Chef's Table (2015) s03e01 Episode Script

With food we can share and communicate our emotions.
It's that mindset of sharing that is really what you're eating.
There is no difference between cooking and pursuing Buddha's way.
It's been almost half a century since I entered this way.
I did it in pursuit of enlightenment.
I am not a chef.
I am a monk.
There was a day at the New York Times when I got an e-mail that Jeong Kwan was going to be cooking lunch at Le Bernardin here in New York City.
So I was thinking, you know, rice bowls and maybe yams that have been boiled past the point of solidity.
So I actually said no.
I actually almost blew off this event.
Um, and then I got a personal call from Eric Ripert, the chef at Le Bernardin, and he said, "I understand you said no to the Jeong Kwan lunch.
" And I said, "Yes, I did.
I'm quite busy.
I have a lot of deadlines.
" And, uh, he said, "You don't understand.
You have to come to this.
This is very special.
This is a command performance.
I insist that you come to this.
" And I was like, "Okay, yes, Chef.
" You know, "Oui, Chef.
" When Eric Ripert suggests it's a command performance, you listen.
And not to be hyperbolic, but it was life changing to attend this lunch.
I went to Korea because I was very curious about Korean culture.
Because I am Buddhist, I knew they have a lot of temples and monasteries and their food is famous.
I wanted to go and learn and taste the food and discuss with the monks and nuns, and find out what it was.
I was very curious about it.
Jeong Kwan is a nun.
She's extremely compassionate.
She's very advanced in Buddhism, and she happens to be a great cook.
Jeong Kwan doesn't run a restaurant.
She cooks for herself and for the nuns who are living in hermitage and for the people who visit her.
Jeong Kwan is very spontaneous in her cooking.
At the same time, she keeps a certain tradition, but she breaks a lot of rules.
And that makes her very exceptional as a chef, as a cook.
Eric Ripert flew her to New York so that she could cook for people here.
I was sitting with a bunch of journalists.
Even if I had known what to expect, I could not have imagined how beautiful it would be, how sublime this food would be.
You would look at these plates, and they could easily have passed for plates served at Noma, at Benu in San Francisco, at Blanca in Brooklyn.
Without a blink, you could have served them at those restaurants and people would have marveled at how beautiful and how delicious these dishes were.
Everyone at this table, we were looking at each other like, "Oh, my God.
What is this?" This was as good as any meal you can get from any chef on the planet.
And as soon as the meal was over, I, sort of emotionally went up to Eric Ripert, and I was like, "I have to go to Korea.
I have to learn more about this cuisine.
I have to learn more about Jeong Kwan.
" Everyone calls it "temple food.
" The Koreans even the monks.
Secular food is focused on creating dynamic energy.
But temple food keeps a person's mind calm and static.
When making temple food, there are five ingredients we don't use: garlic, onions, scallions, chives and leeks.
Those are the five pungent spices.
Those five spices are sources of spiritual energy, but too much of that energy will prevent a monk's spirit from achieving a state of calmness.
This is a distraction to meditation.
Temple food, the food monks eat, is flavored with nature.
You see, temple food is extremely simple.
But it uses a lot of seasonings like curcuma, sichuan pepper, brown pepper, shiso.
We never use instant ingredients.
The flavor is based on salt, soy paste, soy sauce and chili paste.
These ingredients awaken your mind.
They keep you aware.
Temple food is deeply connected to spiritual energy.
I was born in Yeongju, a city in North Gyeongsang province.
I was the fifth of seven brothers and sisters and the third daughter.
Is it done? We had a small farm and a very happy family.
When I was six or seven I enjoyed cooking very much.
I had seen my mother making noodles.
One day, I tried making them for my parents, who worked so hard on the farm.
Just as I was finishing the noodles my parents returned home.
My mother looked at me and asked "Where did you learn to make this?" I said, "I learned from watching you to make you happy.
" She patted me on the shoulder and praised me by saying, "You will live well one day.
" When I felt the love of my mother, I wanted to become like her.
The porridge is done.
I learned the mother's way from my mother.
Have some, sister monk.
Preparing a lot of food to share.
