Scallops with Citrus Fennel Salad

Seared scallopes with citrus fennel salad.
Sometimes the simplest foods are the best.

닭도리탕 (dak do ri tang)

This is a dish I never order in Korean restaurants. My mother made it so often at home and it didn't taste any different in restaurants so it seemed silly to pay for it. Like when I see someone (usually non-Koreans) order japchae in restaurants I want to shake them and say "don't you know this can be made at home for 15 cents!"

When i was a kid I loathed carrots, but I tolerated them in this dish. I'm still not a huge fan of carrots, but I feel like I need to eat more veggies, so I added a ton of carrots in this dish. That's how I tricked me into eating more carrots.

Buy some cut up chicken and marinate in gochujang, gochugaru, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and sesame oil for at least 30 minutes.

Heat up some oil in a pot, sautee onions. Add chicken to pot, add water. After a while, add potatoes and carrots. Simmer until chicken is tender and root vegetables are cooked through.

Serve with a lot of rice. Eat all your carrots.

Raw Fish

On a (inebriated) whim, we picked up some raw slabs of tuna and salmon at Citarella, 5 minutes before closing time. It seemed like a semi-good idea at the time to try out the bamboo sushi mat I bought in chinatown, but in retrospect there might have been one too many cocktails involved. Anyway, we made some rolls, which took forever.

After making the rice, you have to season it and fan it until it absorbs the seasoning. Basically it's a combination of rice wine vinegar, sugar, and salt.


Tuna with cucumber


Salmon with cucumber and jalapeno

While they were ok, next time I'm going to spare myself the trouble (and the dirty dishes) and order sushi delivery from downstairs. Plus they have miso soup.

Next day there was poke.


Diced raw fish, soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions, cucmber, jalapeno.

I hope I don't have worms.

김치 감자탕 (kimchi gamja tang)

My mother never made gamja tang for some reason. I discovered it in Korean restaurants in my late teens. Since then I have loved it from afar all these years. But why wait to go out to a restaurant when I could (theoretically) make it at home? Good question, me. It doesn't seem too hard to make, considering it's simply a spicy meat stew base with potato. Although kimchi isn't necessary, I decided to throw some in. If I could've gotten my hands on some 깻잎 (perilla leaves), that would've gone in too.

Ingredients
- <1 pound baby pork spare ribs (pork back bones would be better)
- 2 scallions
- 2 hot red peppers
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 stalk celery
- 5 black peppercorns
- 2 slices ginger
- 1 small onion (or 0.5 regular onion)
- 2 spoonfuls go chu jang
- 1-2 spoonfuls soy sauce
- 1-2 spoonfuls go chu ga ru
- 1 package enoki mushrooms
- 3-4 small yukon gold potatoes
- 1/2 carrot sliced on a bias
- <1 cup old kimchi
- sesame oil
- salt & pepper
- (optional) firm tofu

Soak the ribs in cold water and change the water a couple of times. Then place the ribs in a stew pot with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil with 1 scallion, 2 slices ginger, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 1 sliced hot red pepper, 5 black peppercorns, and 1 stalk celery. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook about 1 hour while skimming off any fat. Add more water if the water level seems too low.



Place the ribs in a bowl and strain the liquid. Discard any solids. You can separate the meat from the bones and discard the bones too. Or bury them in the backyard if you're a dog.



In the pot, add the go chu jang, go chu ga ru, sliced onion, soy sauce, 1 minced garlic clove, 0.5 minced scallion, and the strained broth. Add the meat back in. you can adjust these things to your taste.



Bring to boil and reduce heat to medium. Add kimchi. Add peeled whole potatoes. Cover slightly and cook about 20-25 minutes (add tofu, if using). Then add 0.5 sliced scallions, 1 sliced hot red pepper, and sliced carrots. Add some sesame oil (about a teaspoon). Taste for seasoning (salt and pepper). Simmer for about 5-10 more minutes. When ready to serve, place enoki mushrooms on top. In restaurants, they use them for decoration, so you'll find a few thin strands of enoki mushrooms. But I love them, so I placed a big handful of it on top. (Imaginary) Chiffonade of perilla leaves go on top as well.



Serve in bowls and eat with rice.



Try not to fight over the potatoes.

