Braised & Enthused

Sorry for the brief hiatus!  Between work, and the upcoming holidays, it's been a bit crazy around these parts.  We've mostly been cooking easy, standby recipes, so there haven't been many new recipes to post here.  However, we did receive some nice looking short ribs in a recent share and put those to good use, cooking them low and slow.  This method of cooking leaves the meat nice and tender, practically falling off the bone.

We're big fans of Top Chef, and Edward Lee, a contestant from the season based in Texas, just put out a cookbook combining his Korean roots and southern tradition called, Smoke & Pickles.  We followed his recipe for the short ribs, and it was quite delicious.

If there's a lot of excess fat, you'll want to trim some of it off.  Then parboil the ribs in a dutch oven for about 8 minutes, in about 4 cups of water.  Once they start to cook, pull them out of the water, and set them aside.  You'll want to skim some of the fat out of the liquid, and then reserve 2 cups of the cooking water.  The rest of the water can be dumped out, and you'll want to dry out your pot.

Once your pot is back on the stove, heat a couple tablespoons each of sesame oil and vegetable oil.  When it's nice and hot, drop in a few short ribs at a time.  You want to get a nice sear on all sides of each short rib, so you'll want to do them in batches.

Once all of the short ribs are seared, place all of them back in the pot, add your chopped onions, ginger and garlic, and let it cook for a few minutes.

Next, add your soy sauce, chicken stock, mirin, and the 2 cups of reserved cooking liquid and bring to a slow simmer.  To balance out the saltiness of the liquid, stir in some sugar and honey.

Then just let it simmer away, giving your short ribs a turn every now and then.  After an hour, add in your carrots, parsnips, and pine nuts.  The recipe also calls for raisins, but I'm not a huge fan, so we left them out.  There was enough sweetness already from the sugar and honey.

Let everything simmer until the short ribs are tender, and the liquid has thickened.  This will be about another hour or so.

While we were in the final stages of braising, we whipped up a side dish of roasted Brussels sprouts.  We halved the brussels sprouts and tossed them in a marinade of miso paste, ponzu, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil.  We also stumbled upon some black garlic at Trader Joe's, so we sliced up a couple cloves and added them to the sprouts.

Black garlic gets it's color from being fermented for weeks.  It develops a nice sweet flavor, with hints of balsamic vinegar.  It may look a bit unappetizing, but it's quite delicious.  Once your sprouts are evenly coated, place them on a baking sheet and let them roast in the oven for about 20 minutes.  We topped them with some sesame seeds and bonito flakes, for a punch of umami.

Rice would be the traditional accompaniment for this dish, but Edward Lee pairs his short-ribs with edamame hummus. We went in a similar, but different direction, and  whipped up some roasted garlic mashed potatoes with some spuds we got in our share. They were a great way to soak up the delicious gravy.

The meat was super tender, and fell right off the bone.  The Asian flavors in the braising liquid really soaked into the meat, and was a nice balance of salty and sweet.  We will be making this recipe again if we get more short ribs, or if they're on sale at the market (if Justin gets his way!).

Homemade Kimchi

You've heard us talk about our homemade kimchi a few times (here and here), and we're finally spilling the beans on how we made it.

We used this recipe, given to us by my cousin, that came from The Lucky Peach.

We just had a head of regular green cabbage on hand, rather than the suggested napa cabbage, but from our previous experience, the green cabbage worked just as well.  Start by chopping your cabbage into big hunks.  You'll season liberally with salt and sugar, and let it sit in the fridge overnight.


Next, you'll want to whip up the seasonings.  In a food processor, puree the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, Korean chili flake, fish sauce, and brine shrimp.

Once that's formed a nice paste/sauce, dump it over your cabbage, carrots and green onion.  We also added some daikon to the mix.  Here's where you'll want to get in there with your hands to make sure the spice mixture gets into all the nooks and crannies of the cabbage.

Once everything is good and mixed, you'll want to stuff everything into a clean glass jar that can be sealed air tight.  We used the jars we picked up from Ikea, that we've also used for our sauerkraut.  Stuff as much of the cabbage as you can into the jar.  If you don't have a jar, you can also use a plastic container with a lid.  In our first attempt at making kimchi, we went this route, and it came out great!  The key is to make sure that the cabbage is packed in as tightly as possible, and no air can get in.

Then you just place it in the fridge and let it ferment.  After a week or so, it'll be ready to go!

Taco Night

It hard for us to resist the Korean tacos from Takorean.  The bulgogi steak, topped with crunchy, spicy kimchi, and wrapped in soft corn tortillas is a combination that's hard to pass up.  Since we've had a tub of homemade kimchi in the fridge, we thought we'd try our hand at making our own version on them.

We started with some top sirloin.  Justin cut it into strips, while I made the marinade.  I found this basic recipe online, and luckily I already had the ingredients on hand.

The marinade consisted of soy sauce, sesame oil, a little sugar, garlic, ginger, and toasted sesame seeds.  Once everything was whisked together, you simply add the meat, some green onions and some yellow onions to the bowl and massage it altogether.

We let the meat marinate in the fridge for a little while we made the cilantro lime crema.  I had about half a container of sour cream leftover from when we made chipotle sour cream, so we thought we'd make a nice little topper for our tacos.

We chopped up a bunch of cilantro that we had left over from a previous CSA, added the zest of 1 lime, and the juice of half.  Mix it all together, and you have a delicious crema!  I also chopped up a bunch of the kimchi so it'd be more the size of cole slaw, and easy to put into our tacos.

It was finally time to cook the meat and assemble our tacos!  The meat cooked up pretty quickly, and then it was time to fill our warm, soft tortillas!

Then came the kimchi, and cilantro lime crema.  We'd reserved some of the toasted sesame seeds and chopped cilantro to sprinkle on top of each taco.  And to really finish them off, they each got a drizzle of sriracha.

 

They turned out to be quite tasty, and a great way to use some of our kimchi.  To quote Justin, "They're my 2nd favorite half Asian thing."