This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Janet Ujong Lee, one of the producers of the show.

I've been eating Korean food my whole life. I grew up with it. I crave it on a daily basis.

But it wasn't until the pandemic when I moved in with my mom that I really learned how to make Korean food.

I had to ask, okay, how do I make kimchi when there's no napa cabbage at the grocery store?

What brand of seaweed should I get? And really, how am I supposed to follow your recipes when it

just says at a pinch or a handful of every ingredient? Just like that so much of Korean cooking

is rooted in practices that are never documented but passed down in families.

The dishes that many of us grew up with are the Korean food that came over in the 80s.

I was at those fascinating and that is why I think in the Korean American community,

there's a staunch desire to preserve only and not innovate.

That's cooking columnist Eric Kim. You may have seen his recipes in the New York Times.

Eric is also the author of a cookbook called Korean American Food That Taste Like Home.

It's a book he wrote with his mom Jean when he moved home to Atlanta during the pandemic.

Maif bang wijwa.

That's Eric in his mom making milk bread. You can find the recipe in his book.

Eric says his cookbook isn't just about Korean American food. Instead,

this book documents the discovery of my Korean Americanness and my attempts and my failed attempts

to define it because what I really believe is that our experiences as Korean Americans are so

multiple that and the diaspora is so vast that any attempt to define it is going to dilute it.

Understanding what it means to be Korean American or being Korean in America,

it never gets easier from the identity crises to our constant effort to reconnect with Korean culture.

And of course, this all looks different. Even between Eric who has roots in Atlanta and me,

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