Jeolla Cooking and the Table of Abundance

Jeolla occupies the south-western corner of the Korean peninsula, divided today into North and South Jeolla provinces, with Jeonju and Gwangju as its principal cities. Its broad alluvial plains, drained by the Honam region's rivers, made it the granary of Korea, and a long, indented coastline with tidal flats and islands gave it salt, fish and shellfish in quantity. The Joseon dynasty's own records treat the south-west as a principal source of grain and tax, and the cooking that grew there rests on that surplus of rice, vegetables and sea produce.

The reputation of Jeolla at the table rests first on the rice plain and then on the sea. With grain, vegetables, pulses and seafood all close at hand, the household cook worked with a range of ingredients that few other regions could match, and the table that resulted was laid with many dishes at once. The Korean principle of banchan, the side dishes set around rice and soup, is here carried to its fullest extent: a Jeolla meal is understood to be judged by the number, variety and care of what surrounds the rice. The second foundation is the jang, the fermented seasonings of doenjang, ganjang and gochujang, together with kimchi. The warm, humid south ripens these quickly and favours strong seasoning, and Jeolla kimchi is characteristically generous in gochugaru, garlic and salted seafood, notably jeotgal, the salted fermented fish and shellfish that give the cabbage its depth. Fermented skate, Raja pulchra, is among the regional specialities of the south-west coast and shows how far the taste for fermentation extends beyond the vegetable. Jeonju is the city most closely associated with the region's cooking, and its bibimbap, a bowl of rice with seasoned vegetables, meat, egg and gochujang, is the dish by which the region is best known. The composition shows the banchan principle gathered into a single vessel: each vegetable is prepared separately, seasoned on its own terms, and arranged by colour before the bowl is mixed. The cook who follows Maangchi's method will recognise that the quality of the dish lies in these separate preparations and in the gochujang that binds them, not in any single ingredient. The cuisine of the region also draws on the great written tradition of Korean cooking. The Joseon court kitchen and the household manuals, among them the Eumsik Dimibang of Lady Jang Gye-hyang (1670) and the Gyuhap Chongseo of Lady Bingheogak Yi (1809), record a cooking built on fermentation, seasoning and the orderly presentation of many dishes, and the Jeolla table is regarded as the regional expression of those same principles. The foundations of that cooking survived Japanese rule (1910–1945), the war (1950–1953) and the division of the peninsula, and the abundance of the south-west remains its defining character for Korean cooks at home and abroad.

The flavour of the Jeolla table is strong, salty and deeply seasoned, built on gochugaru, garlic, doenjang, gochujang and the salted seafood of jeotgal. Rice is the neutral ground against which this seasoning is set, and the many banchan are arranged so that sharp, fermented, fresh and cooked tastes alternate across the meal.