Bibimbap: You don't know what you got

 When I thought yesterday was tough, I had no idea that it was only the beginning. As I rode into Thursday, I had no idea what was next. No inspiration, no direction, and no clue. I brought 2 books on Korean cooking to work with me, but I was too busy to read them. There they sat on my desk, the works of Eric Kim, Taekyung Chung, and Debra Samuels taunting me. It was a reminder, that I had planned nothing in this Korean theme week.  I have been winging it. It was looking like I was out of ideas.

I chose denial as the precious hours of the day passed. We are in a state of physical transition at work which provides the perfect opportunity to hide my head in the sand on dinner ideas. I was sure of one thing, I had missed a few important household items when grocery shopping early yesterday morning, so I was stopping at Walmart before heading back over the river to go home tonight. I work well under pressure, so staring down the barrel of the imminent family requiring dinner, I just might pull something out of nothing.

As I sat in the parking lot of Walmart, my weakness surrounded me and I began to reason, "No one is going to think poorly of me if I take a break tonight, there was no time, it happens to all of us.  I will just continue Korea week tomorrow." As I walked into the store, even though I tried not to think about it, I was feeling disappointed in myself. I decided that my mind would stay open, and I would stop thinking about the big picture and stay generic. Whether you use a Korean tabletop cooker, a wok, a skillet, or the grill on the porch, thinly sliced beef is the most versatile option when planning the not-yet-conceived Korean dinner. 

Donna was still not yet home when I got there, the house was dark and cold. This is because we heat with wood and no one had been home since 9 this morning to feed the wood stove. It had been a very cold and blustery day, so getting the heat going was first. The Second was, to call my sister Amy. I donned my Aeropex headphones and dialed her number, it had been too long since we talked.

Somehow I knew that my actions would just fall into a grove.  I honestly believe that we as humans instinctively know what to do initially, but then we let our heads intervene, messing everything up. Rock on Mel Robbins!

Prepping banchan (Korean supporting dishes), sauteed carrots, spinach, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and zucchini, then the thinly sliced beef, fried sunny side up eggs, and an incredible gochujang blended sauce to top with sesame seeds can just happen as a 2-hour conversation happens with your little sister. Bibimbap is born. This is where my go-with-the-flow theory leads. It was so nice to catch up with Amy.

Last Saturday, we had a giant bowl of Bibimbap at Shin-la in Brattleboro. This, "I am out of ideas Thursday night, this I am out of time, this I am exhausted and just want fast food night's" Bibimbap was just as good if not better than Shin-la's. If this does not drive home the point to stop overthinking dinner, I do not know what does! Not only did I make Korean dinner 5 nights in a row, make giant messes in my kitchen, and clean up said messes myself, I did what I set out to do, I took the old adversary, "I don't know what to make for dinner tonight" and I punched it in the face!

Don't give up! Korean Salmon Bowl

There is always that time when we just don't know what it is we are going to make for dinner. Add this to a theme week and that is culinary paralysis. It is Wednesday. Liam and Haylie are coming for dinner. In my mind I saw us all sitting around the table, with a Korean barbeque cooker in the center of the table, super hot, around it were different vegetables and meats for us to place on the hot cast surface, searing up savory little bites to place into lettuce wraps with fermented bean paste, kimchi, samjan, chili crisp and beautiful banchan.

The reality was I had no time to prep.  I did an early morning, before-work grocery shopping which then rolled right into a full workday, then right into dinner time. So there were no meats thawed and finely sliced. The banchan prep has not even started. I had bought 2 pounds of salmon at the fish counter earlier. That is usually our go-to easy meal, salt, pepper, olive oil, and out onto the hot grill on the porch, then topped with a lemon garlic aioli. Easy peasy. Not so fast! This is Korea week and I am not getting away with dinner that easily.

Salmon is not a fish traditionally found in Korea. In fact, Korea only recently became obsessed with salmon after perfecting large farming operations. Salmon not being traditional Korean food is not going to stop me. After all, in a world where you can take vanilla ice cream, top that with peanut butter, and then top that with wasabi and have it knock your socks off, this is not a stretch.

