The backyard has been occupied by workers for weeks now — regrouting the tiles, tools everywhere. Summer is almost here but we haven't been able to use the garden. My husband talked about making gazpacho once it's back: fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, blended cold and smooth. I'm looking forward to it. I'm also thinking about what to plant in the small herb corner. Maybe kkennip (깻잎) this year.

Gazpacho makes obvious sense in summer. It's hot outside, so you eat something cold. That's the logic most people start from.

In Korea, the logic runs the other way.

Sambok (삼복) marks the three hottest periods of the Korean summer — the first heat, the middle heat, the last heat. 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. You eat it at the peak of summer heat.

The logic was practical once — a way to replenish protein and energy when meat was scarce, to fight the heat by sweating it out. But even now, when meat is everywhere and the original necessity is gone, the tradition holds. People keep the date. And if samgyetang isn't available, chikin (치킨) must be delivered. That part is non-negotiable.

What I didn't understand 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, it's refreshing."

But the soup was scalding. You could burn your mouth — far from cool. Nothing about the moment was cool. The same thing happens at the jjimjilbang (찜질방) — more than just a bathhouse — sitting in the hottest water or sauna, sweating it all out, and the first thing out of their mouth: "ah, shiwonhada" Through young eyes, I watched the adults and couldn't follow the logic at all.

Siwohan-mat (시원한맛) is not 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.

I didn't understand this until I started drinking. Living in the United States, the morning after a long night — I would go to a Vietnamese restaurant, mostly other Asians at that hour, and order a bowl of hot pho. 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. Not comfortable, exactly. But something shifting. Maybe that was what the adults had been saying all along. Not that it was cold. That it had made them feel cleaner.

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 poured into a glass. He loves it. It only appears for a short season. I understand it now — but it took time. These are the things that only make sense from the inside, if you grew up with the right summer.

Korean food has its own cold soups and cold noodles, and they don't always belong to summer. Kongguksu (콩국수) does — my mother used to make it on the hottest days. Soybeans soaked overnight, boiled, then ground into a pale milky broth. She added salt and poured it cold over noodles with julienned cucumber on top. I didn't understand it for a long time: soymilk and noodles? Soymilk was sweet back then and sweetness didn't seem right when it comes to noodle. As I got older and began to prefer salt over sugar, it started to make sense. Now I make it myself. I think of her when I do — she loved it, she kept making it every summer — but it's not only that. I genuinely began to love that taste. That gosoham (고소함) and dambaekham (담백함) — the quiet nuttiness, the clean simplicity. My husband doesn't quite get it. That's fine.

Naengmyeon (냉면) is 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, and keep refilling it whenever you run out. I love that hot broth more than the noodles themselves. Maybe that is the point — the hot and the cold together, the same balance as everything else.

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. I remember the moment my mother 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.

Hot food in summer. Cold food in winter. Cold food in summer too. The rules are the opposite of what logic would suggest — and from the inside, every one of them makes complete sense.