I Am all in Again.
Oh, let's I Am all in again with Scott Patterson and iHeartRadio Podcast.
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I Am all In Podcast one eleven productions. iHeartRadio Media, iHeart Podcast. We are doing a Luke's Diner with Joanne Lee Molinara. Let me tell you
something about Joanne. She's a James Beard Award winner New York Times bestseller, but most importantly, she is a beloved storyteller and cook, captivating her four million social media followers with heartfelt narratives that accompany stunning videos that are preparing everything from traditional kimichi to inventive, career inspired pasta dishes. Her smash debut, The Korean Vegan, was named one of the best cookbooks of the year, and her sophomore follow
up goes on sale this coming October fourteenth. Welcome joe Anne. How are you?
I feel like glowing after that incredible introduction?
Well, you know, we want to make you feel welcome, and you know you've got We had to cut this resume down, actually by by about ninety percent. You're so accomplished, but welcome to the show.
And let's dive.
Let's dive into it.
Let's do it.
You know, Korean cookie cooking and recipe crafting on the show Gilmore hasn't really happened yet. But when did your love for cooking begin? What is is something you grew up with or did that come later in life?
No, it definitely came later in life. I was not one of those who spent a lot of time in the kitchen growing up, you know, at my grandmother's shoulder or anything like that. It was more a situation where I became plant based. And that story was while I was dating my then boyfriend now husband, and so it was partly out of need because there weren't a lot of Korean vegan options, but also it was this is the you know, age old tale. Was trying to impress
my boyfriend. I wanted to cook for him, and it turned out I really really liked it. I found it extremely soothing and comforting but also challenging and inspiring and just kind of took off from there.
Well, the Korean vegan is such a great name and it mashes two types of cuisine. Were you always a vegan or was there the turning point that led you to.
No, I was definitely not a vegan. My boyfriend. He went vegan before me, and I remember remember telling him like, well, I'm sorry, but I can't be vegan. I'm Korean. It just doesn't work. But you know, he convinced me after a few weeks and I eventually joined him. And you know, that's that's was back in twenty sixteen, so we were like in our mid thirty I was in my mid thirties at that time.
So what's the one Korean ingredient that more people should have in their kitchen.
Oh, it's definitely tinjung okay, which I think is going to have. It's like qutchajong moment because everybody knows gucha jong right now because everybody's had the booky and it's like the really cool hot condiment, right. Tinjung is like Qutjujong's like unpopular little sister because she's too nerdy. That's how I would describe Tinjung. It has a very similar flavor profile to quot chu jong, you know, which is really red and fiery, but tin Jung is a little mellow,
doesn't have heat. It's really about, you know, an explosion of umami. It's it's that thing that you add to your stew or to your soup, or to your pasta saucer, or to your dressing, to really elevate it to that next flavor level.
All right, now we're going to ask you about a disaster story. Oh in the kitchen, you ever had a dish you thought it would be amazing only to have it failed miserably?
Yes, I did.
So.
When I was developing recipes for the Koreem Vegan Homemade, which is the book coming out this fall, I had this great idea for let's see Korean style curry enchiladas, which is like it was very ambitious. So it was like a lot of different cuisines, one dish and so, and I was it's like, convinced, this is going to be the next big breakout recipe of my next cookbook.
And I was so excited to make it. And I made it and the curry tasted great, but then once I tried to do it in enchalada form, it sort of fell apart and it got mushy, and I was like, I don't really know what I'm eating here, not to mention you, and I photographed all my own photos. It looked hideous. It looked like not something you would want to eat and so that was a total failure, and it was about half a day's worth of work just kind of, you know, literally through the trash.
So look you found out right, yes exactly, some people work a couple of years and they you know, half a day's not so all right. So your your cookbook Homemade coming out October fourteenth. It took you four years to put this together? What made this such a labor of love?
Well, I think part of it is because I do everything, you know. I photographed my own recipes, I develop my own recipes, I test my own recipes. I write every word that goes into this book. And so I'm maybe a little bit of a control freak. I don't like to let pieces of this thing that I'm creating be delegated to anyone, you know, other than you know, the things that are out of my control truly, And so you know, testing the recipes itself is a very long process.
I tested them, and then I subject subjected them all to third party recipe testing as well, and then photographing it. That is a huge job, and so I was doing that as well. But I would say the longest piece of it was the writing. I write essays, to go with every single chapter of the book. And these are really, like you said, you know, the storytelling that I do on my social media, it's a mirror of that in
the book. It's it's the written version of that. And some of these stories are a little bit emotional and they're vulnerable, and sometimes it takes a little time to really put that together in a meaningful way.
You know, I'm going to get this cookbook that sounds very special. I mean, yeah, feel free to send me one.
Of course, we'll send you one I'd loved.
I'd love to read it. I'm always looking for new recipes, and I'm not I'm not going to be able to pronounce some of these works.
We'll help you.
These These are mouth watering recipes. There's a got you Jong, got you go Jong stew, stuffed camichi mac and cheese. Yes, a pesto? Did I say it right?
That was actually pretty good?
Very all right? Red beans stuffed French toast.
I can say that.
Chocolate's ask me cake?
