I despise dairy with my whole being. Cheese makes me gag, milk makes me grimace, and anything remotely creamy makes me want to toss the dish across the room. I ate it happily when I was little, but as soon as I made the transition into double digits, all I could think about was the sour, curdled taste it left at the back of my throat. I feel bad for my parents, who have to stash away their beloved wooden cheese board whenever I’m home, and my friends, who have to put up with my bad attitude any time they order something as innocent as mac and cheese.

Equally shocking is my embarrassing lack of spice tolerance—something I thought was supposed to be ingrained in my Korean DNA. It’s both ironic and frustrating that I can’t handle heat when Korean food is my favorite cuisine. My family’s meals brim with red chili pepper, kimchi, and dangerously spicy Buldak flavors, but I can barely manage to get through a kid portion before I’m chugging down a tall glass of water (yes, water) like my life depends on it.

Then, during the pandemic, I discovered Korean mukbang videos on YouTube—livestreams where creators eat large amounts of food on camera while chatting with viewers. I started vicariously enjoying my favorite red hot dishes without tormenting my tongue. One day, I saw a popular influencer committing what I thought was an absolute sacrilege: she added milk to one of her Buldak ramyeon to dilute the spice!

After recovering from the initial horror, I felt a strange curiosity creep in. Against my better instincts, I found myself wandering into the kitchen at 3 a.m. (no judgment, please, we were in the middle of a pandemic) to add milk to my ramen. I watched as the dark red Buldak boiled into an orange-colored, creamy soup.

The first bite was… strange. Somehow, two things I couldn’t stand on their own became surprisingly bearable together. As the lockdown dragged on, this little culinary accident turned into a full-blown fixation. My mom let me take over the kitchen when she wasn’t using it, and it became my personal lab for mad science.

I was relentless. Adding cheese to tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes) is not a new recipe, but I tested at least two dozen kinds before finding the perfect match (I’d never even looked at the cheese section of the grocery store before this). To my surprise, aged Gouda won. I even branched out to non-Korean cuisine to discover which yogurt flavor went best with my favorite Japanese curry.

Since then, I’ve developed 27 unique recipes combining my favorite spicy dishes with dairy. Not all of them are winners—just ask my parents, who’ve bravely stepped up as test subjects for every single one (and are desperately praying there won’t be a 28th). What started as a simple experiment to make two intolerables tolerable has turned into a real passion.

Maybe there’s an important metaphor for life in all this that I haven’t quite figured out yet. For now, though, it’s enough that it has brought me closer to my family and friends. I no longer leave the table early when dinner’s too spicy or hide in my room when they bring out the cheese board. I whip up my aged Gouda tteokbokki and join them.