The backyard had been occupied by workers for weeks now. We had been on a long trip, and the garden was a mess when we got back. Trees needing trimming, dead leaves everywhere among the tools the workers had left out there. Scaffolding was so close to the door we could barely open it. Curtains were down for privacy, doors and windows were kept shut to keep the dusty air out. We stood at the kitchen island, the garden just behind the door we couldn't open, and started making a wish list for when we got it back.

My husband talks about wanting to revive the herb garden we left unattended for a while, fresh mint, basil. Maybe we'd try kkennip (깻잎) this year again, from the seeds we brought from Korea but failed two years running; it's the one herb I can never find outside Korea. The days were getting longer, bright until eleven at night. Without air conditioning, with the doors and windows shut, the heat just sat there with nowhere to go, and neither did our appetite. My husband mentioned gazpacho, the one he's been wanting to make: fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, blended cold.

Gazpacho makes obvious sense in summer. When it’s hot outside, so you eat something cold. That's the logic most people start from. But in Korea, the logic runs the other way.

There are three days in a year that mark the hottest periods of the Korean summer: the first heat, the middle heat, the last heat. They call this bok. On days of bok, chickens go into crisis. Lines form outside restaurants. The dish people are waiting for is samgyetang (삼계탕): a whole young chicken, stuffed with rice, ginseng, jujube, and garlic, simmered until the broth is rich and thick and the meat falls apart. Hot. Steaming. Still boiling in ttukbaegi (뚝배기) on the table. The entire chicken in a bowl.

This is how you eat: you eat the meat first, some salt on the side. They bring out a little bowl, like a mini trash can, for the bones. Some try using chopsticks until they realize it's impossible. You're excused to use your hands, deboning the whole bird in your mouth, cooling it as you go without burning yourself. What's left of the broth is reserved for rice, a little kimchi on the side. You eat it at the peak of summer heat, sweating through a bowl of something still boiling.

Ask any Korean why, and you won't get a logical reason. I never once thought about it myself. We do this because that's what we ate on these days. That's what people talk about. They mark it on their calendars. If samgyetang isn't available, at least fried chikin must be delivered. That's the thing about tradition: this is what has been done, so this is what people do.

The logic of eating hot chicken soup on the hottest days of the year was once practical. It used to be a way to replenish protein and energy when meat was scarce, to sweat the heat out. But even now, when meat is everywhere and the original necessity is gone, the tradition holds. People keep the date. It's an annual ritual people actually look forward to, not minding a long line stretching through an entire lunch break, standing outside in the heat. That's the fun of it. That's the excitement.

None of this is logical from the outside. If you didn't grow up inside it, it makes no sense. I certainly didn't understand it as a child. But somewhere along the way, you come to the same not-so-logical conclusion the adults did. You catch yourself saying it too.

The part that I couldn’t quite get as a child was the moment at the end, the adults finishing the last hot gulp of broth and exhaling with deep satisfaction.

"아, 시원하다!"
"Ah, shiwonhada!" Meaning, ah, it's cool.

I mean, you are looking at this whole bird sitting in a ttukbaegi, still boiling there on the table, still scalding. You could burn your mouth. Nothing about the moment was cool.

I didn't understand that logic until much later, staying out too late at parties, drinking too much, suffering through the hangovers that followed.

Living in the United States, the morning after a long night, I began developing a habit of going to a Vietnamese restaurant, along with mostly other Asians at that hour on weekends, and ordering a bowl of hot phở. Scalding broth. Adding more red chilies to it, giving it more heat. And something would happen: the sweating, the clearing, the slow sensation of something being washed through. Piles of napkins next to it, trying to blow my nose without making it too obvious or loud. Not comfortable, exactly. But you feel your body shifting. That's what haejang-guk is for: the morning-after soup. Then I'd say it. Siwonhada. There it was, that not-so-logical word, coming out of my own mouth.

That word isn't about temperature. It's about what happens after: the refreshing sensation. The heat meeting the heat. The body sweating, something clearing, an opening from the inside. The word doesn't describe coldness. It describes release. Whether it makes sense or not, that same logic applies to the moment you walk out of a steaming hot sauna, having sat in there long enough to feel cooked, steam rising off you as you walk, and you say it: siwonhada. I'm not quite there yet, though. Maybe I will be one day.

