Chae

Highlights

The Korean cookbook that finally skips the fried chicken and barbecue and takes you all the way down — to tofu, soy sauce, gochujang, and doenjang made entirely from scratch, season by season.

This isn’t a weeknight-dinner book. It’s the book you reach for when you want to actually understand Korean food — a four-season journey through slow food and fermentation from one of Melbourne’s most talked-about chefs. Organized by spring, summer, autumn, and winter, with roughly 15–20 recipes and foundations per chapter.

Format: Hardcover cookbook · seasonal chapters (spring / summer / autumn / winter)
Inside: ~60–80 recipes and foundational techniques — ferments, handmade sauces, enzymes, vinegars
Best for: Home cooks who already love Korean food and want to go deeper — from-scratch, minimal-waste, medicinal cooking

프라이드치킨·바비큐가 아니라, 두부·간장·고추장·된장을 처음부터 직접 만드는 법을 사계절로 풀어낸 한식 슬로우푸드 & 발효 가이드예요. 봄·여름·가을·겨울 각 챕터에 15~20개의 레시피와 기본기가 담겨 있어요.

Description

Forget everything you think a Korean cookbook is
If your shelf already has the fried-chicken-and-bibimbap starter pack, this is the one that goes somewhere else entirely. CHAE follows a single calendar year through its four seasons, each one its own chapter, pairing traditional Korean technique with locally sourced produce. Chef Jung Eun Chae makes everything from scratch in her home kitchen on the outskirts of Melbourne — tofu, gochujang, soy sauce, kimchi, makgeolli, doenjang — and walks you through the meticulous, minimal-waste, quietly medicinal methods behind each one. It’s less “dinner in 30 minutes” and more a restorative journey into the heart of an ancient cuisine.

The recipes come from a real lineage
What makes this more than a technique manual is where it comes from. Chae’s recipes are inspired by her mother, who was born in South Jeolla province — a part of Korea famous for its deep, layered culinary tradition. That inheritance runs through the whole book: the ferments, the handmade sauces, the vinegars and enzymes and kombuchas that most cookbooks would never ask you to attempt, explained with enough care that you actually can.

Why this chef, and why now
Chae caused a genuine sensation when she opened her tiny Brunswick apartment to just six diners a night, four nights a week — and watched the waiting list explode past 8,000 people. She was named Gourmet Traveller’s Best New Talent for 2021 and one of The Age Good Food Guide’s Chefs of the Year, and her restaurant CHAE earned two hats two years running, in 2023 and 2024. She’s since moved to semi-rural Cockatoo on Melbourne’s outskirts with her husband Yoora and their labrador, where she still runs the same six-seat restaurant. This book is the closest most of us will get to that table — and honestly, the next best thing is making it yourself.

셰프 정은채는 멜버른 외곽 자택 부엌에서 두부부터 고추장, 간장, 김치, 막걸리, 된장까지 전부 직접 만들어요. 전남 출신 어머니에게서 물려받은 정성스럽고 버림 없는(minimal-waste) 발효의 방식이 책 전체에 흐릅니다. 브런즈윅의 작은 아파트에서 하루 6석·주 4일로 시작한 그의 식당은 대기자가 8,000명을 넘었고, CHAE는 2023·2024년 연속 Good Food Guide '투 햇'을 받았어요.

About

Kim’C Market is always looking for the people who take Korean food seriously — the ones obsessed with quality ingredients, clean process, and the slow, from-scratch methods that make our food what it is. CHAE is exactly that spirit in book form: a chef honoring her mother’s South Jeolla roots through fermentation, patience, and respect for the ingredient. We’re proud to share it, and to keep bringing you the stories and makers behind the best of Korean food.

Kim’C Market은 한식을 진지하게 대하는 사람들을 늘 찾고 있어요. 좋은 원재료, 깨끗한 공정, 그리고 처음부터 직접 만드는 느린 방식을 소중히 여기는 사람들이요.  CHAE는 그 철학을 그대로 담은 책이에요. 앞으로도 좋은 한식 뒤에 있는 이야기와 만드는 사람들을 함께 소개할게요.