Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Set on the remote Korean island of Jeju, the island of Sea Women follows the lives of two friends, Young Sook and Mi-ja, two women divers of diverse backgrounds who share their love of the ocean.

They belong to an all female diving collective where gender rules are anything but typical.

Let's meet my guest, Evie Kirkwood, to find out more about their lives.

Welcome.

Thank you, Gail.

This was a delightful book and a surprise to me.

Well, it was a surprise to me, too, and I loved it.

I really thought it's probably one of the 20 best books I've read this year.

I just wanted you to know that because normally we do things about biology and we do lab work.

I rarely read novels and for some reason this one intrigued me.

But it is a historical novel.

And so there's lots of history embedded in this book.

So before we get started.

Well, we continue on.

Let's talk about what we're going to make.

Tell us what you're doing.

Two different things today.

I'm actually making a spicy--everything spicy today, actually.

Spicy sweet potato bake with Asian sweet potato.

So this is a sweet potato that most of us think about that we can get here.

But Asian sweet potatoes are very different, looking deep red, white, even the center of this white one.

Look at that beautiful burgundy color.

It is lovely.

I've seen those presented.

But now tell us where you found that.

One of the great things about books is it introduces us into two new worlds right?.

We learned a lot about these women divers, the haenyeos, but I learned a lot about the Oriental markets right here in South Bend and Elkhart.

So what you're saying is don't be put off by, oh, I won't be able to try this because I don't know about this food and where to find it.

Evie knows where everything is.

I tried all the markets in South Bend.

Some have a Japanese land, a Chinese slant.

There's a one in Mishawaka that has kind of a Korean slant, which was perfect for this book, even went over onto Beardslee Street.

And that's where I found the Asian sweet potato.

So great fun, great exploration in those stores.

And we'll be investigating some of the special sources that are mentioned in these recipes.

Well, I--I am going to chop these cucumbers.

Well, I'm actually pretty much chop them on the diagonal and then I'm going to do some match--match sticks of fennel, a fennel bulb, and we will salt that and let it sort of what do you say season?

Let the juices run out the liquid and we will for thirty minutes.

So we will just get that started because time flies.

I've taken the bulb of the fennel bulb and I have sliced it in half and then I'm making little matchsticks here if you can, maybe you'll see that.

And I tried this the first time and I made them too thick and I'll get that out of the way here but these are matchsticks.

One of the things that I thought was interesting about Young Sook and Maija, who were two women who, as you mentioned earlier, very diverse backgrounds, but commonalities.

They both like to dive.

They both were divers eventually.

But also there's a lot of talk in the book about the--the gardens that they have and growing sweet potatoes and growing vegetables.

So I think it's interesting that the dishes that you and I have chosen today are--they're are pretty much all vegetable based.

Well, you know, as I'm reading this book, The New York Times comes out with kimchi recipe for different vegetables, but it's not the fermented kimchi because that takes a long time to prepare.

It is something you could do and have it for lunch with rice or noodles.

And I'm going to just put some salt on these vegetables for now and we're going to put them in a colandar to drain and there goes a matchstick.

And so that's going to be the base.

It's like a side dish that you serve with the main course or it can be the main course for lunch, served on rice and I'm going to make rice to go with it.

So part two here.

I have to get the garlic.

I have a garlic bulb I've chopped up, and with it I'm going to put some vinegar, white wine vinegar, about a tablespoon and a half here, and that's going to be ready to put on the cucumber and the fennel bulb matchsticks after 30 minutes.

But so I wanted to get that started.

So we weren't waiting forever for these things to what do you call the what's the verb?

I always say weap.

They always have to keep the extra moisture out.

Right?

And this writer in The New York Times uses kimchi, which is the name of this kind of presentation of vegetables.

He uses it as a verb.

You can kimchi cucumbers, you can kimchi, radishes, you can kimchi cherry tomatoes.

It means go through the process of making it with all of these excellent herbs and sauces that we are using.

So it's not-- remember kimchi, really.

We think of this cabbage that has fermented and it is strong.

This is more seasoned and tasty and you use it right away.

You don't wait a month or so.

And so that's the reason why we're making the food today.

And we're talking about, like you said, the two young girls who really are--they're like bosom buddies.

They really are.

They go through the ups and downs of life.

And actually, Young Sook comes from a family of divers.

And Mi-ja was an orphan and her father was a collaborator with the Japanese.

So she is not highly regarded by some people.

They're especially cautious.

They're cautious around Mi-ja.

And actually, she's living with an aunt and uncle.

