KOREAN RECIPES: Three Korean/Asian Cookbooks by Kye Kim

While I was studying in Michigan, away from my family and friends, I often felt lonely, just like any other students abroad, especially during the holidays. Then I met Kye and her family in church - Chin (her husband), Michael and Michelle (their son and daughter who share a birthday with each other) - and a few years later, we found that we'd kind of become a pseudo family.

And there was something special about Kye. Not only did (and does) she love to cook, but she was (and is) a great cook; and she always loved cooking for others, most of whom were young Korean students she met in church. And I gradually became her favorite. Yay~! On Thanksgiving eve, Christmas eve, and New Year's eve, she always invited me to sleep over, worried I might feel eerie and lonely in the mostly empty dorm. And it just so happened that, during that time, I sat next to her, watched her cook the feasts, and ended up learning how to cook. Until then, ramen was pretty much the only thing I could cook deliciously. Since then, almost all of my recipes had been inspired by hers until I turned pesco-vegetarian in 2007 but of course, I still use her recipes most of the time I cook for my meat-eating family and also create vegetarian recipes for myself based on hers.

I left Michigan in 2003 but we've been close friends in spite of our disparate political views (I think our friendship has probably been much easier than Carvill-Matalin marriage, haha), supporting each other through the ups and downs of life. And in 2007, Kye finally became a published Korean cookbook author and has written two more in English since. The strength of her recipes, I think, comes from the fact that she has created her own "mistake-proof" recipes for Korean (or sometimes Asian or American) food, "using ingredients available at any local American grocery store," adapted to "the younger generation," who are less inclined to spend much time cooking as they are busy with their jobs.

Kye's latest two cookbooks, Kye Kim's Modern Korean Cooking (2009) and Kye Kim's Simply Delicious One Course Meals (2012), were written in English and published by Bookhouse, a Korean publisher, and Kye Kim's Neat Cooking: Michigan Cook's Easy Recipes (2007) was written in Korean and its revised version was issued by Bookhouse in 2011.

But there's just one thing I don't understand: Why don't they promote these books in the US or other English-speaking countries?  I mean, has anyone of you ever heard of these books before?  And yes, as some of you may be already aware, I'm now volunteering to be my dearest friend's PR agent (of course free of charge) and writing this post to promote her books. If you're interested in her cookbooks, click on the images below to get more information about them from Amazon.com web site.

Kye Kim's Modern Korean Cooking (2009)

Kye Kim's Simply Delicious One Course Meals (2012)

Kye Kim's Neat Cooking:
Michigan Cook's Easy Recipes (2007, 2011)  

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