The Good Fork Cookbook

By Sohui Kim and Rachel Wharton

“A wonderful collection of warming recipes and stories perfect for the multicultural way we eat, entertain, and live today.” —Anita Lo, Michelin-starred chef and author of Solo

For more than 10 years, The Good Fork has been one of Brooklyn’s favorite restaurants. It’s a neighborhood spot that offers a rare treat in the crowded, slick New York food scene: a restaurant that feels like home. Chef Sohui Kim and her husband live down the block, blurring the lines between their kitchen at home and the restaurant kitchen. The Good Fork Cookbook is packed with Kim’s recipes for flavorful, globally inspired cuisine that a home cook can make any night of the week. Her influences and techniques range from French and Italian to American and Korean, but every dish is comforting, unfussy: Pork Dumplings; Korean-Style Steak and Eggs with Kimchee Rice and Fried Eggs; Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Waffles; and more. The Good Fork Cookbook shares the recipes that made The Good Fork Brooklyn’s favorite mom-and-pop shop.

“I believe that deep down inside, every American cook wants to cultivate the delicate touch, thoughtful spirit, and audacious flavors found in Sohui’s cooking. Her distinctive style of combining Korean traditions with contemporary American flavors in such a personal way makes her cooking, her restaurants, and now her cookbook a reference point for all that is good in our food world today.” —Michael Anthony, James Beard Award-winning chef, Gramercy Tavern

“With this book, you can—at last!—re-create Sohui’s incredibly flavorful, soulful, and comforting food in an actual home.” —Michelle Williams, actor

• Language: English
• Publisher: ABRAMS
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781613122105

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

House Parties

A

Ben and I really moved to Red Hook because of a house. Ben had a friend in the neighborhood, and he had already fallen for its mix of pretty, old row houses, waterfront industrial zones, and grit—hard to find in New York City these days. And then he found this old row house: It was the right time and it was still cheap to buy here then. I remember looking at it—Honey, you gotta see the backyard, Ben said—and I was thinking, "You can’t buy this house. Briscoe and Green find dead bodies floating two blocks away on Law & Order all the time! (Clang Clang)."

Plus, it was a dump. When Ben bought it with his sister Julia (he and I weren’t yet married, and we all lived there together for a few years), it was filled with junk. It took four Dumpsters just to clean out the debris because the people who lived there prior were hoarders.

That is the only time so far I’ve been wrong about a big decision in our relationship. With incredible dedication and focus, Ben has turned a dilapidated old house into a great place for celebration and conviviality, and the backyard into an outdoor Shangri-la. The latter has a huge, century-old oak in an unusually wide and ample backyard, where Ben built a wet bar and a makeshift outdoor kitchen for me. It became a special place, one we wanted to share with family and friends. We got married in that backyard, and so did several of our friends. We have hosted eight weddings, where we would have 150 to 180 people, sometimes three whole pigs, and a crawfish boil. For my own wedding, I was fortunate to have a sushi chef I knew from my days at the Sony Club who made sushi while guests sipped on prosecco, soju, and sake. And Ben has put on plays back there—real productions with sets and tickets. We call it the Coffey St. Playhouse, after the name of our street.

When Ben bought the house, I happened to have cooking jobs that were somehow not all about late nights and weekends. We were able to put on all kinds of parties—some planned, some just Hey, come over and bring a six-pack! It was a period of my life as a chef or, really, as a cook when I developed a sense of catering in the truest sense. By which I mean giving to the people I know and love, and also experimenting with what I really like to cook myself. So these are the recipes in this chapter: Things I made for our own parties, and for my family and my friends.

A

BEET SALAD

WITH oranges, grilled scallions, AND black sesame paste

SERVES 4 TO 6

I have to confess that when I set out to update this recipe for this book, I realized the original had the title of Beet Salad, Goat Cheese, Romaine, Candied Walnuts, and Pickled Apple. I joked that 2002 called and they want their beet salad with goat cheese back. It’s true, I proudly served that salad ten years ago at parties—everybody did!—and even made little goat cheese fritters. Those still taste very wonderful together, but it doesn’t seem as fresh to me as it did back then. That’s why I am giving you this recipe instead, a dish recently updated by our chef de cuisine Sam Filloramo, one of my favorite cooks of all time (you can read more about him in chapter 4). The sesame, grilled scallions, and oranges bring bling to the beets and make them sing in a brand-new way, while totally keeping with the original style and flavor profiles of The Good Fork. If you can’t find yuzu juice (yuzu is a great sour Japanese citrus fruit, most often sold here as bottled juice), fresh lime juice is