2013 Christmas Recap

As promised, we've got a recap of our culinary adventures over this past Christmas.  Like most trips back to southern California, we hit up some of our favorite spots; El Burrito Jr., In-n-Out, and P.V. Palace Seafood for dim sum.  We also headed to Santa Monica to check out Josie.

In addition to all the meals we ate out, we also enjoyed some delicious home cooked meals, including some dishes we prepared during the cook off.  Justin and I faced off against my cousin, Lauren, and her husband, Gregor.  We were given 6 mystery ingredients and had to create an appetizer and a side dish.  We had access to everything in my aunt & uncle's pantry, and if we needed to go to the grocery store, we could only spend $25.

The mystery ingredients were sweet potatoes, mangoes, head-on prawns, bacon, kimchi, and turnips.  As soon as we saw kimchi and bacon, it took us a split second to decide on our kimchi brussels sprouts for our side dish.  Since turnips were a mystery ingredient, we just used those as the garnish in place of carrots.  That left us with mangoes, prawns and sweet potatoes.  We kept things light and went with a grilled prawn over mango salsa with a sweet potato chip.  Lauren and Gregor whipped up a delicious salad of apples, turnips, bacon, egg, and a mango kimchi  dressing to start.  For their side, they poached their shrimp in butter and lime with sweet potato shoestring fries.

It was a close competition, but we came out on top by 1 vote!  Both teams rose to the occasion and produced some delicious food. It was as close as possible, but we had a slight edge.  It was a huge hit with the whole family, and I think this will become an annual throwdown!

The day after Christmas, we gathered in Grandma's kitchen again to make joong ( 粽子) again.  It was a long day, but we ended up wrapping over 200 joong, and we now have a few bags in our freezer.  They're the perfect, cold-weather comfort food, full of delicious pork.

We also spent some time checking out the craft breweries around Torrance.  We ended up visiting Strand Brewing Co., Smog City Brewing Company, and Monkish Brewing Company.  All three offered delicious beers in a variety of styles.  Smog City was our overall favorite, and reminded us of some of the local breweries here in DC.

Overall, it was another wonderful trip to California.  Lots of food, lots of beer, and lots of family.  What more could you ask for over the holidays?

Paleo Shake-n-Bake...and I helped!

We had some umami dust leftover from our burgers, so we decided to jump a little outside the box, and try it on some pork chops.

Let's start with the cauliflower.  It wasn't too different from when we made the kimchi brussels sprouts.  The cauliflower was chopped up into more manageable, bite-sized pieces, and we crisped up some pancetta bits.  We poured a bit of the rendered fat over the cauliflower before popping it into the oven to roast.

Once the cauliflower was a bit charred, we pulled them out of the oven, and tossed them with the crisped pancetta, sliced kimchi, and some freshly sliced green onion.

Now, onto the pork chops.  Since we can't use panko or bread crumbs, we used some unsweetened, shredded coconut, and mixed some of the umami dust, minced garlic and ginger, and some black and regular sesame seeds

Then we just coated the chops in the mixture, and popped them into the broiler on some cooling racks.  Doing that allows the air to circulate around the chops, so all sides get crispy.  If you just place them on the baking sheet directly, the bottom will end up soggy.

To finish the dish, we placed our chop on a bed of creasy greens, lightly dressed in some rice wine vinegar, a dash of black vinegar, garlic, ginger and sesame oil.  The greens added a bit of acidity to the umami chops, while the roasted cauliflower added a nice kick of spice.

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!

Umami So Fat!

Umami...that elusive 5th flavor...

You've likely heard all about it in those Kikkoman soy sauce commercials.  But tonight, we bring you umami burgers.  Just like the ones in LA.  And instead of fries, we went with kimchi brussels sprouts, ala Momofuku.

So let's start with the burgers.  To get the umami flavor, we finally got to use our bottarga, plus some pulverized dried straw mushrooms and nori.  With that, we mixed in a blend of white pepper, salt and wasabi that we picked up from the Asian market last week.  This gave us a salty, savory umami dust to work with.

We were fortunate enough to receive some ground beef from Polyface Farms.  If you've been following along, you'll remember me gushing about Polyface here.  We mixed the beef with our umami dust and a splash of fish sauce.  Then we just formed them into 2 patties and got them into the pan to start cookin'.

While the burgers cooked, we got to work on the kimchi brussels sprouts.  I should've kept the last beating stick...then we could've had a proper duel!

But alas...we started with some bacon...because every good dish starts with bacon.  Once it was nice and crispy, we threw the sprouts into the pan so they could roll around in the bacon fat.

Once they were seared, we slid them into the oven to roast.  After about 15min., they came out of the oven, and were bathed in some butter, salt and pepper.  We added the bacon back into the pan, along with some of our sliced kimchi.

We let all the flavors meld together for a few minutes, so each ingredient was coated in the butter, and spicy juices of the kimchi.  By the time the sprouts were done, so were the burgers.  We're getting much better with this whole timing thing!  The sprouts were garnished with a little raw carrot, and our burgers got some avocado and creasy greens.

The burgers had such a rich, salty, savory flavor, and creaminess of the avocado balanced it all out.  The sprouts were nicely roasted, with a sharp spiciness from the kimchi and a nice crunch from the raw carrots.  It was quite the delicious meal!

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."

Toki Underground

Ok, if you're like me, when you think of ramen, the first thing that comes to mind is this.  The over-salted, underwhelming, cheap stuff that only has a time and a place at 3 AM in a freshman dorm.  I was vaguely aware of the traditional Japanese ramen, but I've always been a bigger fan of soba, udon, or shirataki.  But when I was trying to think of what would be a perfect cure for a hangover on a particularly cold New Year's Day, I thought ramen just might be the trick.

I've been really, really, really, excited to go to Toki Underground for a while.  I wasn't deterred by the long wait times (typically 2+ hours), or the trendiness (Toki has been known to host famous clientele like Manny and Doogie Hauser).  And although I don't know the difference between Japanese and Taiwanese ramen, its difficult to keep me away from a hearty bowl of noodles, dumplings, and a soundtrack handpicked by Geologist from the Animal Collective.

If you're claustrophobic at all, I'd suggest ordering food to go, as space is limited to bar seating around the perimeter, and in front of the tiny kitchen.  We were seated between the 2 street-view windows, in front of some shelves that held jars of bonito flakes, the biggest cinnamon sticks I've ever seen, house-made preserved lemons, and togarashi.  The menu is simple and straightforward:

To start, we opted for a plate of pork dumplings.  You have a choice of fried or steamed dumplings, so we went with the fried version.  But don't be fooled by the term "fried".  They weren't deep fried with a thick batter.  Instead, they were very reminiscent of Chinese potstickers...simply pan fried and then steamed to finish.  You could really taste the ginger in the dumplings, which balanced out the 3 sauces that were drizzled over them.  One was spicy, one was slightly sweet, and the third was a bit tangy and savory.  Kara said they rivaled her mom's potstickers!

When it came to the ramen, I chose the kimchi kae-dama (which means with extra noodles), while Kara chose the Taipei Curry Chicken.  It was everything I was hoping for...packed with umami, there was a savory, flavorful broth, tender pulled pork, perfectly cooked noodles which absorbed a ton of flavor from the broth, and enough heat in the kimchi to clear out my sinuses.  The soft egg was a pleasant surprise, especially when I broke the yolk and let it mix into the broth.  Kara's bowl had perfectly crispy pieces of chicken, spinach, some nori, and a delicious broth that didn't overpower the other items in the bowl.  The ramen was so filling that we didn't even have room for milk and cookies.  Maybe next time!