Desserts

For Koreans, dessert, or hu-shik—which really means “after meal”—used to mainly be seasonal ripe fruit. We’d have Korean yellow melon in July or a really juicy peach in August; watermelons in late summer; grapes or persimmons in fall. You’d just slice them up and eat them out of hand, then in winter you’d have toasted chestnuts, peeled and eaten at the table. Historically, finishing every meal with something very sweet was just not what we did—instead we looked to nature.