There are many different kinds of doenjang jjigae.
The type where you enjoy the broth, with the nuance of a clear doenjang soup,
The heavy, spicy type where you mix in not only doenjang but gochujang too, then add meat,
Or even gangdoenjang, where the broth is reduced to the bare minimum like a jageuli.
Depending on taste and depending on the ingredients that go in, even the same doenjang jjigae can taste worlds apart.
Among them, the style I was making today was the most common form of doenjang jjigae.
Not the kind with a restaurant feel, but a doenjang jjigae with a completely home-cooked vibe.
You know the one—based on anchovy bouillon stock, no meat, but loaded with tofu and all sorts of other ingredients, like something made by a mother’s hand.
Of course, I wasn’t the elves’ mother, and before that, I wasn’t even a woman...
‘Now that I think about it, I am basically playing the mom.’
Something I had learned while living with Iseria was that this young lady’s life skills were a mess.
She couldn’t even do laundry properly, and if I left the dishes to her, they came back still slick with oil.
It wasn’t as if she was good at cooking, either... She was good at one thing: sleeping. She woke up late every day.
In any case, since my current position was practically that of a housewife, I was more than qualified to make home-cooked-vibe doenjang jjigae.
Iseria was watching me with interest as I cut the onions, potatoes, and zucchini into even pieces.
Yes, just grow up healthy.
While I was cutting the vegetables, the stock I had put on the stove began bubbling before I knew it.
I turned off the heat under the stock, which contained anchovies I had removed the guts and heads from and toasted, along with kelp.
It had already boiled for about ten minutes, and neither kelp nor anchovies were ingredients you were supposed to simmer furiously for a long time.
Kelp in particular makes the stock cloudy with foam and brings out a bitter taste if you boil it in hot water for too long.
So I figured I could let it steep like that for just another ten minutes, then begin.
In the meantime, I blanched the potatoes first.
I had nothing else to do while waiting anyway, and while zucchini and onions cook quickly, potatoes alone take a long time.
If you blanch them first and get them about halfway cooked, you can shorten the completion time of the doenjang jjigae by quite a lot.
Ever since I began cooking, Seiran and Veila had been looking at me with suspicious eyes.
To be exact, they looked like they wanted to be suspicious.
I couldn’t say for sure, but maybe after eating the hardtack earlier, they had found it tastier than they had expected?
They didn’t like that I, a human, was close with Iseria, but I cooked good food for them, so they were wavering.
Whether they watched every single one of my movements like puppies or not, I had work to do.
When the stock had steeped enough, I removed the solids.
Sometimes people who haven’t cooked much ask this question.
“How do you know if the stock came out well?”
You might think, Well, wouldn’t you know if you tasted it? But surprisingly, they don’t.
Stock, which forms the base of a dish, is fundamentally unseasoned.
It contains only the small amount of flavor, aroma, and umami the ingredients possess.
Because of that, cooking beginners may taste the stock and only find it bland, and because they haven’t practiced sensing aromas much either, they may wonder, Did this stock turn out right?
Then what method is there to know for certain whether a stock has steeped well?
First, take out a small amount of stock, add seasoning, and drink it.
People who are sensitive to taste and aroma can guess the cooking order, method, and even ingredients when they eat something.
But ordinary people cannot sense things to that degree.
At times like that, what happens if you season the stock and drink it?
Oh, this tastes like that food I ate back then! And it draws out the memories of taste sleeping inside your brain.
Once you recall that taste, you can keep steeping the stock until it tastes similar, or stop if it’s fine.
But this method is somewhat bothersome.
So another method is simply to eat the ingredient that was steeped to make the stock.
Take onion, for example. Everyone knows the taste of cooked onion. That slightly spicy, sweet taste.
Then you can check whether that taste remains when you eat the onion used in the stock.
It tastes like cooked onion? -> The flavor components haven’t all entered the stock yet.
It feels like you’re just chewing fiber? -> The stock has steeped well.
That is how you can judge it.
I took one anchovy out of the hot stock and tasted it.
An anchovy that crumbled in my mouth with no flavor or aroma at all.
That meant the stock had steeped properly.
I dissolved the doenjang directly into the stock pot.