Watermelon Sangria

For the past couple of months, I've been making (and drinking) white sangria. It usually involves lots of white wine, calvados, confectioner's sugar, and any fruit lying around. One day some leftover watermelon chunks made their way into the sangria pitcher. It was a bit of an experiment, but it was very good. Soon there was a Google search and we found Andrew Zimmerman's recipe for watermelon sangria. Not Zimmern. Although I'd love to see what his sangria recipe would look like.

The process is a bit of a hassle, but the final product is worth it. I doubled the recipe and changed a few things.

Ingredients
- 1 orange
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup water
- 2 bottles white wine
- 6 ounces vodka
- 8 ounces Cointreau
- 4 pounds of watermelon

The day before, make the citrus simple syrup. In a small saucepan, bring 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water to a boil; simmer until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and throw in the peel of an orange (no white parts). Cool and then refrigerate overnight with the lid on.



The next day, remove the orange bits. This should be about 1 cup.





In a blender, puree about 4 pounds of watermelon. There was no way to weigh this in my apartment, as I ended up buying a 15 pound watermelon. So i just eyeballed it and made 2 blender pitchers worth.



Blend blend blend



Pour through a fine strainer into a pitcher. Add white wine, vodka, Cointreau, and citrus simple syrup. Stir and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. This recipe made 3 gallons of watermelon sangria.



Stir again before serving and enjoy on a hot day while thinking of all the thirsty people outside.

Milk Chocolate and Pistachio Tart

The previous tenants never had their mail forwarded, so I receive all their magazines. Some are bad (hunting/game and fishing magazines, Parenting, and Woman's Day), some are good (New Yorker and Martha Stewart's Living).

This summer, says Martha Stewart, is all about tarts. The one that caught my (stomach's) attention was the milk chocolate pistachio tart. I like milk, chocolate, pistachio, and tarts, so why not put them all together?

Ingredients and equipment:

Crust
3/4 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for surface
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup unsalted shelled pistachios, chopped
salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Pistachio paste
1/2 cup unsalted shelled pistachios
1/4 cup sugar
salt
1 teaspoon grapeseed oil (or any other neutral oil)

Filling
5 ounces milk chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup whole milk
1 large egg, beaten

Garnish: finely chopped pistachios

9-inch fluted round tart pan with a removable bottom, rolling pin, baking sheet

First things first. Leave the stick of butter and the egg out on the counter and bring to room temperature before attempting a go at this. If you try to cream cold butter, you're either nuts or crazy.

They tell you to coat the tart pan with cooking spray. I don't own any cooking sprays, so I skipped this step. In the end, I had no trouble with the tart sticking to the pan, but mine was non-stick.

In a bowl, mix the flour, cocoa powder, chopped pistachios (you'll have left over chopped pistachios, which you can use for garnish), and 1/4 teaspoon salt with a whisk or fork.



Stir stir stir



In another bowl "beat butter on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes." Do I look like I own a hand held mixer? No. I creamed the butter in a big bowl with a wooden spoon. It worked out fine. And it's good exercise. Add the sugar and stir (or beat) until pale.



Add the vanila and incorporate into the creamed butter. Add the dry ingredients and stir until just combined and the dough holds together.





Press the dough into a disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.



Take the dough out of the fridge, unwrap it, and roll it out to 1/4-inch thickness on a well floured surface.



You know how to transfer rolled out dough from the counter into the pan, don't you? Roll it up with your rolling pin and then unroll it on top of the pan. Press dough into bottom and up the sides of tart pan. If it tears a little, just patch it up with your fingers. No one's going to see the patch jobs under the filling. Trim excess dough flush with edges of pan by rolling your rolling pin over the top. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour. I threw the scrap pieces in the toaster oven for a few minutes. It was pretty good.



Near the end of the chilling time, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. I poked holes in the crust with a fork, just in case. Place the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Let it cool completely and reduce the temperature to 300 degrees.

While the crust is baking, make the pistachio paste and the chocolate filling.

Pulse pistachios, sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a food processor or blender until mixture begins to clump together. Add oil, and pulse until smooth and pastelike.



It looked more like wet sand than paste.



Chop up the chocolate and place in a heatproof bowl. I used Scharffen Berger milk chocolate (41% cacao).



Heat cream and milk in a saucepan over medium heat until almost boiling; pour over chocolate. Let stand for 2 minutes.



Slowly whisk until smooth. Let cool for 10 minutes. Stir in a beaten egg until combined.



Once the crust has cooled down completely, spread the pistachio paste into the bottom, pressing firmly with the bottom of a measuring cup until flat and smooth.