As a monk, I try to practice such a mind, a mother's mind.
A monk is everyone's mother not just to a family, but to the whole community.
Let us start our meal service.
Wonderful.
I wish I could eat Jeong Kwan's food every day for a month and just see what happens.
I have a feeling that I would feel so good.
On the monastery grounds, we're eating all Jeong Kwan's food, and you start to feel transformed.
She's like a walking advertisement for cooking because she looks so young, she has so much energy You know, I really think she's just aware.
She's aware of the weather.
She's aware of your mood.
So much of Buddhist practice is about mindfulness and attention.
It's about paying attention.
And, in a way, her cooking is about paying attention.
There was this incredible deliberation and care.
There was just a different kind of care than even you find in the best restaurants.
A good example is that tea the lotus tea, which was, in a way, its own metaphor for the delicacy of enlightenment.
It's a study in subtlety.
It's an expression, in liquid form, of maybe what enlightenment feels like.
That's pretty heavy.
And yet, it really was just so subtle that it was just on the edge of being water but not.
It wasn't.
It was it was obviously infused with this floral quality, and I couldn't get enough of it, which is I actually did want to just, like, down a lot of the enlightenment tea, you know? When I was young, my father would say "A woman should be able to make seven dishes with straw.
Only then does she deserve a good husband.
" One day, I got angry.
When my father said that, I told him, "No, Father.
I'm not trying to find a good husband.
I will live in a small shack out in the mountains surrounded by nature.
I will live all alone.
" He said, "Then I will let you stay up in the mountains, but I will feel sad.
" And, as he said this he cried.
I asked, "Why are you crying?" He answered "How can a young girl like you think like that?" I thought I had to be alone to be free.
The most remarkable thing to me about Jeong Kwan's cooking has to do with time.
So you say, "Well, how does she achieve so much impact on your palate with no garlic, no onions, no meat, no dairy, et cetera?" This is part of it.
She's using time.
She's playing a long game, and she's dealing with a practice that is, in fact, centuries old.
She's using fermentation, and she's using the slow development of these undercurrents of flavor.
Kimchi is an incredible example of this.
Kind of the alchemy of fermentation is so amazing to me because, essentially, it's taking ingredients, adding salt, adding what's in the air, adding time, and watching them transform.
That cabbage, that is becoming, basically, a preserve.
When something ferments, it's a transformation of the product.
You create, through the process, another life.
All year long, plants grow by the energy of nature, the universe, the earth and human labor.
It's man's greed that wants the plants to grow faster and grow bigger and prettier.
That is why some resort to chemical substances.
But I let the plants in my garden grow as they want.
I'd never seen a garden like this.
You know, if you go to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, you see this incredibly meticulous, tended-to, almost Calvin Klein garden.
Like, it looks like some fashion designer has designed this beautiful farm.
You go to Jeong Kwan's garden, it's a mess.
It's like, "Where does the garden begin and the forest end?" There's not really any barriers.
And she said, "Sometimes a feral pig will come in and make off with a squash, and that's fine.
You know, that's just nature.
" There's insects, and she says, "Well, they're insects.
They're part of nature.
I don't do anything to keep them off.
" And I was like, "Wow.
Organic? Organic has nothing on this.
" Cultivating, in temple food, it's very important that you apply the same process of putting compassion, love, good energy into the seed that will grow as a plant.
And so she does that, but she doesn't care if the vegetables look beautiful.
She doesn't care if the leaf that an insect ate is perfect.
It's not about that.
It's about sharing, actually, with nature, and the garden ultimately looks beautiful.
It's very harmonious, the way that the plants grow together, and I find it very charming.
She was just out there, growing and plucking things and letting it be.
She's just trusting that air and water and sunlight will produce beautiful food.
After planting the seeds, I just watch them grow.
They grow in snow, rain, wind and sunlight.
When it's hot, they grow in heat.
When it's cold, they grow in cold.
I make food from these vegetables with a blissful mind.
And I eat the vegetables with joy.
I periodically leave the temple and go into the city.
I want to communicate with everyone through food.
So I lecture at the Department of Culinary Arts at Jeonju University.