Nice bulgogi flavors infused into chunky cubes of salmon marinated in soy, mirin garlic, and ginger, with a gochujang glaze,  air fried then served on white rice, baby cucumbers, beansprouts with a spicy and savory dressing, and kimchi.  It was true to the Korean theme for this week. The best part is that the cubed salmon cooks for 5 to 6 minutes in the air fryer.

I always get this weird sort of idea that I might fall back one night and just surrender.  I might tell myself that circumstances just were not there to do a Korean-influenced meal tonight. I am happy to report that day was not today. I have to say, that makes me feel good.  It is nice to stay the course. When I consider giving up, I cannot help but think of the late Julie Powel (Julie and Julia). She stuck with Mastering the Art of French Cooking for 365 days! There is no way that I am going to wimp out. No!

Mandu: Let's make some dumplings!

 In the last 12 years, I could not count how many thousands of dumplings I have made. These are mostly my take on the typical Chinese dumpling. The ones I usually make are famous for, homemade wrappers, home-ground pork butt, an incredible amount of bok choy, Napa cabbage, spinach, and scallion. Seasoned in fresh ginger, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and soy sauce. I also make a homemade dipping sauce that is so many things at once.

I am so down with that method that I have felt like the new kid in those times that I decided to try dumplings a different way. In the process, I learned that even a leftover meal, such as the japchae can be spooned into wrappers, sealed, fried to a crispy bottom, and then steamed to finish. You won't believe how awesome this can be.  The wrapper is that blanket of love that can take something you make into a whole new place.

Mandu is a Korean dumpling. These are more freestyle.  They can consist of many or even anything vegetable or meat-wise. This means one thing to me, refrigerator cleanout time. During lunchtime, I got out the grinder attachment for the KitchenAid and ground up the pork. At dinner time, everything I could find got pulled out: Napa cabbage, onion, scallion, enoki mushrooms, carrot, tofu, spinach, zucchini, and seasonings. 

I did not have time to do homemade wrappers, so I tried three different things. First egg roll wrappers, but those were damaged, wonton wrappers, but those were too tedious for this sport utility style filling, and finally a package of dumpling wrappers that I found at my local Asian market a couple months ago. Then I tried 3 different methods of cooking them.

For me, I would have to say that making Mandu is a wonderful reminder that the sky is the limit. I used 3 different wrappers and 3 different cooking methods, (I had to chisel batch # 2 off of the wok) and I utilized whatever I had in the fridge for the filling. As I enjoyed my bowl of these steamed dumplings with their crispy caramelized bottoms, I remembered the badge of honor and creativity of the Korean people who carried their families through war and famine. Not only did they feed their families, but they did it with a brand of eloquence that is impossible not to be moved by.

The practicality of it all is the best. It shouts out, "I will not surrender to ordering overpriced mediocre takeout tonight! I will not suffer the buyer's remorse that now comes with ordering out food these days." In the wake of these dark days where the ad mongers' propaganda rides high in the collective psyche, we all still have a choice. Let's stop going to assembly line "elevated fast food" telling ourselves that it was good, and get into our own kitchens and make some dumplings!

Japchae happens

 Sometimes a course change can happen on a dime. A reality other than the one we planned on seemingly hangs from a fine thread. The storm that brought it upon us leads us to determine that the thread is made of the strongest of materials. It becomes what we are made of.

Today's star is the amazing Emily Kim, born Kim Kwang-sook, but known affectionately around the world as Maangchi. Described by the New York Times as YouTube's Korean Julia Child, she owns stock in a sizable piece of my Korean culinary education.

Close to a decade after this teacher/family counselor migrated to North America, she took up gaming for a post-divorce pastime. Her avatar, a small girl who fought crime with a large hammer was named Maangchi, which is Korean for hammer. In 2007 she started making videos teaching how to make authentic Korean food and for the lack of a channel name, Maangchi was born.

Maangchi is what I would like to call unsinkable and in that way, the name Hammer seems just right. She sports a quirky sense of humor and when it comes to Korean food, she has universal respect. I am sure if you were to ask her today if she ever thought that this is where she would end up she would tell you, no way.

I have had many junctions like this in my life.  In fact, many people were born due to what I did in a one-hour block on a Saturday night 33 years ago. Such a singular thing brings about incredible change and possibilities. 

