Crossroads, No. 10.5: Janey Lee's Mel i Mató with Konggaru

A Korean pantry staple meets a thoroughly Catalan dessert

Crossroads is a column about cooking and eating at the crossroads of multiple cultures. We explore dishes created from immigrants’ resourcefulness and creativity as they create the foods of their homeland while having to make do with the ingredients they have available to them in their new environment. This isn’t “fusion cuisine” (as in, the kind of stuff that would be served at a restaurant or marketed to the masses), but rather, food that’s part of a quirky, in-between cuisine reflective of where they’re from and where they currently live—something rooted simultaneously in tradition and innovation. You can check out TOD’s archive of past recipes here.

Hi all,

Happy (almost) weekend! In full transparency: this dispatch was supposed to go out last Friday—but I totally forgot to schedule send, and didn’t realize that it never arrived in your inboxes until Sunday evening. That was on me!

Last week, I spoke with Korean-American food writer Janey Lee about reconnecting with her heritage through language and cooking—as well as her newsletter, “I Have a Question,” which documents her findings on what it means to eat intentionally and sustainably in Catalonia. We walked through her method of making “Catalan-ish” kimchi—an experiment in making an iconic Korean dish with only locally-sourced ingredients. (If you missed that, you can find it linked here).

Janey’s cooking is informed not just by her cultural background, but by place, season, and an openness to experimentation, where traditionally Korean ingredients become part of a broader, evolving culinary vocabulary rooted in Barcelona. It was near the beginning of our phone conversation when she shared with me a few examples—if not using fish scraps leftover from a cooking class on how to fillet fish to create a kimchi tartare, then it’s stir-frying black chanterelles (mushroom foraging—anar a buscar bolets—is a cherished fall tradition in Catalonia) with tteok (rice cakes).

“I really like to just experiment and think about what ingredients I like that I can put on other things,” Janey tells me.

Today, we’re featuring a recipe for her take on mel i mató—a Catalan dessert that feels almost too simple to be memorable, until you’ve actually had it for yourself. Mató is a soft, fresh cheese with a light, slightly sweet flavor. A drizzle of honey (mel) brings it to life, seeping into the cheese’s airy folds. A few chopped, toasted walnuts sprinkled on top adds crunch. There’s no heavy sweetness or elaborate technique involved here, just a few really good ingredients in quiet conversation.