By pretending to be angry and disappointed yesterday, I shamed my Korean coworker into finally making me a long-promised batch of scones. He found an online recipe by an ajumma who loves baking (here). Her 못난이/motnani (misbegotten, ugly) style of scones, made without cookie cutters (example), is the boulder-ish style I think of when I think of scones.
My coworker has been trying and trying to get this recipe right. What you see below is the second batch from his third attempt (one attempt = 2 batches = 6 scones/batch):
In typically Korean fashion, my coworker was apologetic. I get where he's coming from: I listened to my mother acting the same way for years as she cooked wonderful dish after wonderful dish. It's tempting to think of these apologies as evidence of false modesty, but over the years, I've come to think that Koreans are actually neurotically stressed about serving something less than satisfactory. In my own cooking, I'm not much different: my inner perfectionist is constantly noting this flaw and that flaw, so whenever I experience a culinary triumph (as with yesterday's pie and filet mignon), I'm sincerely feeling triumphant. My coworker's scones came out perfectly, as far as I'm concerned: crumbly, a bit dry (it's actually hard to imagine a moist scone), but ready for some jam and clotted cream, which I happily applied. "Better than Kim Young-mo," I told my coworker. Still, he promised to bring in an even better batch... although I noticed that, this time, he didn't mention a specific day.
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