Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Seoul Food

Well, not really, but Korean-inspired at least. To begin, I ground some local grass-fed beef stew meat with garlic, herbs, salt, and (after separating some for Milo) togarashi. I let it sit while I cut sweet potato fries and chopped pak choi, and while the fries were going cooked the meat and then sautéed the greens in the burger pan with a little lemon and soy sauce. Topped with homemade kimchi, these were damn fine burgers. The togarashi gave them an intense flavor with good heat, and the kimchi added a pickly crunch with more heat from our homegrown cayenne peppers. This is a keeper, and could become sausage, meatballs, or a filling for peppers, etc. in a second. They unsurprisingly went particularly well with a couple of beers.

4 comments:

Heather said...

Feh. You know how busy I am? yet I need to read your blog.

Okay, so dip this into a grip of gochujang and you're pretty much there. Korean ketchup, that is. Also, I prefer my Korena with some soju and lemon, but I drink my booze on the hard side.

peter said...

It's an honor to be among your preferred online time-wasters.

The next batch of kimchi is going to be heavy on the horseradish I just dug up- as an experiment- and thereafter I might try a grain-based thing like gochujang, using hama natto and ground rice or something.

And as you know, I am not such a booze-lover- much more of a wino.

Heather said...

Natto gives me the WILLIES. And not in a good way.

peter said...

It's pretty funky, but I like funky. It also seems to fit somewhere in the chocolate-mushroom spectrum and I think a little bit gives some seriously umami bottom when called for.

Having said that, there's a nonzero probability that my experiment will end up an inedible bowl of athlete's foot.