Lobster tail with spinach salad

This is one of the best 15-minute meals I've ever had. Cook a lobster tail for three minutes in boiling water; Make a salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

My brother-in-law got us a gift certificate to Lobster Gram for Christmas, and we didn't use it until recently. I waited until the lobster tails were defrosted and then I cooked them.

We dressed them with melted butter, cracked open the shells and devoured them. We picked apart the shell, trying to get the last remnants of the lobster in our mouths.

Buttermilk creams with strawberry sauce

This is the first time I made buttermilk creams, a panna cotta-like dessert. I hardly ever use gelatin and this dessert is so easy to make. It's just a matter of mixing ingredients and letting the dessert sit in the fridge.

I really liked how the buttermilk added a tang to the taste, making sure the dessert isn't too sweet. For the topping, I heated up some homemade strawberry jam that I already made.

To get the recipe from Everyday Food, click here.

My dad's kimchi jjigae

Photo taken March 2010

My dad's way of making kimchi jjigae, or kimchi stew, is to throw everything in a pot. This Korean traditional stew is best made with old kimchi. Since my dad never wants to waste anything, he took kimchi that was two years old and turned it into a soup that I couldn't wait to eat day after day.

He boiled the kimchi in water until it was translucent. He added dried anchovies, potatoes, pumpkin and dried mushrooms. He put in tofu. He added pork from the freezer and it became really soft in the stew.

"If you add anchovies, it will make it sweeter," he told me.

"How do you know that?" I asked him.

"I don't know. Your mother told me," he replied.

"How did you learn to cook?" I asked. Growing up, my mom cooked everything.

"Everything I know I learned from your mother," my dad said.

Do you want a tamale?

Tomatillo chicken tamale

I tried a Block Factory tamale today and it was awesome! I went to the Beacon Farmers' Market this morning and I was eager to check out some of the new vendors.

Block Factory Tamales, of Germantown, N.Y., sells their tamales at farmers' markets. The owner uses all locally grown vegetables and all natural meat for her tamales, according to the company Website.



I had the BBQ pulled pork tamale, while Matt had the tomatillo chicken tamale. I liked my corn husk package of goodness, but I actually liked tomatillo chicken better. It was just filled with flavor.

Fishy in the sea

Photo taken 3/27/2010

I love anything fried, so I tried these snacks shaped like fish. They're basically fried batter with red bean paste inside. They're nice and crispy on the outside, but they give way to a soft and sweet filling.

I tried these "fish" in the Insadong district of Seoul during the last week of March. I think they're so cute.

Spareribs glazed with Chinese BBQ Sauce and honey

These spareribs were juicy, sticky and sweet. I had glazed the pork spareribs with Chinese barbecue sauce, or Char Siu sauce, honey, garlic and sesame oil, using a marinade recipe from Candy of Soup Belly. I had never cooked spareribs before, so I was pretty happy with the way they turned out!

Spareribs glazed with Chinese BBQ Sauce and honey
1 rack pork spareribs
salt
pepper
For Soup Belly's marinade recipe, click here.
Garnish:
Scallions, chopped
toasted sesame seeds

Directions:
Take out the pork spareribs 30-60 minutes out of the refrigerator before you roast them so they come to room temperature. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F. Season the spareribs with salt and pepper.

Put the ribs in a roasting pan and cook them in the oven for two hours. Mix the garlic, Char Siu sauce, soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, five-spice powder and corn starch for the marinade. During the last 30 minutes before the ribs are done cooking, glaze them with the marinade.

After two hours, if you don't think the ribs are tender enough, glaze them again with more sauce. Then take a large piece of tin foil, tent it over the roasting pan and cook the ribs for another 15-20 minutes. Cut the ribs into segments with a cleaver. Garnish the ribs with chopped scallions and toasted sesame seeds.

Turkish kebab in Seoul

Photo taken 3/27/2010

The Sultan Kebab House teen cashier turned around and said, "Lamb spicy!" to the cook standing in front of the meat on the spit.

I couldn't wait to try my first Turkish kebab in Seoul. I had taken a bus and a train to get to the Itaewon district where several kebab, or shawarma places were.

I took my first bite. I couldn't get the taste of the lamb, but it was probably smothered in lettuce. I took a second bite. The lamb that had been grilled on a spit all day gave way to savory flavors with a subtle burn from the sauce. The sauce wasn't really spicy hot, but it added to the lamb. 

What I love about Sultan Kebab is that it's just a man and his meat. He cuts the meat off the spit and adds the sauces.