Monday night's Japchae, sweet potato starch noodles with vegetables and meat is like that. The noodles have a unique clear look to them that when cooked by themselves in a sauté pan, can look a bit questionable, but they are a wild card. The possibilities they bring to a dish are endless. 

There is a dish called Japchae Hotteok which is everything in this recipe except the meat, but it is then fully wrapped in a ball of homemade dough and deep fried into a savory donut and dipped in blissful sweet, spicy, and/or savory sauces. Yeah, possibilities man, that is what I am talking about.

Sweet potato starch noodles change everything for the better, who knows what they will end up in next?

Jayuk Dubap across time

 I have made a lot of Kimchi over the last decade. Often over five pounds at a time, like a person with a healthy Korean diet would. But I have not made it a regular part of my diet and I have to say, I do not know why. The brunch (sorry Tony Bourdain- he hated that word and the idea of it) that I made earlier had such great promise of what was to come.  It was time to decide what was for dinner.

I had an 8-pound pork shoulder downstairs in the fridge. So I went for a went for a pork recipe in Robin's comic book. Jayuk Dubap (Spicy pork over rice).  So this took care of 1 pound of the pork. Talk about needing to get creative this week!

It is like this in the food problem-solving department. It can be so easy, or it can be inexpensive. Rarely is it both, unless I can invest just a little bit more time. For a 46-mile round trip drive, I can buy thinly sliced pork belly, ready to use, that cost 12 times more than my other option. 

Instead, I utilize an 8-pound brick of pork that when frozen could be launched by an ancient catapult and would put a hole through the side of a wooden ship back in the day. Needless to say, there is some finesse needed before we can start cooking.

I don't mind knife work, there is something therapeutic about it. I need accessories though. I need to be in the zone. I touch up the edge of the knife, don my wife-canceling (Donna's term for them) headphones, and pick what album will carry me through to the other side of Mise en place. Squeeze just finished Another Nail in My Heart when the mise was done. 

As I made this pretty spicy meal, I thought about Robin. I thought about the aroma of 3 meals all wafting through her childhood home in Seoul South Korea as she slept in her growing years. I thought about the tastes of her meals as she moved through her days. That direct connection she had with all the work her mom put into her daily sustenance and yet an absolute line of division in which she was not involved in making it, I suddenly thought, I know what this is like.

In 1988, I started painting houses inside and out for a local landlord. As the months passed, the need for me to do more than painting became evident. I had a connection to propane gas because as a kid we moved a lot, we always lived in old houses that had natural gas space heaters and gas-and-gas stoves. It became 2nd nature to understand their inner workings.

When a two-man team that had been laying floors for my employer got done, I stepped up. My father had professionally laid carpet and linoleum back in the mid-70s. Other than seeing him and his partner install my grandfather's wall-to-wall, I was not there to be taught by him. But there is something to this parental connection that I think is the fortitude to stay the course as you learn a task. I started installing floors and I did it in one house after the other. All along, the experience of my father working as a custom support to my own learning. It was as if he was next to me, guiding me.

 I have now seen my own sons do this and it is always something that they were busy doing something else when I could have been teaching them. Robin states, "I never developed an interest in cooking because it seemed like something I would never be able to do. Besides, I had other things on my mind, like reading and drawing comics." What is beautiful is that Robin was close enough to her mom and her food, that years later it made an impression. Moving to a place where food choices were mediocre and a few simple recipes from her mom, she forged ahead with that support system, just as I had in the late 80s. 

Robin invented a cartoon character named Dengki. Dengki would be the cooking teacher, and Robin the illustrator, it was a perfect match. So tonight, thanks to Dengki, my household enjoys this beautiful Jayuk Dubap, Spicy Pork over Rice. Of course, my cold crunchy kimchi on the side, oh man!

The storm is coming - I will understand it

 I have seen it in my father, late at night on a mission to cook things in ways that we or others may never have thought of before. I have seen it in my sons, the call to create something they can see and taste in their minds that they just have to plate into materialization. I am the bridge of this and man, let me tell you it is really something! I cannot ignore it.

I have often described my desire to cook and create like Eric Clapton's "Have You Ever Loved a Woman". Since 1999, food has been my Patti Boyd. She was the former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, the woman who served as the powerful inspiration for songs like Clapton's "Layla", and "Something" by the Beatles and many more by Eric and George respectively.

