The Recipe centers on a TV producer searching for the recipe for an enchanting spicy bean-curd stew--and its elusive creator. Producer/presenter Choi Yu-jin smells a scoop when he learns that the last request of mass murderer and famed fugitive Kim Jong-gu before he was executed in February 2009 was for a bowl of dwinjang jjigae (beancurd soup stew). Choi then discovers Kim was arrested at the tiny Sanjang Restaurant, in a mountain pine forest outside Seoul, while eating a bowl of dwinjang jjigae so delicious it reduced him to a state of pure bliss. Choi discovers that the soup was made not by the restaurant's owner but by a mysterious young woman, Jang Hye-jin, who turned up one day with a suitcase and was taken in by the owner. Choi becomes obsessed with finding Jang, who's since disappeared, and tracing her precise ingredients and preparation method.