I have slowly started eyeing some Korean products on the shelves, and techniques and flavour combinations mastered in restaurants. It’s exciting to experience some more unusual tastes for a bit of a change.

With the help of my local Asian supermarket staff trying to identify the ingredients for me on vibrant and funky packaging, I often go home with tubs of pastes and bottles of sauces just hoping that the language barrier has translated well!

Even before The Pot Luck Club at The Biscuit Mill moved into the über-stylish new place, restaurateur and chef patron Luke Dale-Roberts was serving up beef short rib cooked so slowly in soya that it became an exotic, dark, sticky meat, accompanied by kimchi. This pickled, spiced and fermented cabbage salad takes a few days to make and is often prepared at this time of the year and preserved in jars. It’s the sort of stuff I have lined up on my kitchen shelves that I eat like piccalilli with almost anything – it’s so delicious!

Most Korean food is cooked over the charcoal grill, like bulgogi, which is kind of a shabu-shabu barbequed at the table. XO sauce is a fiery kind of chilli paste that seems to be the most popular ingredient on trend right now, and I’m sure you will see it popping up on certain menus.

I hope you get to experience these transcendent ancient flavours being reignited!

Happy eating.

Abigail