Author: Faith

Recipe: Bulgogi

Last week I made bibimbap for the first time. My Korean cooking skills are almost nonexistent but my expert sister Jan walked me through it over the phone. Among other things, I made bulgogi to go on top of the bibimbap. (Yeah, I was cooking for 2+ hours.)

This is the bulgogi recipe that my sister uses. It has a few more ingredients that other recipes I’ve seen, but it’s really delicious. (I made a huge batch so I would have extra to freeze. You might want to halve this unless you’re feeding 10+ people)

Ingredients

  • 4 lbs. beef chuck roast, sliced thinly (I get the butcher to slice it about 1/8″ thin.)
  • 1 yellow onion, roughly chopped
  • 3 Tablespoons of Garlic, crushed
  • 1 kiwi, peeled
  • 1/2″ piece of ginger, peeled and then sliced (slicing prevents it from being stringy when blended)
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 ripe Asian pear, peeled and cored
  • 1 cup Korean soy sauce
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions, green parts only
  • sprinkle of roasted sesame seeds

Directions

  1. Add all ingredients except for green onions and sesame seeds to blender or food processor and process until well blended.
  2. Put sliced beef into a couple of gallon Ziploc bags, add marinade, and mix to coat. Refrigerate for approximately 1 hour (According to Jan, if you marinate the meat for too long, the acid in the marinade can “make the meat mushy.”)
  3. Cook beef (in batches if necessary) in large skillet over high heat. Add green onions towards the end.
  4. Garnish with sesame seeds and serve with rice (and lettuce if desired).

When I made the bulgogi, I was struck by how easily and quickly it came togther. It only took about 30 minutes to peel/rough chop everything and throw it into the food processor for the marinade. And cooking the meat went very quickly as well because it was sliced so thinly. I’m going to try and make it for dinner more often.

Project Update 3: Armoire

Class this week was pretty productive. To save time and money, I had bought a 8′ by 4′ piece of walnut MDF to use for the shelves inside the armoire. On Wednesday I used the panel saw to cut the MDF to width (below) and then I ripped lengths on the table saw.


And then, I glued the main frame of the armoire together!

This is the fixed shelf that I cut the dadoes for before.

Who has two thumbs…

…and is allergic to penicillin?

–This guy!

Yes sir, the hits just keep on coming. A while ago E. picked up a strep infection on his skin (I think he actually got it from his 4-month visit to the pediatrician) and so a week ago the doctor put him on amoxicillin to clear it up. It worked, but his stomach was very upset and then today he broke out in hives all over his chest, arms, and legs.

I took him back to the doctor today and they said that he’s allergic to penicillin. So now he’s off of the amoxicillian and he’s taking Children’s Benadryl to clear up the hives. I don’t like giving him so much medicine when he’s so little, but it seems necessary in this case.

I think that E. has suffered more than his fair share of aliments this winter. I know that kids get sick a lot, but come on! He’s really been a trooper throughout it all, though. Poor sweet little guy.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling…

E. rolled over yesterday! He was laying on his tummy, kicking his feet out behind him when his head started leaning to one side and slowly (ever so slowly) he rolled onto his side and then onto his back. I got out the video camera and tried to get him to do it again, but to no avail (of course!). I tried it with him again this morning, but he was tired and having none of it.

However, I haven’t given up hope and will continue trying to capture footage of the elusive rollover!

Food and Families

Whew–today was crazy. I had to turn in my big monthly report for work and the baby kept waking up early from his naps. I just got my report finished, though. Yay!

Today I was thinking about some of the foods I ate as a kid. My mom is Korean and is a great cook of both Korean and American food, but some of the quick meals we would eat growing up could be kindly described as “fusion cuisine.” Some were her idea, some were the ideas of my older siblings, and I think some were entirely my invention. Most of them included either kimchi or the West’s greatest gift to Asia: SPAM! (I just checked with N. to see how SPAM was capitalized and he recommended all caps because “SPAM is too big of a food for little letters.”)

Anyway, here are some of the weird foods I remember from my childhood:

Cream of Wheat with kimchi: My mom would make Cream of Wheat for breakfast in the wintertime and we would eat it with radish kimchi. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized that most people who eat Cream of Wheat sweeten it like oatmeal–my mom only put a little bit of salt in it. I think this dish still holds up because the Cream of Wheat was essentially a stand-in for rice and it was a nice savory alternative to oatmeal.

Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup with rice mixed in and kimchi and pan-fried SPAM on the side: Another hot breakfast for wintertime. The SPAM went well with the soup and rice, and the spicy kimchi would cut through the saltiness of the soup and spam.

