From a mountainside in Gyeonggi-do, Buddhist nun WooKwan Sunim pioneers the Korean temple cuisine movement, which has roots in ancient history but speaks directly to modern tastes.

“Whenever I go to the mountain, I can see all the edibles out there. They are everywhere.”

WooKwan Sunim wandered across a mat of decaying leaves and browned pine needles, careful to keep her shale-grey robes clean. For those who know what to look for, the tangled forest surrounding Gameun Temple, near the South Korean city of Icheon, is packed with edible treats. Each year, ginseng roots hide in the dark loam beneath vivacious sprigs of emerald leaves and carmine berries; clusters of velvety oyster mushrooms (songi beoseot in Korean) bloom from the decay of fallen trees; and spicebush branches burst like fireworks with the yellow blossoms known as ginger flowers.

A nun of almost 40 years, WooKwan is a master of Korean temple cuisine and often returns to Gameun from her foraging forays laden with sprigs of fresh pine needles, wild artichoke hearts, feather-light cherry blossom, fat ginkgo seeds and perky lotus leaves, to pickle, ferment, dry or salt for use at a later date. No matter the season, the land dictates the menu at Buddhist temples across Korea, where an organic, vegetarian, zero-waste approach to sustenance is older than the temples themselves.

“When you join the nun or monk life, you start to learn temple food, because we eat it every day,” said WooKwan, who was born into a Christian family and followed that religion before discovering Buddhism almost 40 years ago. She learned the ways of the faith and of temple cuisine from lamas in New Delhi and Seoul, before settling into a peaceful life at Gameun to perfect her craft.

“In the world, the best food is, in my opinion, Korean temple food,” said WooKwan. Coming from anybody else, this would sound like bragging. However, she mentions this merely to balance the caveat that “Korean temple food is not a perfect cuisine”, more a work in progress. “In Korea, there is an image that temple food is not tasty, but good for health.”

As a result, this is a food movement without celebrity chefs and without the swanky inner-city restaurants run by them. Temple food is modest, grounded and completely focussed on sustainable practice. It is, in essence, the product of devotion and necessity; all monks and nuns need sustenance. Mindful preparation of the dishes is all part of the path to enlightenment.

In the temple setting, the combination of South Korea’s robust food culture – where emphasis is traditionally placed on preparing healthy slow food dishes – and Buddhist ideals, which focus on transcending earthly, ephemeral human desires in the pursuit of enlightenment, produces something truly unique. It’s unsurprising then, that when it comes to preparing food, cheap shortcuts to big flavours, such as excess salt, garlic, butter and sugar, are eschewed for healthier pairings of natural ingredients instead. In fact, one item on that list – garlic – is avoided altogether. If that doesn’t provoke the collective gasp of gourmands everywhere, then nothing will.

“In temple cuisine, it’s important to convey the original taste of the ingredients, rather than pushing a sensational flavour,” said WooKwan. Onions, leeks, chives and spring onions are also shunned because nothing distracts meditative practice more than the smelly breath of somebody sat next to you. When you strip away these flavoursome ingredients, along with most animal products, it takes creativity and deep understanding to concoct great recipes with what remains.

Through her resourceful, yet deceptively simple recipes, WooKwan is steadily proving that Korean temple cuisine is both healthy and delicious. Restriction breeds invention. The secret to its rich flavours lies in the seasonings: “Chilli paste (gochujang), soybean paste (doenjang) and Korean soy sauce (ganjang) are the most important. We make these three kinds of seasonings by hand at the temple.” Everything tastes good in the context of these three jangs.

At Gameun Temple, a modest collection of single-storey buildings on a wooded hillside, WooKwan’s onggi (earthenware fermentation pots) are immediately noticeable. They are found in squat, umber huddles all around the temple grounds, containing the jangs and all manner of preserved ingredients sourced from the doorstep wilds.

Pickling and fermentation are age-old preservation techniques that are elevated to an art form here. Spicy and umami flavours abound. The purported healing properties of kimchi, a word that describes a salting and fermenting process, are by now infamous throughout the world. Any vegetable can become kimchi, not just cabbage, in the same way that any vegetable can be pickled or dried. And WooKwan also turns a surprising number of plants into teas.