Here’s what's even more confusing: you can use that same word for actual cold food, and this time it means something different. Literal cold, this time. Temperature, not release. There are plenty of cold soups in Korean food, cold soup noodles, cold noodles altogether, and they don't always belong to summer.

Naengmyeon (냉면) is a good example. It literally means cold noodle, eaten all year round but especially loved in winter. Cold noodles in cold weather. You sit in a restaurant with your coat still on and the bowl arrives, the broth half-frozen at the edges. They bring a small cup of hot broth alongside, made from the meat topping and whatever secret ingredients the restaurant won't tell you, and keep refilling it whenever you run out. I love that hot broth more than the noodles themselves. Maybe that's the point: the hot and the cold together, the same balance as everything else. But here's the odd part. Eating cold noodles in cold winter, accompanied by hot broth, no one ever says siwonhada, including myself.

And then there is kimchi-mari guksu (김치말이 국수), cold noodles in kimchi brine, a winter dish that requires mukeunji (묵은지), the aged kimjang kimchi. Not the fresh one, because you need that deep tang from the old mukeunji, and there has to be plenty of it. The whole head, kimchi han-pogi, gets finely diced. The red, spicy, tangy brine becomes the base for the noodles, while a big pot of boiling guksu gets a cold wash before its kimchi brine shower. This is only possible when the fridge is still stocked full from kimjang. As spring approaches, my mom starts looking for ways to clear out her kimchi fridge. Making mandu becomes her excuse, and kimchi-mari guksu becomes another. It's really her way of preparing for the new batch, a way to greet the coming spring.

I remember the moment she decided it was time: she would suddenly get busy in the kitchen, and you knew what was coming. The cold outside makes the cold inside feel exactly right. You could sweat a little from the heat, it’s the perfect balance.

During the past few heat waves this summer, I've seen a lot of cold noodle recipes floating with ice cubes in the broth, as if the ice alone proves how cold it is. It reminded me of a Gourmet Festival I went to in Budapest a few years back: chłodnik, cool cucumber and beetroot turned pink with kefir, deep tang from the pickles. Visually striking, and one of the most impressive dishes I tried that day. I came across all kinds of cold soups there. There were more than gazpacho and naengmyeon in the world, it turned out.

My husband has his own version of summer food that took me time to understand. Meggyleves, cold sour cherry soup, a Hungarian specialty, only available in summer when fresh cherries arrive. When I first saw it, I didn't know what to think: ground fruit in a thin, sweet liquid, nothing solid, nothing to chew on, something that could just as easily be a juice. But it arrived in a wide bowl, just like any other soup. He loves it. He orders it whenever it's on the menu, because it only appears for a short season. Now I know exactly what he'll order when he sees it there, and I'm happy to watch him get excited over his summer special. It took time, but I understand now. These are the things that only make sense from the inside, if you grew up with the right summer.

I have my own version of a cold soup like that. Kongguksu (콩국수). Soybeans soaked overnight, boiled, then ground into a pale milky broth. The noodles have to be boiled al dente, thirty seconds less than usual, so they're still alive even after the cold water bath, then thrown into that milky broth, topped with cucumbers. Some salt gets added, not sugar, not in our household; other households do, apparently, I learned that later. My mother used to make it on the hottest days, every summer. I never liked it as a child. I never understood the point. It was too tasteless for a young palate. Then one hot summer day, I caught myself making it for myself, and I kept making it after that. The quiet nuttiness, the clean simplicity. It wasn't just bland after all. I understand now why my mom made it every summer. My husband doesn't quite get it. Maybe he will one day, like I did.

Hot soup on a hot day. Cold soup on a cold day. Cold soup on a hot day too, depending on who's cooking and wherever you are. Gazpacho, chłodnik, meggyleves; samgyetang, kongguksu, naengmyeon, kimchi-mari guksu. Some of it is supposed to cool you. Some of it isn't supposed to make sense at all, and somehow still does. At some point we begin to understand. No explanation needed.