Rice with SPAM, kimchi, and gim (dried seaweed): This still ranks pretty high on my list of great home-cooked lunches. It’s pretty much perfect. If I cook it N. will eat it too, but only after he complains about the smell of the fried SPAM.

Plain Dduk (pressed rice cake) with Pace Picante Sauce: when I was in elementary school, I would make this snack for myself after school. I think one of my older siblings probably taught me how, but I can’t remember. I would put the dduk in a plastic bag and add a couple tablespoons of water, twist the bag shut, put it on a plate, and microwave it for a minute or so. This would kind of steam the dduk and soften it up and it would be all warm and kind of gooey. Then I would dip it into the salsa and eat it. Yeah, pretty weird, I know. Did we not have tortilla chips in the house? But to this day, when I smell Pace Picante Sauce, my mouth starts watering and I can almost taste it the dduck.

These other two have nothing to do with Korean food and are just weird.

Bagels with margarine and garlic powder: I would warm up onion Lender’s bagels, spread margarine on them, and then sprinkle garlic powder on the top. Obviously I was not too concerned with bad breath as a kid.

Microwaved marshmallows: I would put two or three jumbo marshmallows on a plate and microware them for a minute or so, watching them inflate and puff up. Then I would swirl them around with a fork until they were kind of the consistency of taffy and eat them. I had to be sure to rinse off the plate well afterwards or else the marshmallow dried hard as a rock and was a pain to wash.

Well, I’m sure there are more, but I think those are the standouts. The reason this topic came up today was that my lunch today was one of the dishes I listed–l’ll leave exactly which one it was to your imagination.

I ate some weird things as a kid, but at least I ate them in the normal way. Not like the family in this SNL sketch that N. sent me a link to today.

How about you? Did you eat any weird foods as a kid?

Project Update 2: Armoire

It’s almost 11:30 am; and I’ve been up since before 6 am and have yet to shower! I have however, gotten a big chunk of my reports for work done though. Instead of going back to bed after I fed E. early this morning I went downstairs and worked on my reports while he (and N.) continued to sleep.

I had to work on things this morning because while the weekend turned out to be relaxing, it was not productive at all (unless you count watching a two-hour marathon of The Women of Ninja Warrior as productive.)

Anyway, I’ve gotten to a good stopping point in my work and E. is taking a nap, and so I thought I would put together an update on the armoire I’m building.

Class on Wednesday was a little frustrating due to my sloppy project planning. I spent 15 minutes agonizing over the length of the legs of the armoire because they “looked too tall.” I ended up trimming 2 inches off of them and now feel better about the legs but worse about my planning skills. Oh well.

The only other thing I accomplished at class this last week was that I cut the dadoes where the fixed shelves will go. There will be fixed boards at the top, bottom, and middle of the armoire; these are essentially what holds the armoire together to form a box. I had to cut dadoes, or grooves, into the two sides where the shelves will be glued in. It’s very important that the dadoes on both sides are exactly parallel (or as close as possible) so the shelves will be level when they’re glued in. I positioned the sides using a stop block and clamps to make sure I was cutting the dadoes in the same place on both sides. I used a panel router to cut the dadoes, which you can see below.

The cut dado is circled in yellow in the picture below.


There’s no class this week because of Spring Break, but next week I’ll glue in the shelves to form the main box of the armoire, which should be pretty exciting.

I just checked–E.’s still sleeping (yay!) and so I’m going to hop in the shower. At least I’ll get it in before noon!

E. at 4 Months

E. had his 4-month checkup yesterday. He looks so bleary eyed in the photo because he fell asleep in his carseat and only woke up when I had to undress him for his exam. I was right about his size – he weighed just under 17 pounds at 16 lbs 14 oz. and he was 25 and 3/4 inches long. The doctor said that he’s developing nicely and that I should start him on baby cereal sometime in the next 2 months. E. got another round of shots. I took him home and he continued the nap he had started in the car for a couple of hours. His reaction to the shots seemed to be okay, but last night he was crying and waking up every couple of hours and running a low grade fever. I was so tired of getting up out of bed to soothe him back to sleep every other hour or so that around 5am I gave him and put him to sleep in his swing and I crashed on the couch. It worked – he didn’t wake up again until 9:30am.

The odd sleep I got last night left me both tired from waking up so often and also a little oogey from sleeping in so long–the worst of both worlds. It might be the rough night, but I feel really overwhelmed by things today. I’m behind on some things I need to do for work, the house is a mess, I need to go grocery shopping, and there’s a long list of home improvement projects that I need to get started on. But all I want to do is veg on the couch and was Jeeves and Wooster on DVD. Here’s hoping the weekend’s both productive AND relaxing. A tall order, I know, but a girl can dream.

Have a good weekend!