For example, wild Jerusalem artichoke’s dried flowers are turned into tea, while the artichoke tubers are pickled, turned into a type of kimchi, or dried into a crispy snack. Nothing is wasted in the preparation process, nor in the consumption process. “We only fill our bowl with what we need. We eat every last grain of rice,” WooKwan said.

Slow food cultures such as Korean temple cuisine are in some ways last vestiges of a pre-commercial food production era. But despite the increasingly clear benefits of such a diet, new construction developments are chewing up the forest around Gameun, making foraging and organic farming increasingly challenging. A new golf course here, or a warehouse there, squeeze the remaining wildlife into ever-smaller, disconnected spaces.

“All the time, the gorani (water deer) come and eat all our vegetables.” WooKwan can now only grow plants with fragrant aromas, such as rosemary, sesame and mint, which the deer generally don’t touch. Many other ingredients have to be sourced from local farms instead. And those earthenware pots filled with already harvested, fermenting ingredients are not immune, either. “One day, a gorani opened the cover on one of the pots and ate all the gochujang,” said WooKwan of the irresistible red chilli paste. “It means my gochujang is a very good one,” she joked.

“I think that nature and humans are not separate, but rather connected. It’s important to understand that this connection is made through the heart and mind,” said WooKwan of the “spirit of non-killing and respect for life” principles on which Korean temple cuisine is founded.

In 2018, WooKwan released her first English-language cookbook, WooKwan’s Korean Temple Food. In it, she bridges the gap between East and West, occasionally incorporating ingredients not commonly eaten in Korea, such as Brussels sprouts, artichokes and avocados. Along with a handful of other nuns, she is steadily cultivating the global profile of Korean temple cuisine.

“My favourite ingredient is eggplant [aubergine], and my favourite dish is eggplant and chilli tomato stew. I developed that recipe under the guidance of my master, the head of Bongeun Temple in Seoul, when I began my journey in temple cuisine,” she said. Kindness was at the root of the recipe’s creation; WooKwan was looking to make a dish with softer ingredients that her elders would be able to chew comfortably. New recipes are concocted in this way all the time using a philosophy that has remained unchanged for centuries.

“Good food means not only good tasting food. Good food means what you need,” she said. You can tell, by looking at any one dish, that WooKwan’s ingredients aren’t just healthy, they look good too, balancing textures and colour. Tender lotus roots are topped with crumbled walnuts and diced red chillies; gnarled whorls of chewy seaweed are shredded atop a sea lettuce soup; and crunchy cakes of fried sticky rice come packed with straggly mugwort and pumpkin cubes.

For every person, a slightly different diet is prescribed. “People are increasingly getting addicted to only good-tasting food,” said WooKwan, which in modern times is often processed and can lead to all sorts of health issues. “We try to listen to our body’s sound, it’s voice.” Korean temple food aims to redress the imbalance created by inorganic modern diets. “We need salty, sweet and sour flavours, all kinds of types, but not too much and not too little. You need good harmony and good balance,” she said.

“I love a simple life. Life is better when it’s simple, so food also needs simple recipes. Not complicated. Not too much. Then you will develop a free life.” That is a culinary philosophy that speaks to anybody who has ever fought to balance time constraints with a healthy diet. WooKwan’s aubergine and chilli tomato stew takes only 10 minutes to cook. Who said fast food has to be bad for you?

Braised Aubergine with Cherry Tomatoes

By WooKwan Sunim

Serves 3-4

The marriage of flavours is enhanced the more you chew with this simple, healthy recipe.

Method

Step 1

Slice the aubergine crosswise into 4cm (1½ in) pieces.

Step 2

In a large, pre-heated pan add the perilla seed oil and aubergine and stir-fry over a high heat for a couple of minutes. Add the vegetable stock, soy sauce and rice syrup. Stir well to mix.

Step 3

Cover and braise over medium heat, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cherry tomatoes and simmer until they’re cooked through, and the aubergine is tender. Sprinkle with the diced chillis and serve.

BBC.com’s World’s Table “smashes the kitchen ceiling” by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future. 

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