Empty shell



Filled with paste



Place tart shell on a baking sheet, and pour in filling.



Bake until just set, 31-32 minutes in my oven. let cool and garnish with chopped pistachios. This tart is brought to you by the letter G.



Then set it on fire and scare your jetlagged brother-in-law.



PS - it's better the next day

Spicy Squid

I had a craving for spicy octopus, but had to settle for squid instead.

Chop up the bodies into 0.5 inch rings and cut the legs in half, length wise. Also chop up some vegetables:

- 0.5 yellow onion
- 1 small carrot
- 1 small zucchini
- 2 hot red peppers with seeds
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 scallion



Throw the onion, carrot, zucchini, and garlic into a pan with oil and sautee. Season with salt and pepper.



Once the onions become somewhat translucent, remove the veggies and return the pan to the stove. Add the following for the sauce:

- 3 spoonfuls go choo jang
- 2 spoonfuls go choo ga ru
- 2-3 spoonfuls soy sauce
- 1 spoonful mirin
- 1 spoonful rice wine vinegar
- black pepper

The original recipe called for sugar too, but I omitted that. Heat the sauce and then add the squid, scallions, red peppers, and the sauteed veggies. Cook until the squid is opaque and the veggies are heated through. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.



Plate with rice or rice noodles.



The squid was ok, but it was no octopus.

Neck Bone and Sweet Potato

What a bizarre combination. Pork neck bones and sweet potatoes cooked in a spicy sauce. How much meat can neck bones have anyway? Surprisingly, a lot. The sweet potatoes add a nice sweet break between the spicy bites.

This reminded me a lot of something my mother makes, with pork ribs and potatoes. That could probably work really well here. Probably chicken too.

Ingredients
- 2 scallions with roots trimmed, sliced in the middle (or however you want)
- 3 red peppers sliced on a bias (medium hot), keep the seeds unless you're a sissy
- sliced ginger - I love ginger, so I used a large chunk for this
- sweet potatoes, peeled, and sliced in 0.25-0.5 inch thickness (i don't have a picture of this). Keep them in a bowl of cold water until ready to use. Do it or you'll be sorry. I used 5 tiny ones, but I would imagine you can use 1-2 regular sized ones.



Sauce
- 6-8 spoonfuls soy sauce
- 4-6 spoonfuls 고추장 (go choo jang)
- 3-4 spoonfuls 고추가루 (go choo ga ru) - i like coarse ground
- 1 spoonful sriracha
- 10 garlic cloves, minced finely (it's not as much as you'd think)
- 2 spoonfuls sesame oil
- 1 spoonful mirin
- 1 spoonful rice wine vinegar
- 1 small asian pear, finely grated,* with juice
- 1 small yellow onion, finely grated, with juice
- some ginger, finely grated, with juice
- a few turns of the pepper mill

Mix the sauce together in a bowl. taste and adjust seasoning, if needed. If the pear is not sweet enough, add 0.5-1 spoonful of sugar. The original recipe did not call for the mirin or the rice wine vinegar, but i think these add more depth to the sauce. Also Sriracha. It's probably unnecessary, but I like to add it to everything. And next time, I will probably reduce the amount of go choo jang. I found out that not everyone can handle the heat in the songo household.



* if possible, use an Asian grater like this one



Oh, before all of this, you should have been soaking your neck bones in cold water in a large bowl. Change the water a few times.

Place the neck bones in a pot with enough water to cover and then some. Turn the heat on high and bring to boil. You may add aromatics you have on hand. I had some leftover ginger peel, onion skin, and extra scallion, so i tossed them into the pot.

After it starts to boil, lower the heat to medium and continue to cook. As the meat cooks, skim off any scum or oil that comes up to the surface. Cook about an hour or more. It is impossible to overcook this.



Place the neck bones aside for now.



Throw out any solids, strain, and reserve 2-3 cups of stock for this dish. The rest, you can save and freeze to use for another dish (eg, arroz al horno).



Add the sauce you made earlier to the stock and stir. Add the meat back into the pot. Place the scallions, ginger, and red peppers into the pot while you're at it. Bring to boil then reduce to medium heat without a cover. Cook until the liquid is reduced by more than half. The meat should be falling off the bone.



Add the sweet potato slices and place the cover. Reduce the heat to low and cook until sweet potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes. Check often, but resist the urge to fish out and eat all the sweet potato pieces.

Plate your dish with rice and eat.