A lot of watermelon right now.

A lot of watermelon right now, so I'm really excited about this salad, 'cause it's something that I picked up bussing tables at a restaurant called Caps On The Water in St. Augustine.

I was 19 years old, and I was bussing this salad every, every day, every night, and I didn't get to taste it until the end of the summer-

Mm-hmm.

And then on top of this, um, I also like to add some feta.

So actually, I love these huge shards of feta.

I wonder, though, if that means as a solo diner, as someone cooking for oneself, that you suddenly have a fridge full of half onions.

That's really funny.

Once I started developing recipes for The New York Times, my editor, Genevieve Koch, She hated whenever I had a half onion or a quarter onion in my recipe.

She'd be like, can you just use a small onion? And I'd be like, well, that's not reality.

You don't always use the full onion.

My name is Eric Kim.

I'm a food columnist for the New York Times and the author of a cookbook called Korean American.

What if you live alone, but you're a terrible cook?

It's echoed by one of the New York Times' top food

writers.

It's not just the nourishment of the food.

It's the act of cooking.

It's the craft of it.

And I think there's a reason why standing at your stove to cook something to eat, it's a creative practice.

And it's something that I've been trying to tell people.

now, so I totally understand.

... at The New York Times?

This is very controversial this year because I have a bun, technically/a bao, which I think some people will say is not a dumpling.

But in Korea, the word, uh, wang mandu, which refers to, um, king dumplings, it's just referring to the size, they do involve, uh, a yeasted kind of bread roll wrapped around a very savory, decidedly dumpling filling.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing that story.

And, and Eric, is there some special extra magical comfort quality to dumplings? Yeah.

I think, um, one of the recipes that really exemplifies this well is Kay Chun's.

She has a cabbage, potato, and cheese dumpling, and it's, it's such a cool expression of her creativity.