I have been lecturing on vegetarian cooking for five years.
Sugar acts as a preservative.
It acts as a preservative, which is why we hardly use any sugar.
That's why temple food is considered healthy and good for your well-being.
Today's young people have a different way of eating.
Their eating habits have become westernized.
And with the propagation of fast foods, they have experienced a great change in food culture.
I teach because I want the world to be united through healthy and happy food and to thrive together.
Whenever you have leftover flour or you throw away a lot of ingredients, that is not acceptable.
You must treasure the ingredients.
I don't consider my activities to be teaching.
It is communication.
Whoa! I lecture on the spirit, the definition of temple food, why the monks eat temple food, and how you can change yourself with temple food even if you are not a monk.
You need to taste it and right away understand what is missing.
The tongue is just one part.
All your five senses must move.
The five senses are body, feeling, perception, intention, and consciousness.
We need to take these things into consideration when cooking.
Although it is merely progress toward a goal the very action of progressing with the greatest passion, with the greatest energy is a kind of an enlightenment.
When I was 17, my mother suddenly passed away.
I was deeply upset when she died so early.
And I realized there was no guarantee that I wouldn't give my children the same kind of pain one day.
I vowed never to pass down that pain.
One day, I just disappeared without telling anyone.
I didn't take anything with me.
I just decided to be a monk.
In 1974, I left home and came to the temple.
The winter sun was setting.
I got off the bus.
I had nothing in my hands.
No money.
No things.
Nothing.
Just a small girl going step by step up a mountain.
When I looked up, I saw an old monk.
She asked, "Did you come here to live?" I answered, "How did you know? Yes.
I am here to stay.
" My mother granted me the opportunity to enter this temple.
Even today, I thank her for her mercifulness and her compassion for allowing my pursuit of the freedom.
Soy sauce Soy sauce makes me excited just thinking about it.
Every food is recreated by soy sauce.
Soy beans, salt and water, in harmony, through time.
It is the basis of seasonings the foundation.
There are sauces aged five years, ten years aged for 100 years.
These kinds of soy sauces are passed down for generations.
They are heirlooms.
If you look into yourself, you see past, present and future.
You see that time revolves endlessly.
You can see the past from the present.
By looking into myself, I see my grandmother, my mother, the elders in the temple, and me.
As a result, by making soy sauce, I am reliving the wisdom of my ancestors.
I am reliving them.
It's not important who or when.
What is important is that I'm doing it in the present.
I use soy sauce, and I acknowledge its importance.
It is no longer just me that's doing things.
It's me in the past, in the present, and even in the future.
Soy sauce is eternal.
It is life itself.
When you become a monk, it's not about learning Buddhism more deeply.
It's about living with Buddhism.
Living with it eating with it praying working chopping wood pulling weeds All of these things become a study.
This is perhaps Buddhism itself.
When I was 17 years old, I entered the way of a monk.
It was very hard for a young girl.
I had to wake up every day at 3:00 in the morning.
And, still groggy, I'd go to morning prayers light a fire in the kitchen and cook breakfast.
Eat breakfast at 6:00 and pray again.
Pray again at 9:00.
Eat lunch at 12:00.
It repeated endlessly without stopping.
I was at the age where you still need a lot of sleep.
At first, that was the most painful part.
Not enough sleep.
I was always sneaking away to try and sleep.
One warm spring day, after chopping wood, I climbed up a tree and I fell asleep.
I felt something crawling by me.
So I opened my eyes, and I saw a huge snake that came down from the tree.
I watched as it crawled down my neck.
I wasn't worried.
I just fell back asleep.
So I wrote to my father "Father, I can't take it anymore.
Come and take me back home.
" A few days later, my father came.
"My daughter says it is painful for her to wake up so early, so I will take her home.
" Then the elders said "We will let you sleep in the morning.
Sleep later and we will let you skip the early morning prayers.
" Everyone cried.
My father and my brothers and sisters also cried.
So when I wrote to my father, it wasn't because I actually wanted to go home.
I just wanted to see my family one more time.
Curled squash.