They're not always very nice to her.

They're not.

And so we we have these two girls and they--they really become lifelong friends.

They dive together and they spend any extra time that they're not gathering sweet potatoes, cooking when they get home, taking care of baby--diving and then coming home, taking care of babies.

And in one scene, they take their newborn babies with them and the babies are left on a boat.

The mothers dive,.

I know, later in the book.

Come back up and then they nurse their babies, have a little lunch and go back into the water because this is their livelihood.

I think it's interesting, too, to learn about the amount of training that goes into these women collective.

So really, it's a group of women who are bonded by their love of the ocean, their great skill, free diving.

They don't use any apparatus.

It isn't until much later when they actually start to use masks and wet suits, but they actually wear something almost similar to what you use.

It's white, all white.

Cotton.

And they dyed it in green persimmons and somehow they gave some kind of protective characteristic to the fabric.

Well, talking about fabric.

You were in Korea and you bought an outfit that you could wear and to do anything you wanted to do.

This actually is an outfit from Korea, kind of a working person's outfit.

So I thought that it fit.

You're working today.

Today?

I'm walking away working on the food, so yeah, exactly.

319 00:08:20,940 --> 00:08:22,067 That was surprising and perfect.

Just perfect.

And I really liked this story.

And this it's a sweeping story.

It's intergenerational.

These women train their daughters.

They want sons, but they at least have to have two daughters because the women earn the money to send the boys to school, not the girls, until much later.

Much later in the book.

And these women work so hard.

I mean, they're gathering water.

They're--they're digging for sweet potatoes.

They come home and feed the kids.

I mean, it is--.

Very hard.

And they--I think they get a way to meet their friends in this collective just to escape family life.

And their husbands.

Who don't seem to be very energetic at all, at least in this story They're not they don't seem to be.

And when the women come home, they like to go and sit under a tree and play cards and have some drinks and that sort of thing.

Anyway, it has a lot going on in this book.

357 00:09:22,170 --> 00:09:23,219 I just I'm going to interrupt you here.

Go right ahead.

So we can let folks know what's happening here.

You talked about there's a spicy garlic paste, chili, garlic paste that is used in a lot of Korean and not much Asian food dishes.

And so I've mixed that with a number of things, a little bit of sesame oil, a little bit of rice vinegar, lots more garlic.

And I'm tossing it with the beautiful sweet potatoes and some onions, and then I'm going to spread it on a baking sheet.

Oh, it looks good.

Oh, it looks good.

Yeah!

It smells good, too.

And I borrowed some of this sauce, too, which I couldn't find for my my.

What is it.

Instant kimchi, yes, instant kimchi.

So, again, 30 minutes here, I have some garlic and vinegar here.

And then we will add when this is already seeped, we're going to add it back here to this mixture and then we'll add some sesame oil.

And you found that too.

At the Asian market--.

On Beardslee in Elkhart.

And then I'll add some of this sauce and some fish sauce and you say, oh, my gosh.

But the flavor--.

Flavors, layers of flavors.

I think once you if you've grown up with these flavors, I think Indiana cooking could seem a little bit bland and it doesn't work.

Yes.

So we talked about the conflict that happens during their life.

This starts in probably the middle.

Would you say 1930s?

Yes, it does.

But the Japanese are an enemy.

They've always been an enemy.

Then you have the World World War two and then the Korean War.

You have the North coming down to invade the South and the Americans come in and get involved and horrendous things take place.

There are some scenes in the book you just-- well, it's war.

It's war.

And--and this is cooking.

And we have to take a little break.

Got to pop these in the oven to let them bake.

Bake them right now.

Yes.

So we're going to be right back.

But we want to take a look at pictures, some pictures of the women divers, and they're still diving today.

We'll be right back.

And today, our book is The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See.

My guess is Evie Kirkwood and I am cooking rice for our kimchi and I'm going to add my matchstick fennel bulbs and cucumbers to a source of garlic and white vinegar.

And then we'll add some sesame oil, some of this hot sauce that you go through, something like that, and then we'll add some sugar.

And there we go.

This will be our and I actually should have mixe that with the sauce there that was in there, but we'll just throw this in.

Well, we won't throw it.

And one of the things now that I'm working on are Korean rice cakes.

So this is actually what a Korean rice cake looks like.

It's actually made from rice flour.

And then it's pressed into a cylinder, which I think is really interesting, very different from what I have grown up to know.

As you know, like an American rice cake, dried, puffed rice.

So Korean rice cakes, you can get them in the local markets, sometimes frozen.

