Cook Who Studies Recipes Until 2 a.m. Fetches Octopus From Masan Fish Market for Changnyeong Clan Table

Comic artist Heo Young-man sat down to a table of the Changnyeong Cho clan in a TV CHOSUN JOY video, where the owner researches new recipes until 2 a.m. every day.

Octopus, turban shell and pork in one dish

The owner works from a belief that good food rests on unadorned ingredients and tries at every moment to bring out the taste of nature. Long experienced in cooking, the owner seasons dishes with fish sauce and strong soybean paste rather than artificial seasoning, earning the image of a "cook who studies." The signature dish is a seafood wrap combining octopus, turban shell and boiled pork. Because Changnyeong lies away from the sea, the owner fetches fresh turban shells and common octopus in person from Masan Fish Market. Land and sea ingredients could easily clash, but the owner's own idea brings them into balance.

The core of the wrap is a 17-year-old base soy sauce and a meat soybean paste made with beef, chicken and pork. The meat is boiled for 30 minutes with a generous measure of medicinal herbs to remove any gamey smell, then finished with homemade soybean paste and the meat paste for depth. It is eaten topped with kimchi aged three to five years, and diners can combine meat and seafood to taste. The kimchi, some of it kept since 2002 and some aged three to five years, testifies to the owner's long skill.

Dried-onion kimchi and a fermented hairtail dish

The side dishes are far from ordinary. Onion kimchi made from dried onions tastes sharp yet cool, and grilled seasoned perilla leaves have their characteristic aroma softened by the heat. The meal opens with a dish that feels both familiar and strange: hairtail sike, made by turning rice into jilgeun powder and fermenting it. In the Yeongsan area it is a delicacy that never goes missing on festive occasions. Fermented hairtail is loaded with garlic and sesame oil, and the dish is called "red rice" in Changnyeong dialect. It is a prized food made ahead and stored for feasts, and is known for a texture that seems to melt on the tongue.

Heo on art and expression

Facing the table, Heo focused on the owner's life. Heo once drew a picture as a performance on a music program, setting off controversy, and recalled expressing through art the wounds and violence experienced as a woman at the time. That work earned artistic recognition strong enough to bring an invitation from the city of Paris. The path suggests that both food and art begin with changing the frame of thinking.

Heo paid tribute to the owner's constant willingness to try new things and said, "I want to live a life of expressing and making the results." Heo has recently written a screenplay and is preparing to produce a short drama, showing that both art and food call for boundless challenge.

Source: TVCHOSUN JOY (YouTube)