Then I poured in the onion, potato, and zucchini all at once.
Normally, I would have put in the potato first, since it takes the longest to cook, then the zucchini, and the onion last.
But since I had blanched the potatoes in advance, it didn’t matter much.
As the ingredients began coming together in earnest, the first floor of the restaurant filled with the rich, savory smell of doenjang jjigae.
At the musty aroma of fermented paste that they were smelling for the first time in their lives, Seiran and Veila sniffed with strange expressions.
Iseria was no exception. She had eaten only gochujang before; today was her first encounter with doenjang.
“What is this smell? It kind of stinks, but it’s strangely addictive...”
“It isn’t a nutty aroma! But it’s a scent in a similar vein... It smells like hay stacked up through the winter!”
“So is that good or bad?”
Maybe it was because I had just come off being praised so much for the hardtack a few days ago.
The elves’ reactions, which seemed good and bad at the same time, felt a little bland.
Well, I had expected this dish to be divisive from the start, so it was a relief that no one seemed to hate it—
“Ugh, Jinwoo! This smells weird!”
“How could you say that?”
If it had been Seiran or Veila, I could understand, but for you, Iseria, who were relatively used to Korean food, to dislike it?
Iseria had always eaten anything I made for her deliciously, with an attitude that said she could trust it because I had made it, and now an indescribable sense of betrayal washed over me.
No. My doenjang jjigae was not finished yet.
When the taste of the doenjang had seeped into the ingredients,
I added chopped green onion, spicy chili, and firm tofu.
Tofu. This was the true kick of doenjang jjigae.
Gochujang, with its spicy, salty charm, and soy sauce, with its salty umami that clings to the tongue.
If you looked only at the impact of flavor, doenjang could not imitate the intensity of those two pastes and sauces.
However, the true value of doenjang did not lie in intensity.
Gentle on the outside, strong within.
The addictive mustiness of soybeans made through long fermentation,
A rich, mild flavor that keeps going in.
And since it also possesses the unique heartiness of beans, it could be called an ingredient with solid substance.
For such doenjang, tofu was a fantastic match, a soulmate.
Both were ingredients made based on soybeans, and their flavor profiles were similar as well.
When cooked together, they produced tremendous positive synergy.
I boiled it for about three more minutes so that the seasoning could permeate the tofu, then finished the dish.
The eternal GOAT of warm home-cooked meals, doenjang jjigae, was complete.
***
At a table for four sat three elves and one human in harmony.
In the center of their table, a generous amount of doenjang jjigae was still bubbling as if boasting of its heat.
Its appearance was like mud erupting in an active volcanic zone.
Faced with a dish that was completely different from the food they had eaten all their lives, Seiran, Veila, and Iseria stiffened their faces.
Iseria, who had lived with Kang Jinwoo and eaten Korean food, was relatively fine, but Seiran and Veila were not.
They had come all the way down to human territory to escort the young lady back, and now they had to eat their food too?
No, was this even human food in the first place?
Seiran and Veila were not particularly knowledgeable about human civilization, but they at least knew that the humans of the Empire did not eat swamp-like food like this.
Even so, the reason they were still seated at the table was the hardtack the human had given them earlier.
It had been a type of hardtack similar to the elves’ ration, “Elskit,” but the taste had been far superior.
Although they had sensed that it contained animal-derived ingredients, it had a crispness and flavor that surpassed that discomfort.
Because of that, they held a small measure of expectation before this food, this doenjang jjigae.
That, unlike its musty smell and appearance, perhaps the taste might be real.
“Now, let’s eat. You can mix it with rice or eat it separately. Do whatever’s comfortable.”
The human chef Kang Jinwoo scooped up a deep ladleful of doenjang jjigae and served it into his own small plate.
Seiran and Veila followed his method and put the stew into their own plates as well.
The rice, the substitute for bread that the human had served, pleased them with its snow-white color and deep, sweet grain fragrance.
They had even tried eating plain rice out of curiosity, and it was good; did they really need to dirty this pure-white rice?
Seiran hesitated with her spoon, wearing a face that wondered, Is this really right...?