Will they be puffed, too?

Just like that?

No, it's literally rice flour that's pressed into this shape.

And I'm going to be stir fry them with a little bit of either cabbage in the traditional recipes or this is a collard green, which is in the cabbage.

I thought it was a plastic--.

I know.

For the table.

Came from my garden.

So it's in the cabbage family.

So that's what I'm going to use is really pretty green.

One drop of fish sauce in here and then we've got everything.

And also the--the collective of women, this sort of communal arrangement that these women have.

Haenyeo is the Korean name for these women who are our divers.

I was fascinated by their hierarchy.

They have baby divers who are just learning, which they're not really babies, but they're 12, 13 years old, all the way up to the grandmother divers.

Women in their 80s and 90s diving!

Holding their breath for two minutes.

Yes.

So that they can dove down for sea urchins, which really their tools are just a knife, a net, a basket.

That's it.

And then they have a float, called it tewak that kind of floats above them in the water to indicate their location.

Yes.

And you travel out on a boat and then they jump off.

They jump up and they're up and down.

And as we mentioned before, they bring their babies.

But the babies stay on the boat, obviously.

And your chiffonade, you doing a chiffonade here?

I did a little chiffonade with that, with the cabbage leaves.

Just gives it a little green color.

Yeah, I'm discarding the chewy stems and I'm going to be stir frying some onion in here as well.

And it'll get this same kind of spicy garlic sauce that I've mixed with a little water, a little bit of sugar and a little more garlic believe it or not.

We've got garlic and I have my salad mixed up.

I'm going to add just four color some slices of radish and spring onion, but you can also kimchi these and make it its own set of kimchi for the day.

There's so many ways to do this, but the authentic way is not this way.

The fermented is the authentic.

And you should go to maybe Sunnies on Spring Street.

And there is a Korean house on McKinley.

There is, yeah.

So you can try the food there and compare.

This is not going to be is fermented as you would find in the restaurant.

We're going to let that sit for a while.

The rice is cooking will will serve this on the rice and that that could be lunch or it could be a side if you're going to have any other main dish.

I think another thing I was fascinated in the book about was the change in the culture for these women.

Very simple life worked as a team, a unit.

And it was all women driven.

And they were really some of the first eco feminists.

They were they were conscious of where they drove and not overharvesting towards the end of the book, rather than diving in their cotton clothes, which they were criticized for--.

Because they were see through.

They were seen through.

They would they had wetsuits, they had masks.

And then men were in charge of the Asian fisheries, which didn't sit quite right.

Didn't sit well later on.

But they adapted the women.

The--absolutely.

The Hennyos have been very adapted to culture change and fairly rapid culture change.

Well you know, and the whole point, too, is that these women were not educated because they were the bread winners.

I mean, I'm trying to get my head around that, but today they're sending their daughters to school.

These women provided the money by selling these items that they took from the ocean.

And and it was for the education of their sons.

But her husband said, no, we are going to also educate our daughters.

And the mother said in the beginning that why they're going to earn money just by, you know, deep sea diving here.

And he didn't-- he was more progressive.

He was more progressive.

And as we go through the book, we learn about Young Sook and her happy marriage and Mi-ja's not happy marriage.

As young children, those two young girls did rubbings of places.

I like that.

That was very charming.

And they shared them with each other.

There was a falling out between those two women.

Yes.

During the war.

Actually, Mi-ja's husband was abusive.

In fact, I would say more murderous.

Young sook said, please take my children if we have trouble.

And she said, I'll make sure your son will be taken care of.

But then she turned her back on Young Sook's child.

And we don't find out for, what, 30 years why she didn't take the son.

And we find out later when there is a tape recording of Mi-ja saying, I knew if I brought your son into my house, my husband would beat him.

Right.

But in places that he was killed by a probably North Koreans coming down, invading the South Korea.

So there is so much in this book.

I mean, there is it is fascinating in this hierarchy of women, but the closeness and how they took care of each other and how they love to get together.

Love to get together.

Now you've just added--.

I'm adding sardines.

Obviously, these women, it's--it's fun in the book.

The women don't eat a lot of the things that they harvest because the things that they harvest, they sell and that's how they make money.

But they do eat things like dried anchovies or simple fish.

You don't read a lot in the book about them eating the abalone or the octopus because those were saved to sell at the market or to the fisheries.

But I added some little sardines.

It'll give it some flavor.

Well I can smell it, you know, when there's off season or they don't have opportunity the--the fish are not there.

They go off and do sort of what do they call it, a special--we're going to go to another country or another city and we're going to work there, earn money.