I was okay with that.
How did you create these dishes?
Did you grow up eating?
And how's a mix of sweet and savory contribute to those dishes?
So sweet and savory. That mixture is very very Korean. That's a very Korean sort of flavor profile, which I didn't even realize because, of course, when you grew up eating these foods, you do sort of take things for granted. But right now, you know, on TikTok, you know, and now I'm a denizen of that social media app, a lot of people are talking about why do Korean foods always have a little bit of sweet and a little
bit of savory, And that's very much our style. So when I think about the foods that I wanted to create, gu jajongstew is a very I mean, it's a pretty traditional dish, right, But something like kimchi, mac and cheese. I really wanted this cookbook to show I'm Korean American. I grew up eating, you know, kimchi, but I also grew up loving mac and cheese. What would happen if
we joined those two things. Just like my personality, I'm a little bit Korean, I'm a little bit American, And so that was so much a part of developing the recipes for this. Like you know, French toast, love French toast. Everybody loves French toast, right, but I also really love sweet red bean paste. That's a very traditional Korean ingredient, and I thought, oh, wouldn't it be fun to stuff the French toast with a little bit of sweet red
bean paste And it turned out glorious. It was like amazing, not like the enchilada. So that's really kind of how these recipes came to.
Be, right, Okay, Well, the Korean army stew is a beautifully shown on the cover of your cookbook. Walk me through this recipe. What makes your version special?
Well, part of the thing that I wanted to do when making Pudicchiga, which is the army strew, is to actually study it. I wanted to understand sort of the anthropology of this particular dish because it is you know, it can be triggering for a lot of people to see that dish, especially on the cover of a cookbook.
And I talk about in the head note, my mother really doesn't like that dish, not because she doesn't like the way that it tastes, but because what it represents to her, which was this is the food that Korean people sort of mishmashed together with the leftovers during the war because they were so hungry. They were so poor, and so this dish to her always reminds her of how poor they were and how she nearly died from starvation,
so I can understand that. So to me, it was really important when I was developing a vegan version of this to understand the history and the stories that really underlie how this dish came to be so that I could honor it in a way that wasn't disrespectful. And I think because of that, I learned a lot of interesting things. For example, if you go to a Korean bar right now and you order puditchige, a lot of
times it's not going to come with beans. A lot of times it's going to come with ramen, and it's going to come with spam and all of the different heavy proteins, but not beans. And I was like, why not beans? Beans is such a big part of a plant based diet, and I was like, let's add a lot of beans back to this. So I actually used white beans because that's the bean that I prefer, even though back in the day in the nineteen fifties, they love to use baked beans or red beans. That was
a really big popular item. The other thing that they like to use of course, is spam. I don't eat spam anymore, but I love vegan sausage, and so we incorporated a lot of that. I think the reason mine is great, though, is because I used Ramen seasoning. I love instant lamion. Lamyan is how you say ramen and Korean.
I grew up on that stuff. My father like basically raised me on instant Korean lamion, and I like to use the seasoning in addition to the noodles for this dish, and it just instantly brings a ton of nostalgia, but an explosion of flavor to this stew. I think it's also why my dad absolutely loves my army Stewkay.
So let's dive into your writing process a little bit. You build the dish first.
So the writing process in terms of, you know, what comes first, chicken or the egg obviously neither in my book.
But.
For me, I kind of treat those things very separately. So I idate the recipes and I kind of let myself go as you know, crazy as I want to. Like the enchilada situation, like, let's really push the envelope. What kind of flavors do you want? What do you want to make? What do you think will be fun? What do you think will taste delicious? That's one part
of my brain. The writing is done completely separately. Oftentimes I'll have already created all of the recipes and I'll have written all of those down, and the last piece of putting the book together is often the writing, because I know it's going to be the hardest, and so I will sit down and I'll think of a story that I think, you know, has some relationship to the food, or is at least thematically consistent with the rest of the book, so that it doesn't feel like, uh, it's
literally coming out of nowhere, but is really designed to shine a light on the stories of my family and hopefully get people to feel like, oh, this is so relatable, I understand this. This makes me feel like, oh, I could sit down with this lady while she's cooking dinner for me and eat with her.
Right right, All right, Well, let's go back to the show a little bit here. Gilmore Girls Season three, episode nine, a deep fried Korean Thanksgiving, missus Kim famously serves Tofurky, have you ever made that yourself? And another question is if you were hosting a Korean vegan Thanksgiving? What would you have? What would have to be on the table?
Okay, so those are really two good questions. I have not made the classic tofurky, but I have made many dishes that are very similar to tofurky. And you know, obviously I don't have all of the cool, fancy ingredients that the tofurky people have. But what I have is, you know, I have made tofu wrapped in either tofu skin or rice rice paper, right soaked rice paper that has been you know, in a brine, just like a turkey would be. So I have done something very very similar.
