United Colors of Benetton.

Cooking Korean food is the culinary equivalent of Chinese water torture. Traditional Korean dishes require a lot of drying, reconstituting, squeezing-dry, pickling, fermenting, mixing, simmering and stirring - all demanding the utmost patience and attention. The result is a cuisine that is a complex of flavors and textures that is all at once, heartwarming and enticing, but also, a real pain in the ass.

That being said, I invited my favorite group of future attorneys to my place for a potluck night, asking all the guests to bring something representative of their own (or favorite) culture. Naturally, this meant that I would have to torture myself (see above), but I decided to keep it relatively simple, and make dduk-bok-ee and kimchi jun.

Dduk-bok-ee

Typically, dduk-bok-ee consists of long pieces of rice cakes with onions, fish cake and sometimes ramen noodles in a thick, spicy red pepper paste sauce. Unsure of my guests' tolerance for spiciness and fish cake, I opted for the non-spicy, soy sauce-based, beef-instead-of-fish-cake kind: "goong-joong" (royal) dduk-bok-ee. Only the best for my friends.

Kimchi jun

I prefer kimchi when it's cooked, whether it's being grilled on the side of the barbecue grill or boiled in kimchi chigae; any of which requires the kimchi to be sufficiently fermented. The smell of "sufficiently fermented" kimchi is... well, there's no real comparison - it's pretty potent. But mixed with some Korean "pancake mix" and water, and then pan fried, it's delicious - the Korean equivalent of latkes. Crispy on the outside, but hot and chewy on the inside.

Our international potluck was a success. There were dolmas, honey walnut shrimp, KFC, Beard Papa's cream puffs, a cherry-custard tart, cookies, ice cream and sangria. Lots of sangria. Everyone loved the food and more importantly, had a fun night. But for now, I return the torch to the masters: my mom, my aunts and the ladies at my go-to restaurant in LA's Koreatown for some home cooking away from home. (See: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mapo-kkak-doo-gee-restaurant-los-angeles)