Food in books: the Yuk Hwe (Korean beef tartar) in The Vegetarian

Kate Young makes a very meaty recipe from the International Man Booker winner – despite its title – and remembers a steak so good it brought her to tears

By Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the Guardian Books Network

I couldn’t think of her family without also recalling the smell of sizzling meat and burning garlic, the sound of shot glasses clinking and the women’s noisy conversation emanating from the kitchen. All of them – especially my father-in-law – enjoyed yuk hwe, a kind of beef tartar. I’d seen my mother-in-law gut a live fish, and my wife and her sister were both perfectly competent when it came to hacking a chicken into pieces with a butcher’s cleaver.

The Vegetarian, Han Kang

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