And I often treat turkey like, you know, sort of a poultry type of meat, you know, So I have done that. In terms of your second question, what would I serve at a Korean vegan Thanksgiving? So I have been celebrating Thanksgiving in a very Korean way long before I even went vegan. So I always like to have a mix of both Korean food and American food when we celebrate Thanksgiving. I would say the things that are always there are mac and cheese because I love mac
and cheese. I love, love, love mac and cheese. I often bring my kimchi mac and cheese now my pea can pie. I love my peacan pie. That's from my first cookbook. It's the Peacan red Bean Pie. It is one of the mos like more popular recipes of that cookbook. And I would say also corn bread, because I love corn bread. I just think there's so many ways that you can prepare it. We love biscuits. I'm trying to think in terms of a protein. I always go with
my braised tofu. That's a very traditional Korean dish. It's tupuchodine. It's very popular. It's easy to prepare, as our brais dishes oftentimes, but it really packs both, you know, a flavor punch and a protein punch.
Well, here's something that I read that I found fascinating. You're also an attorney. Yes, has anyone ever tried to mess with your IP? And? Boy, bad bad move on their part, right.
It's inevitable, sort of inevitable. So a few years ago, I got a text from one of my friends who's also a cookbook author, and it's a screenshot of a book on Amazon called the Korean Vegan Cookbook, not my cookbook,
somebody else's gigbook. And he goes, what you know, wt F and I looked at it, and you know, the thing that was troubling about this because I got to tell you, there are many books now called the Korean Vegan Cookbook that kind of exploded after mine came out, and I was told that there's not a lot I can do about it. But this one was particularly offensive because everything looked identical. The only thing that was different was the cover image. But even the cover image was
very similar to my cover image. And then when you open it up, you'll find that they literally copied and pasted all of my chapters, I mean, including the Korean words, which was very troubling, and so we were thinking perhaps this might have been one of the early AI generated, you know, cookbook ripoffs, because of just the way that it looked. We looked up the so called author person doesn't exist, which is virtually impossible in this day and age on the internet, and so it was very frustrating.
It was very hurtful, it was enraging. I posted something about it on both my Twitter and my Instagram, and I think, you know, I said, note to rachel Issi, the purported author, I still work for a thousand lawyer law firm, just and you know, the community was galvanized by that. And also we put in a call to Amazon and the book was delisted within twenty four hours.
Good good, good move.
Yeah. You know, it's the age of the Age of AI is fraught with copyright.
It's just tragurism, that's what it is.
No, No, that's the big issue with AI in terms of like, you know, the entertainment space. It's like its all about copyright infringement.
Yeah.
Was there a moment when you realized food was no longer hobby for you but just a full second career, I.
Would say when I was offered a book deal. I mean that was such a like like surreal moment. I was a partner at a law firm. I remember I took that call in my law firm office, you know, and I got, you know, lawyer work happening over here, and I'm taking calls with publishers over here, and you know, my lit agent told me the good news. And you
could have picked my jaw off the ground. You should see my parents, you know, my very Korean immigrant parents, who were like, we're not going to stop doing this cooking nonsense, you know, you know, like you know, they were like, what you're going to make money off of this, so I would say that, you know, and that was in twenty seventeen, when we first started talking to publishers and we realized that there was actually going to be a book in my future. I would say that was
when it became more than a hobby. But I'll tell you what, I still haven't lost that same sort of Oh, this is so fun. I love doing this sort of feeling that you have for hobbies, which sometimes can dissipate when it turns into a profession. I've been really fortunate.
I just made these amazing zucchini fritty sandwiches yesterday with this like amazing like you know, greenawl of topa nod and like a lemon ricotta and like this beautiful, gorgeous fresh basil pesto on these like crusty baggettes that we picked up like right here in Brooklyn. They've got so many different bakeries here, and I was just like, this is so fun, like making this, like you know, just seeing how it turns out and then getting to eat it at the end of the day. I mean, I love doing it.
You make me when I come to Brooklyn and deep bread, I mean it's just like I can smell it. I can smell it. I miss it so much. All Right, we're running out of time. Last question for you, Joanne. We know, we know, we know you're busy. You're busy, lawyer, busy writer, You're busy, busy, busy. Uh. If you were to walk into Luke Steiner and you can't do that yet but maybe soon, what was your order and where would you sit?
Okay? I would sit in a corner booth. Let's do that one first. Okay. I would sit in the corner booth, all the way in the back, right next to a window. I love having a window so that I can people watch and see everyone who's passing right and they can see me if they want, I don't care. And what I would order, for sure, this is a classic Joanne move is I would order the largest available size of French fries, with plenty of ketchup and a diet pepsi or coke, whatever they have, that's all I need. If
they do have dinner rolls, I will add that to them. Okay, so we'll have dinner rolls like you know, the stale stale dinner rolls like the classic stale I love those, so I'll have that with a plate of hot French fries and lots of ketchup and a diet pepsi or coke. Is my favorite meal.
There is no wrong answer for that question. Thank you so much, Joanne Lee moll and Irey Homemade coming out October fourteenth. Go get her cookbook. It is amazing assortment of recipes. Thank you so much for the time, Joanne, and please please please come back. We really enjoyed it. Listen, everybody, thanks for all the downloads and all the love and all the cards and letters. You are the best fans on the planet. You know that, and where you lead, we will follow.
Stay safe, hey.
Everybody'll forget. Follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.