I don't pretend to know much about Patti's life, other than her presence seemed to have a runaway train effect on the people mesmerized with her. Whether this was due to qualities within those persons or not, I do not know. Nonetheless, a powerful effect took place.

For me, it is like one lone raindrop falls from the sky, and I can hear it from a thousand miles away. I get up and look up at the sky. I can feel it in the air, I smell it coming in like a distant storm. Something awaits and even now, I am not sure what it will be. I know more at this point what it will not be and that is a powerful thing. Before I know it, it is pouring.

It's not just what happens now. I know that we can learn to cook almost involuntarily. We can move in harmony with cooking synching our lives with the food and having it mean something. Instead of letting it be a chore and a utility function, it can flow with ease and without effort. It can just be.

So inside my head, I am screaming, but I am not making a sound. I know I have something here, but I am still trying to create words that can describe it. 

It is February.  For the last two Februarys, I have done something called taco week. They were a lot of fun, but I am not feeling it this year. Besides, I can do taco week any month of the year that I choose, right? I do have this desire to pull off some sort of thematic event that will edify how food and life can flow together, reducing stress, not creating it.

This is where we lock the door of the barroom, turn and face the advertisers, the propagandists, and the naysayers and tell them they are about to get their butts handed to them. The slaying of people's self-esteem and confidence ends today. Unpack your knives, now.

Eighteen hours passed since I felt the drop of rain and I thought, Korean food is a flow. I needed a friend to spell it out to me though. I found Robin Ha in my bookshelf with her Cook Korean A Comic Book with Recipes cookbook on the shelf.  I have had this wonderful book for years.

Robin told how her Mom was so busy that she would produce breakfast, lunch, and dinner before Robin even got up for school as a child. As a result, she never learned to cook until she was staying with a family in Italy and the mom there showed her that anyone can cook. Robin developed a taste for international cuisine while attending college in Manhattan and then missed it after moving away. She set her focus on cooking Korean food much to the delight of her friends. When they asked her how to make this food, she could not simply do that. Koreans do not measure things and Robin was a cartoonist. So after deciphering measurements in her recipes, she created a wonderful comic book that allowed her to share her food.

It had been some time since I took this book off the shelf.  When going over the four pages of Korean pantry items I was pleased to realize, I have 95% of everything here in my pantry.  She also pointed out that Koreans eat rice and kimchi at all 3 meals and they eat whatever kind of meal they want at any time of day. There it was.

I was up and rinsing rice to put into the rice cooker (thank you Linda M.) Rice has been second nature. It never matters how much you choose to make, it cannot get messed up as long as you do the finger trick, which is placing your index finger on top of the rice, then filling the water until it reaches the first joint on your finger. Perfect every time.

I made kimchi on January 2nd and it is in this perfect place right now. Okay, so there are the two staples of a day in Korea.  Naturally, protein was next. I wanted some fast but creative.  I have studied people teaching how to remove salt and nitrates from Spam. Spam is a staple in Korea, I keep some on hand. 

During the Korean War (1950-1953) Korean families were struggling to feed their families. American soldiers, touting boxes of C-Rations (canned food served as military meals) contained what we know as Spam today. Resourceful Korean mothers and grandmothers gratefully accepted all the GIs were willing to give them. Out of this, traditional Korean recipes were created, most famously, Army Base Stew.

I slowly simmered the spam in a skillet full of water adding mirin and soy sauce towards the end. Then just before the rice was done, I pan-seared the spam and seasoned it with dark soy, rice wine vinegar. If I had not known this was spam, I would not have been able to tell. It was so wonderful. 

During this time, I did up a cold spicy celery bowl. Four very nice components of a simple and delicious brunch were born. This is not hard, but it can make your day. Shouldn't this be what food is about?

It was then I knew, the thematic mission was accepted. All meals were going to be Korean this week. As I looked forward, why couldn't next week's be from Vietnam and the week after Japan? In doing so, I wish to adapt their intelligent and holistic view of food to my existence.

My desire is to take the "what are we going to make for dinner" attitude and punch it in the face, not with aggression, but with diverse creativity.

Stay tuned. Dinner is coming.