Bad Timing, Good Luck: Yum Woon Sen

20201211, I rushed, out of breath, to the store right before closing to buy breakfast ingredients — and of course the one thing missing was exactly what I needed. On the day of an all-company outdoor event that had taken considerable effort to organize, with hundreds attending, a fine-dust advisory (not even a warning, an outright ban on outdoor activity) kept absurdly going off. The Korean expression 'the day you go is market day' (bad timing, missed connection) comes from a story about going to great trouble to visit a faraway friend, only to find the village happened to be holding its market that very day, so the friend was out and about, and you had no choice but to turn back without seeing them. These days, though, people apparently also use the phrase when things unexpectedly work out really well. #BadTimingGoodLuck This Yum Woon Sen, thrown together in a hurry after I couldn't buy the breakfast ingredients I'd planned for, turns out to be exactly that kind of lucky bad timing. This is the precise verdict of Na Jo-sik, who judges a Thai restaurant's real skill by its yum woon sen and has probably eaten a thousand bowls of it by now. Slice celery, onion, and tomato into a bowl, and add lightly blanched squid and shrimp. (Wanted to add chives and ground pork too, but skipped them since I was out.) Blanch the glass noodles briefly in boiling water, drain, and add to the bowl, then toss with a dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, a little minced garlic, and peperoncino. Top with a little peanuts and cilantro. *Yam means to mix/toss, and woon sen refers to vermicelli — glass noodles made from mung bean starch. Swapping in konjac noodles for the vermicelli barely changes the texture.