A Maangchi quote from her video for making kimchi stew.