Whether she did or not, Kang Jinwoo mixed the doenjang jjigae and rice together with practiced motions and put a hearty spoonful into his mouth.
“Hah, hot. It’s good!”
The tofu and potatoes, which retained heat for a long time, must have been hot, because he kept moving his mouth nonstop, but his expression was happy.
Iseria also took a large spoonful of rice mixed with doenjang jjigae.
At first, she had said the smell was strange, but once the tofu went in and the stew was complete, Iseria showed interest again.
It was as if her face said, “H-hmph...! Considering your effort, I’ll at least try it once.”
“Mm... Mmm?”
Perhaps the taste was not bad, because Iseria tilted her head and moved her dainty chin.
Then one bite, and another bite after that.
Her expression was still strange, but Iseria did not stop moving her spoon.
At Iseria’s continued eating, Seiran and Veila hardened their resolve and mixed the doenjang jjigae with rice.
And then, they squeezed their eyes shut and put the spoon in their mouths.
What they felt immediately was warmth.
Not physical warmth, but a more fundamental heat.
The vitality possessed by the tofu,
The heartiness unique to fermented food,
And even the natural nutrients contained in all sorts of vegetables.
All that life force blended together, led by the doenjang, and bestowed an enormous comfort.
Their stiff shoulders and faces loosened the moment they took one bite.
Where had they experienced this comfort, which even felt familiar?
Seiran and Veila kept their eyes tightly shut and entrusted their consciousness to memory.
What came to mind then was the mother of all elves.
The immense blessing that watched over the elves from the center of Noirudel, the World Tree...
‘No, that can’t be!’
As soon as that thought occurred to her, Seiran shook her head.
After eating this food that looked like a mud pit, she dared to think of the World Tree, the most gracious divine tree?
Uh, but now that she looked closely, the bark of the World Tree did seem to be this sort of color...
‘It’s a trick. It has to be this human bastard’s trick.’
The food did not taste all that bad, but to keep making her have such irreverent thoughts...
Judging that it would be better for her mind to simply get rid of this food quickly, Seiran lifted her spoon again.
And this time, she thoroughly mashed and mixed in the fluffy cooked potato and tofu as well.
The rice and doenjang jjigae were mixed together as neatly as Iseria mixing bibimbap.
Seiran put the spoon into her mouth with the thought, I’ll eat it and make it disappear!
The starch of the rice, the crumbly potato, and the soft tofu clung together stickily with the doenjang jjigae broth.
As those clumps were broken apart by her tongue and teeth like sand dissolving in waves, they delivered their flavors to her taste buds without holding anything back.
This time, the umami of the anchovy-kelp stock, the sweetness of the onion, and the rich savoriness of the doenjang struck Seiran’s tongue.
The mixed-in tofu was so soft that even if she did not want to swallow the food, it slid smoothly down her throat.
‘Damn it, it’s not supposed to taste good. Why??’
Even though it looked like mud boiling up from hell.
Even though its musty smell was strange yet addictive enough to make her want to keep smelling it.
Even though it was at its absolute best when you added a big ladleful, enough broth to make white rice moist, then mashed the tofu and potato and mixed it all together.
Inside Seiran’s brain, her pride as an elf and her joy as a living creature waged a sparking battle of nerves.
It was then.
“Mmm! Jinwoo, this is good. When I smelled it at first, I didn’t like it much, but the more I eat, the better it is. My body and mind feel at ease.”
“It really is, Lady Iseria. This is delicious!”
Iseria poured out praise for the food, and Veila, already captured by the doenjang jjigae, chimed in agreement.
Watching their attitudes, a sticky, dark ulterior motive arose in Seiran’s heart.
A way to preserve both her pride as an elf and her joy as a living creature.
‘If Lady Iseria says it’s good, then it can’t be helped. I’m her guard, after all...’
‘It can’t be helped.’
As Iseria’s guard, she could not belittle something that Iseria acknowledged.
Since it was a food the young lady liked, she, as her guard, could eat it with her.
Since Lady Iseria had said to eat it, she had not surrendered to human cooking.
A terrible rationalization born from the close battle between conviction and instinct.
Thus was completed Seiran’s world of doenjang jjigae, where no one got hurt.