The visitors brought these with them for us to eat on Buddha's birthday.
Let's go soak them.
We're at a time now where restaurants have their Instagram accounts.
They have Facebook.
They have Twitter.
The chefs are promoting themselves.
The chefs have cookbooks.
The chefs have celebrity TV shows.
We live in a culture that wants to worship these chefs, and that would run counter to everything that Jeong Kwan stands for.
If people take away, like, "Oh, Jeong Kwan is a new star chef," that's the wrong lesson.
Mmm! This is not ego food.
Very often, in the restaurant community, we are tempted to cook with the ego.
We are distracted by the stars, and by the rewards, and by, "Are we going to get the ratings?" and so on.
In temple food, it's not about competing with another monastery.
There's no such thing as, "Okay, let's have a competition of the best soup today, and let's have all the nuns coming together, and we have a judge and you have a winner.
" It's not about that at all.
Jeong Kwan has no ego.
Creativity and ego cannot go together.
If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly.
Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment.
You must not be your own obstacle.
You must not be owned by the environment you are in.
You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you.
You must be able to freely move in and out of your mind.
This is being free.
There is no way you can't open up your creativity.
There is no ego to speak of.
That is my belief.
We will now end the prayer ceremony of Buddha's birthday of the Buddhist year 2560.
Please help yourself to the temple food.
Not too much, not too little.
Please eat Buddha's food and be healthy.
My father was 70 years old and was reflecting upon his life.
He must have felt sorry for me because I was a monk and never married.
So he came to the temple to live with me.
He wanted to know, "How do these monks live?" He wanted to experience it for himself.
At first, he complained.
One day, he comes to dinner and gets mad.
"Everything you eat is vegetarian.
" "How do you live without eating any meat at all?" My father said, "I like all the food.
It is clean and elegant, but I don't have any energy.
" He thought he couldn't get energy from the food because there wasn't any meat or fish.
So he asked me, "What's the best food monks eat?" So I cooked shiitake mushrooms.
I fried them in a pan with sesame oil and soy sauce.
I gave him the food and told him to eat it quietly in the mountains near the valley.
"This is better than meat! You can indeed live without meat since you have this.
" He realized there must be a kind of peacefulness in this way of living.
After being there a month, he called me by my secular name.
"Chunjeong, I am going back home without worries.
Live well.
They say even the king does three bows to a monk.
Now I will bow to you.
" So my 70-year-old father bowed to me three times.
And he left.
One week later, he passed in peace, like falling asleep.
That was his last.
Because of my parents, I could become a monk.
And I prayed for them to be happy in the next life.
Even today, when I see something beautiful, or make or see beautiful food I thank my parents for their energy and virtue.
The food I prepare is an expression of gratitude to my parents.
They let me become who I am.
Being with Jeong Kwan has been a very special experience for me.
I learned, of course, techniques that I didn't know flavors that I've never tasted before, ingredients that are foreign to me.
But her influence is more philosophy than the techniques.
Her philosophy is Buddhist philosophy.
It's about being in the present.
It's about respecting the ingredients the planet making people happy how to be happy in the process how to put good energy into the food.
It's all of that.
That is the big change, uh, in my life.
That's the influence of Jeong Kwan.
We were touring the grounds, and she took my arm and she, without a word, led me down to this creek.
And she sort of walked me to the middle of this small bridge.
There's water flowing underneath.
And she went like this And she was kind of looking into my eyes.
She wanted me to listen.
This is the moment we never get to have in contemporary life, just listening to the water.
That lasted for, like, a minute or two.
We just sat there listening to the water.
And then, all of a sudden, she looked into my eyes, and she said, in English, "Orchestra.
" That said everything about her cooking.
It said everything about her practice.
It said everything about her worldview.
The world itself is an orchestra, that nature itself is an orchestra, that every piece is working together.
And that creates who we are.
That creates what we eat.
That creates what she cooks.
I was stunned by this.
And I I really did sit there thinking, "That's it.
That's the whole That's what this is all about.
" I make food as a meditation.
I am living my life as a monk with a blissful mind and freedom.
I wish you a healthy, happy life.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.