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

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl or ziploc bag and let marinate for 40 minutes.
2. 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.

Alright ladies, listen up. This post is for you.

Some of you out there just flat out do not cook because, well, times have changed. But they, whoever the hell “they” are, say everybody should have at least one dish they can fire off just in case. Also, you may occasionally want to play the part of good girlfriend/wife and produce a tasty meal for some boy…

Ok, so Janel does cook. More importantly she bakes, which I admittedly do not. What she does not do is eat animals so her beef cooking skills have atrophied.

Her boy, Jared, spent a good stretch of his college years as a short order cook for a local burger joint/sports bar. He’s a red-blooded, beef consuming, beer-drinking American male. If this sounds like your guy start taking notes…now:

Stella Braised Short Ribs With Leeks & Potatoes

What You’ll Need

• Two Beef Short Ribs
• One Leek
• Two Small Red Potatoes
• Stella Artois (or another Belgian Lager of your choice)

What You’ll Do

1. Cut off and discard the leek’s tough dark green portions of the stalk and the white tip of the bulb. Cut the remainder in half lengthwise, then into half inch pieces.
2. 
   Put the chopped leek in a strainer and rinse thoroughly under cold water while separating the layers. This is cruicial since these crevices are dirty.
3. Liberally salt the short ribs. Coat the bottom of an oven-safe pot with a tiny amount of flavor neutral oil with a high smoke point (peanut or canola oil would be perfect) and get this hot over a medium-high burner.
4. 
   Sear the short ribs for four minutes on each of the three sides that are not bone. There will be a lot of hissing and smoke, so cue the fan. Do not touch the meat between changing sides. Don’t worry. The meat is fine. When done, remove them from the pot and set aside. It should look something like above.
5. 
   Some of the fat from the short ribs will have rendered out into the pot. Add the leek and another liberal dose of salt. Keep the leeks moving and cook them for five minutes, knocking the pan drippings lose. Adding a small amount of beer at this point will help losen those little good bits.
6. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Reintroduce the short ribs to the pot, meat side down, and add a couple bottles of Stella Artois. Add enough to where the beer is just below the rib bones. Bring it back to a simmer over low heat, then move it to the oven.
7. 
   Chop the potatoes into bite size chunks like this.
8. After 1.5 hours in the oven, remove the pot and add the potatoes. Return to oven and cook an additional 20 minutes.
9. You will notice now that the top layer of the liquid in the pot is fat. Use a ladle or large spoon of some kind to remove as much of this as possible.
10. Put the food on a plate and give the plate to your man.

That’s it ladies. Those instructions may take up a lot of space on the page but it’s really quite simple. Chop two things, sear one, add beer, and a lot of waiting.

Good luck Janel, I hope he enjoys.

I know, I’m a little late with the whole St. Patrick’s day recipe thing. I doubt the food blogosphere ran short of entries without my contribution. But hey, shouldn’t every day be St. Patty’s?

I spent the week leading up to this Irish Christmas at SXSWi and I couldn’t have asked for a better dinner on the big day than at III Forks with The Governors. However, I didn’t want to miss out on cooking some delicious “seasonal” food. And by that I mean: I’ll look for any decent excuse to buy a 12 pack of Bass and Guinness.

What I Used

• Corned Beef Brisket, Mild Cure, 3 lbs.
• Bass Ale, 2 bottles
• Guinness Draught, 1 bottle
• Baby Bok Choy
• Radicchio, chopped
• Shallot, finely minced
• White Wine Vinegar
• Corn Starch
• Butter

What I Did

1. In a dutch oven over high heat, brown the corned beef.
2. Add the Bass Ale, cover, and move to a 250°F oven for 10 hours.
3. Separate, thoroughly wash, and dry the baby bok choy leaves.
4. Reduce the Guinness over low heat until it has reduced to about 2 oz. Thicken with a little corn starch.
5. Melt a pad of butter in a skillet over medium heat, add the shallot, radicchio, and a splash of white win vinegar and cook for 1 minute.
6. Serve the radicchio mixture with the bok choy, topped with thinly sliced corned beef and Guinness reduction, as pictured above.

A couple hours into the corned beef braising I searched the interwebs to see if anybody else had a take on combining Black and Tans with Corned Beef. Sure enough, Barb Reese of Focaccia’s Delicatessen in Toledo, OH cooks a sandwich with these flavors and in much the same fashion. It sounds. Friggin’. Awesome.

The amount of corned beef I’ve cooked here is way more than used in the overall dish, but I’ve already eaten the leftovers in the time it took to write this.

I seriously warn you not to eat the radicchio mixture alone. It’s quite bitter. Well, I guess if you dig bitter food, go to town, it’s just never been my idea of a good time. But mixed with the salt explosion that is corned beef and the Guinness reduction, it isn’t bad.

I’m going to be upfront. I can’t recommend that you eat much of my food, for medical reasons. In fact, I was going to say something to the effect of, “I’m not liable for your bypass surgery,” but instead I might just be able to guarantee gastric/coronary complications. You’re better off trying to sue me if you stay healthy. Hah!

The abomination pictured above is one example. When I made this I rendered the fat from a half pound of bacon…in a half stick of butter. Combined with the natural fat from the beef, the result wasn’t so much a gravy as a solid bed of flavor topped by an ether of heart sludge. And I did mess up a few things, but more on that after the jump.

So if I had to do this again I would definitely lose the butter. I must have been drunk when I thought I needed it. I’d also turn the fat into a roux with flour instead of using corn starch. The result was still tasty, but needed careful portioning. I started slipping into a coma halfway through the 8 oz. pictured above. If you feel like giving it a try (or please, please, please improve it first) leave me a comment with your results, opinions, and any resulting medical conditions you wish to share.