Chef Jeongkwan Snim – A Korean nun becomes a star of vegan cuisine culture

From the mountains of Korea to the plates of gourmets: the temple food of a Buddhist nun goes through the roof, whether on Netflix or in the star kitchens. A cookbook will follow in autumn – published by a Swiss publisher.

Vegan food is trendy. Anyone who opens a new restaurant today can hardly avoid plant-based cuisine. The cookbooks also tend towards plant-based dishes, because the classic meat cuisine à la Paul Bocuse was yesterday.

Plant-based foods are popular – even better if they come from a centuries-old tradition.

Temple cuisine from the mountains of Korea

Jeongkwan Snim brings one of these old traditions with him. She is a nun from a convent 300 kilometers south of Seoul. There she usually only cooks for a handful Nuns and monks, and have been for 40 years.

Zen Buddhism and food: This combination is now also exciting the West. Star chefs from all over the world travel to the mountains of South Korea to seek advice from the nun.

Hardly anything more authentic. Far away from civilisation, withdrawn and close to nature, she does not cook for a restaurant or for a select clientele. She mainly uses vegetables that she grows and processes herself.

A nun becomes a Netflix star

She was made famous by a New York three-star chef who once visited her. Netflix then became aware of her and portrayed her as one of the most interesting cooks in the world in the television series “Chef’s Table”.

Legend:

Jeongkwan Snim in the spotlight: In “Chef’s Table” she gives an insight into her cooking. Garlic and onions do not come into the dish – they would disturb the meditation.

Netflix

Since then she has been visiting the world’s metropolises more and more often. With her ingredients from the monastery garden: root vegetables, radish, aubergine, cabbage and kimchi. Above all, it is her way of handling the ingredients that defines her as a chef.

The essential ingredient: time

“I am the ingredient and I am the ingredient,” says Jeongkwan Snim. Cooking can only succeed if the energy she puts into the ingredients is right, says the Buddhist nun.

One of the important forms of energy it adds to ingredients is fermentation. The fermentation of vegetables is very important in the temple cuisine of Korea. Jeongkwan Snim sometimes prepares sauces and pastes that ferment in pots for years or decades, giving the vegetables a special energy and an extraordinary taste.

She refines the whole thing with juicy mushrooms, bamboo, chili, rice syrup and lots of herbs. The time factor plays, who would have thought otherwise, a major role. Fruits can only grow and sauces mature over time.

First cookbook in Switzerland

“I never wanted to publish a cookbook,” says Jeongkwan Snim. Because their recipes would always change. Committing to a specific procedure is not their thing. But with her popularity and her simultaneous reclusiveness as a nun, she has now decided to pass on her knowledge in this way.

Legend:

In her new cookbook, Jeongkwan Snim not only wants to show recipes, but also life in the monastery. “Jeongkwan Snim” by Hoo Nam Seelmann (text) and Véronique Hoegger (image) will be published in November 2023 by realtime publishers.

real time publisher

In Switzerland of all places, she found what she was looking for at realtime publishing. This certainly has something to do with the journalist Hoo Nam Seelmann, who is a good friend and lives in Switzerland. She translates everything and writes the lyrics.

The book is still in the development phase, the cook wants to see every picture again: Above all, the temple life shown has to be exactly right, because there are clear rules. That also takes time. The cookbook is planned for November 2023.