While the outdoor food stand has upgraded into a full takeout counter with teen cashiers, the place has the feeling that this is still homemade shawarma. It's dressed up like semi-corporate fast food complete with a red tray, but I like it and I'll keep coming back.

Itaewon is the international section of Seoul where people can eat Bulgarian, Mexican, French, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Turkish and other ethnic cuisine. It's a popular shopping area. The U.S. Army Base Yongsan Garrison is nearby and a lot of Americans and other foreigners frequent Itaewon.

 



Sultan Kebab House
Nearest subway station: Itaewon, line 6 (brown); exit 3
Directions: Leave Itaewon station through exit 3. Instead of going straight, turn around and walk in the other direction. Turn left at the big intersection. Turn left again when you come to the first alley. Sultan Kebab House is on your left.

Roasted chestnuts

When I visited South Korea during the last week of March, I couldn't help but get roasted chestnuts. It was chilly in Seoul at the time. Vendors roasted chestnuts and carved off the tough skin. I loved the slight sweetness of the chestnut and how it gave way in my mouth. It seemed like the chestnut was one of the last joys of winter before spring would be coming in full force.

Kalguksu Round 2 with Seoulful Adventures at Myeongdong Gyoja

I tasted the broth of the kalguksu and it was SMOKY. It seemed like the cooks grilled beef over charcoals and made broth from that beef. At Myeongdong Gyoja, that's why people waited in lines that snaked down the stairs, out the door and into the street.

When I was in Seoul last week, I met up with Anna Waigand and Andre Francisco of Seoulful Adventures and International Underground. They picked the best damn place to get knife-cut noodle soup in Seoul.  It was better than the other kalguksu I had.

The kimchi was a zinger. I picked up a piece with my chopsticks and put it in my mouth. Woh. Blink. Blink. Eyes widen.

All that raw garlic made my eyes water. I diluted the kimchi in my kalguksu.

We ate pork mandu with our soup. But we just couldn't finish everything.


Anna looked at my bowl and Andre's bowl. The level of kalguksu had gone down in our bowls just enough to make a visible difference. But her bowl looked like she hadn't even started on her soup even though she had. There are never any small meals in Korea.

We had been digging away at our kalguksu for a little while. When I thought I could maybe, possibly eat most of my kalguksu, a waitress refilled my bowl with more broth.

"Well, I thought I was making a dent," I said. Anna and Andre laughed.


The two bloggers teach English in Seoul. They graduated from Northwestern University. While they co-write a food blog called Seoulful Adventures, they started a journalism project called International Underground with Greg Boone and Danielle Harms, of Schoolhouse: ROK. Their goal is to write about people's experiences that haven't been told before. Their first multimedia project looks at Seoul's Filipino community.


The line looks long, but it goes fast. Staff separate customers into groups of two or three and larger.

Myeongdong Gyoja, Seoul, South Korea
Nearest subway station: Myeong-dong station, line 4 (blue), exit 6 or 8.
Directions: Leave Myeong-dong station through exit 8. Walk straight and turn left when you see Crown Bakery and you see a sign for Gye Seong Girls' High School. You can also leave the subway station through exit 6. Then keep walking and turn left at Crown Bakery. Keep going. Myeongdong Gyoja will be on you right. It is between Orbis and Lim's.

Where you turn left after you exit Myeong-dong subway station:

Hodo kwaza! Korean walnut cake

Hodo kwaza, or Korean walnut cake

Last Saturday, I managed to convince my dad to let me go alone into Seoul. (I'm in my late 20s, but my father believes I could get kidnapped and forced into slavery because I don't speak fluent Korean.) My late grandmother's apartment is about an hour away from the city.

I took the bus to Insadong, a neighborhood known for selling Korean traditional art like embroidery, ceramics, paintings and many other items. As I made my way to Insadong, I kept thinking, "Hodo kwaza! Hodo kwaza!"

I love getting Korean walnut cake from a vendor that has an automated machine. The machine squirts pancake-like batter into walnut-shaped cast-iron shells. Then it puts in red bean paste and finally a walnut is dropped in each cake. The pancake ball filled with the sweet bean paste comes out fresh and hot.

I like getting hodo kwaza from this vendor because the employees put a walnut inside each one. Other vendors who usually work out of food carts just squirt red bean paste into pancake batter.

Location: Insadong, Seoul, S. Korea
Nearest subway station: Anguk, line 3 (orange)

I'm back home in Upstate New York now. I think I'm still jetlagged.