Biting into a round dumpling, a crisp cucumber aroma spread across the palate, bringing a fresh lift after a winter of heavy air and fine dust.
A hands-on event where participants made and tasted Monk Seonjae’s pine nut noodles — praised by chef Ahn Sung-jae on Netflix’s variety show “Culinary Class Wars” — was held Feb. 26 at the Korean Temple Food Culture Experience Center in Seoul’s Jongno district.
Hosted by the Korean Buddhist Cultural Heritage Foundation, the event featured Seonjae, known for popularizing temple cuisine, demonstrating how to make “Seungso” pine nut noodles. She toasted pine nuts in a pan, finely chopped them and blended them with water to make the broth. She kneaded flour dough with blanched zucchini and spinach, then pulled thin noodles. She also ground cucumber, mixed it with starch and shaped small, round dumplings. Thinly sliced cucumber and Korean melon, lightly salted, were added as garnish.
“Seungso” (僧笑) refers to a dish tasty enough to make a monk smile. The noodles highlighted the ingredients’ natural color and fragrance, with pine nuts complemented by the clean scent of cucumber and Korean melon for a mild, refreshing finish.
Journalists attending the session split into four teams of four to five people and followed Seonjae’s recipe, pulling noodles and shaping dumplings by hand.
Seonjae repeatedly emphasized that “food is medicine,” saying the hardest part of cooking is deciding who will eat it. “You have to make food that fits that person — food that becomes medicine,” she said. “The scriptures say all food is medicine. People usually call seasonings ‘flavoring,’ but in Buddhism it’s the idea of adding taste and medicine. It’s not food that only tastes good; it should suit the person’s palate and be good for the body.”
She said thinking, taste and the body are connected. “Your taste changes when your thinking changes,” she said. “When your taste changes, your body changes. To avoid wasting food, you have to think of it as precious.”
Seonjae said visitors who want to eat her cooking must come one to two hours before mealtime. “You have to make the food together,” she said. “You need to know what went into it to understand its value.”
She also urged ingredients that align with Buddhism’s view of life. “You can only become healthy by eating ingredients that respect nature’s life — not ones that pollute the soil, water and air,” she said, adding that many people are unfamiliar with ingredients such as bang-a and perilla. “Bang-a makes soybean paste stew sweet and delicious. We need to teach children these things.”
Seonjae stressed learning “what is ours” first. “If our children don’t know how to ferment sauces or make kimchi, our culture will disappear,” she said. “Then even our DNA will have to change. We must protect our culture.”
The Jogye Order said it plans to intensify efforts to promote temple cuisine.
Ilhwa, head of the Korean Buddhist Cultural Heritage Foundation, said at the event that it was meaningful that temple food has recently drawn attention through media as an important cultural phenomenon. The foundation will keep working with countries including France and the United Kingdom to globalize temple cuisine, Ilhwa said.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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