Today is this little site’s 1 year blogiversary. Here’s where I’m supposed to look back at the past year of posts and say, “Yay, I made it!” Nah, this post is looking straight ahead. More on that later. Let’s get down to the food first.
A few weeks ago I was holed up in Cupertino, once again, without a kitchen. But I was lookin’ to cook and was given access to JC’s kitchen. Thanks JC!
She took all of these pictures, except for the one below (by Patricia), and several others that can be found in her Noms Party set.
What I Used
- Korean cross-cut beef short ribs
- Green onions, chopped
- Soy sauce
- Sesame Oil
- Rice wine
- Umeshu
What I Did
- Combine all ingredients in a bowl or ziploc bag and let marinate for 40 minutes.
- Remove the ribs from the marinade and move to a charcoal grill for 5 minutes on each side. I didn’t have a grill so I used the broiler.
Umeshu is an alcoholic beverage containing unripe ume, also known as Chinese Plum. I do recommend drinking this in a cocktail and not shots because it is diabetic-coma-inducingly sweet. This is why I left the usual sugar out of the Galbi marinade. The alcohol content of the umeshu also accounts for the short marinating time, since I didn’t want it to denature too much of the protein and render the ribs mush.
There were a couple of little side dishes in tow. They aren’t much on originality, so no post of their own. :P
Almost Kinpira Gobo
Gobo is a root vegetable notably tougher than carrots. It may be most commonly seen in a traditional Japanese appetizer called kinpira gobo. What I made contains about 60% of the ingredients and only half of the correct techniques as the traditional recipe, but this was my first time and I was operating off of flawed recollection. Here’s what I did:
Take julienned gobo and sauté for 15 minutes in sesame oil and sugar. Add an equal part julienned carrots, a little bit of soy sauce, and sauté for another five minutes. If things get too dry, just drizzle a little more sesame oil in the pan.
Garlic Baby Bok Choy
Separate and wash the bok choy leaves. Heat corn oil in a wok until it starts to smoke. Add salt and minced garlic and then immediately, before the garlic burns, add the bok choy and kill the heat. While the wok is cooling and cooking the bok choy, toss/stir it in the garlic and oil furiously. You’re done when things stop sizzling.
Going Forward
Just two days ago I launched a website for a little “project,” 100 Days of Less. I’m dumping the vast majority of the stuff I own over the course of 100 days. This means blogging at least once a day more than three straight months. In that time I’ll have tripled the number of posts made here in the last year.
I imagine this will take a significant amount of my blogging focus. Or who knows, maybe it will just get me into a writing mood regularly and I’ll blog here more than ever. I do know that when it’s over there will be a massive rethinking of the direction and focus of Food Goes In Mouth. Until then, it’s business as usual.
Mmmmm…meat. I’m hungry.