Bibim Naengmyeon

Comfort foods often come steaming hot. Soups and casseroles come to mind. But my comfort food of choice is bibim naengmyeon, a cold dish of sweet, spicy, vinegary Korean noodles.

This is appropriate for people like me, who have needed to take refuge from the heat more than from the cold. On sweltering summer days in Southern California, where my mother immigrated and where I grew up, bibim naengmyeon provided a refreshing taste of Korea. The San Fernando Valley isn't as humid as Seoul, but the Valley has some of the highest temperatures in Los Angeles, given its distance from the cooling power of the ocean or the mountains.

My mom and I turned to summertime treats like mung bean popsicles, chilled soups and cold yogurt drinks—foods to quench the thirst while satisfying the soul. For me, bibim naengmyeon was the star. I associate it with food courts attached to Korean supermarkets, but also with kitchen tables.

It's an unfussy dish, in multiple ways. Vigorously mixing together the ingredients just before eating makes for a delightfully messy dish. ("Bibim" means "mixed," as in bibimbap, or mixed rice.) And it's hard to remain elegant while slurping from a heaping bowl of noodles, which leave behind an oily red smear around the lips and a pungent smell in the air.

Bibim naengmyeon lends itself to long, leisurely conversations on sticky days. There's no worry about it melting or cooling, and thus no pressure to eat it quickly. Plus, it's a starchy meal that feels filling but not too heavy, thanks to the mixture of buckwheat flour and (usually) sweet potato starch that gives the noodles their chewiness.

This dish also doesn't demand much time in a hot kitchen. The noodles cook quickly, while the sauce can be assembled in a matter of minutes.

Since leaving Southern California, I've lived in a number of places where Korean ingredients are less accessible than in the Korean minority enclave where I grew up. It was a shock at first when I realised how much I'd taken for granted the easy reach of Korean products.

Concerned about the culture shock, my mother used to send me care packages loaded with seaweed and other lightweight goodies, in the hope of keeping down the weight of the boxes. No doubt, though, the shipping costs sometimes exceeded the value of the goods.

But whatever the distance, bibim naengmyeon has accompanied me in some form throughout. It's been a tangible reminder of the multiple homes that immigrant families come to inhabit, reflecting that for many, a migrant journey is never fully finished, in some ways a continuing process across the generations.

So in my own journeying, I've made nontraditional versions of this dish nearly everywhere I've lived. But a standard Korean pantry would already have all the ingredients, making special grocery runs unnecessary.

The most important ingredient is gochujang, the spicy-sweet paste that features in many Korean dishes, but if I can't find gochujang I'll swap in Sriracha. If sesame oil isn't available, I'll make do with olive oil and go heavy on the sesame seeds. In lieu of naengmyeon noodles, soba noodles would work. And if I'm being honest, I can't tell the difference between rice vinegar and other types of white vinegar in this dish.

As a vegan, I now forego sliced egg and beef on top, but fried tofu slices are an excellent modification. And while I usually cut up cucumbers, carrots or zucchini to swirl into the noodles, many other vegetables would work just fine. I have to admit that I've never bothered adding pear or radish slices when making it, though some other recipes do.

Purists might be horrified, but for me the beauty of this dish lies in its simplicity and versatility. Appropriately, then, my version is a kind of hybrid of two similar tossed-noodle dishes: bibim naengmyeon, with its buckwheat-mix noodles; and bibim guksu, with its simple sauce.

This borrowing reflects the hybrid Korean nature of my own upbringing and family, which is now a mixture of Mexican, Apache, Filipino and North and South Korean. Like this heaping pile of noodles, my family is bibim indeed. And it's a comfort no matter the weather.