And they aren't married yet, but they're going to earn money to buy things for their husband.

And isn't it interesting how the marriages were all arranged, arranged very strategic by grandmothers often?

Oh, and actually these two women weren't so sure that their grandmothers had done the right thing.

Exactly.

But Young Sook's marriage is very successful.

She's a very nice husband, very loving, very--he wants his daughters to be educated.

And that was that was the main thing that impressed me.

And as time goes on, as we've talked about the things going on in the island, the women are never reconciled.

Mi-ja moves to the United States, but her great granddaughter has a tape of Mi-ja telling the story of what really happened and why she didn't take her son.

And in this big massacre, Young Sook lost her sister in law, her son and her husband.

So that was tumultuous times.

And we read it and we feel it in this book.

At least I did.

And I think it's very poignant.

You talked about the tape recording at the very end of the book.

Mi-ja's great granddaughter comes back to Jeju Island from the United States, seeks out Young Sook, who's now much older and eventually--.

Probably in her 80s.

But it is it is Klara, this great granddaughter, that helps Young Sook understand Mi-ja's true story through the tape recordings.

And poignantly, Mi-ja had been sending letters from the United States to Young Sook.

But Young Sook was so mad for so many years she never opened those letters.

Well, I can understand the misunderstanding, but also the hurt.

837 00:21:36,458 --> 00:21:37,169 The hurt.

And when she opened the letters, so many of them contained some of those wonderful rubbings that the two of them had done as children, which I thought was really, really charming.

Came full circle in all these activities.

This smells so good.

Yeah, it looks colorful.

We just got to have just a little bit of sardine in there that softens those chewy, chewy rice cakes.

So I'm going to plate them here.

We're going to we're going to do some plating.

We're going to invite you to our Korean feast.

And I hope you enjoy the book.

I would just encourage you to read it.

You know, we need something different in our life.

We need to experience another culture and what certain people go through just to make sure their children are educated.

And so I highly recommend the book.

OK, well, the next thing we want to do is show a picture of the map of this area off of the coast of Korea, the south western coast of Korea.

And so join us for our Korean supper or lunch.

I think it's more like a supper, isn't it?

Sure.

So we'll be right back.

The island of Sea Women, I highly recommend it and Evie I've been cooking up a storm, chopping.

Cooking.

Spicy dishes?

Yes.

Tell us about what you made.

We have the Korean sweet potatoes that we baked and then we have the chewy rice cakes, spicy rice cakes garnished with some sesame seeds.

And before you talk about yours, let's not forget--.

Let's look at table.

There's a theme about gardening in here as well, because all the Hennyos were gardeners as well.

So, again, the sweet potatoes and the garlic chili peppers up here,.

Beautiful ones you chose.

So--.

Tangerines!

Tangerines, that's a good dessert, a good fruit.

And they grow them.

They're the the women grew them.

It was a snack for them oftentimes.

And I recommend them highly.

We use them as snacks--.

Dessert.

And yes, dessert.

They're wonderful.

And last night when I was just doing some cleaning, I had forgotten that I got this handmade paper from Korea when I was in Korea in 2005.

That's hand stamp.

So that's what this is all displayed.

Just perfect.

And you've made that wonderful kimchi.

Oh yes.

And the wall hanging it.

Beautiful.

And kimchi.

The kimchi, which is not fermented, but it's got a kick to it.

Now, when I made it at home, I didn't have the red sauce.

Now it steams up the room when you eat it, but it's really good.

We're going to serve it on rice.

And this is a perfect meal.

It really is.

And light!

Light.

It is light ,yes.

And a lot of things are kimchi.

That's my verb.

You can have it on rice, buckwheat noodles and have it at noon.

Oh, and we are just moving along here.

Tell me, how would you recommend this book to someone?

If you're a novel lover, then this book is really something that you'll be interested in, especially if you like historical based novels.

And for me, I was fascinated about the story of the women in their transitions and the changes and the fact that they really are eco feminist.

They are they were way ahead of their time.

They really were.

The whole society on this island was way ahead because the women were in charge.

I loved the book.

Thank you for suggesting it today.

Some of these women are working in hotels and--.

Hospitality, they've become a tourist attraction.

And yes, they have.

So times have changed, but the food remains good, the women were smart and all of that.

So thank you for coming and providing a wonderful meal and thank you for joining us today.

I love the book and I hope you will come back next week.

Remember, good food, good friends, good books, make for a quality life.

We'll see you next time.

Thanks, Evie.

Thank you.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.