photo by Heath Robbins

I wasn’t going to share this recipe with you. I’d already blown my wad on three permission requests for Jap Chae, Pork Ribs with Fresh Ginger, and Tofu and Clam Hot Pot, all equally good but in very different ways, and all from The Korean Table. But then I tried these wings, and I got greedy. Oh Tuttle Publishing, would you please grant me permission to use yet another recipe on the blog? Because of their generosity, I present you with the best-ever chicken wings. They are hot and (more…)

Taekyung Chung, co-author of THE KOREAN TABLE, stirring Tofu and Clam Hot Pot. (Photo by Mark Goodwin.)

Right about now, whether you live in the north or the south, this is what you want to eat: a hot pot of steaming, spicy, and nourishing broth. This hot pot takes its name from pillowy soft tofu, but there’s much more going on in this soup besides sundubu (tofu): there’s pork, clams, egg, and beef via the broth. It’s both rich tasting and enriching to the body. Again, perfect vortex food.

This same dish was one of several served (more…)

photo by Heath Robbins

Have you ever sat back in your chair after enjoying a meal, allowing the flavors to linger in your mouth, reached for your water glass, and then regretted it? I have, until breaking myself of the habit. All it takes is one small sip of water to wash all of those wonderful flavors down the tubes, possibly never to be experienced again in exactly the same way.

This dish from The Korean Table, or rather its redolent sauce, which is the dish, is worthy of regret—should you lapse into knee-jerk mode and imbibe in a post-meal drink of H2O.

The base of the sauce is Sweet Soy Base Sauce, a soy sauce concoction that’s ramped up with brown sugar, wine, and aromatics (ginger, garlic, and black peppercorns). To that is added more wine and black pepper and a good amount of ginger and green onions. Then in go the pork ribs, carrots, pearl onions, and potatoes. The result is a rich, mellow, and well-balanced sauce that hits all the right notes: salt, sweet, acid, faintly peppery.

Soy sauce along with the pork supply the sauce with its umami, so it’s important to use good quality pork (translation: happy life, good diet, least stressful death possible). (I kinda hate throwing the term umami around because it’s an abstract one—like a lot of food flavor language—and most of the time I’m not exactly sure I could recognize it on my palate if I had to. But every so often I eat something that seems designed just to illustrate umami. And this is one of those foods. It’s deeply rich, complex, and satisfying in a completing savory way, and yet is as addictive as a sugary treat was to you as a kid—remember picking chunks of brown sugar out of the box as a kid? As far as I can tell, that’s umami. Scientifically, umami is provided by the amino acid glutamate, found in proteins, fermented foods of all types, and some vegetables.)

I shopped for pork ribs at my new local butcher shop—the Belmont Butchery, owned by Tanya Cauthen. When the man behind the counter handed me the ribs, I was happy to see they had a nice dark and meaty color to them (none of that tragic “other white meat” business, please). He said, proudly, that the ribs were from a Berkshire pig from a local farm. His comment, and his obvious love of food and love of talking food, made me realize that the only thing that could make me happier in my new home town of Richmond is if we lived in walking distance to Belmont Butchery.

I hope my description, and the enticing photo by Heath Robbins, are enough to convince you try this dish and savor it. And to find a butcher you can talk pig breeds with. That’s as much of a treat as the dish.

Pork Ribs with Fresh Ginger

(Adapted [very slightly!] from The Korean Table by Taekyung Chung and Debra Samuels)

Serves 4, amply

2½ pounds meaty pork ribs, separated into individual ribs
2½ cups water
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces
7 ounces pearl onions, peeled (see Note)
¾ pound potatoes, cut into 2-inch cubes

Sauce
¾ cup Sweet Soy Base Sauce (click here, and scroll down for recipe)
2 cups minced green onion (scallion)
2 ounces fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
¼ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
½ cup red or white wine

1. Place the ribs in a large bowl and cover with water. Let them sit for 20 minutes to remove excess blood. Drain and transfer the ribs to a large pot with a lid. Discard the soaking liquid.
2. Add the sauce ingredients and the water to the pot. Cover and bring the mixture to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, or until tender. Add the carrots and pearl onions and continue cooking, with the lid on, for 10 minutes. Add the potatoes can continue cooking until the vegetable are soft, about 10 minutes more.
3. With a slotted spoon remove the ribs and vegetables and transfer to a serving bowl. With a spoon, skim any oil from the surface of the sauce.
4. Cook the sauce for another 10 minutes or so over medium-high heat, or until the sauce is thickened. Pour the sauce over the ribs and vegetables. Serve in wide shallow soup bowls with plain white short-grain rice on the side.

Note: Peeling pearl onions is extremely finicky work, unless you give them a pre-peel blanch. Trim the root ends of the onions, then blanch the onions in boiling water for about 30 seconds and transfer them to a bowl of ice water. Pinch the onions at the stem end to pop them out of their skin. If they don’t slip out, use a paring knife to remove the skin.

(Recipes and photography from The Korean Table by Taekyung Chung and Debra Samuels. Photography by Heath Robbins. Recipe for and photograph of Pork Ribs with Fresh Ginger reprinted with the express permission of Tuttle Publishing, http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/.)

Japchae. Japchae. It’s almost as fun to say as bibimbap. And come to think of it, every Korean I’ve met seems to utter the word with revere and a sigh.

Maybe that’s because the noodles used to make the dish are magical. Called Dangmyun, they are dried vermicelli noodles made with sweet potato starch. When heated, they go from being opaque to transparent, and from (more…)

That was day before yesterday. Maybe one of the last possible days to enjoy a pomegranate-ginger smash—a lemony, minty, sweet-tart concoction served over crushed ice—even in Richmond, Virginia. October 21st is way beyond the date of wanting such a thing in Vermont—the place where I lived for seven years before plopping myself down here exactly one month ago.

The views. They’re from the balcony off of the second floor bedroom in our new home. Starting from the top: looking out to the left toward the parish house and Father Wayne’s back courtyard; straight ahead to the large magnolia tree in our own courtyard, which will be magnificent next spring; over the tree tops to the stately, prior school building, now condominiums, the next block over (which you could make out better if the top portion of the photograph wasn’t blown out); then over to the right at a slight angle to some of the courtyards of neighboring buildings; and finally, the bottom image, to the far right out beyond our neighbor’s matching Juliet balcony and beyond to nearby rooftops, my favorite view.

The drink. It’s a hold-over from Jerusalem days: the thread being the use of pomegranate molasses. (The recipe is below.) I came up with this cocktail back in mid-August with the plan of photographing it soon after and posting it on the blog—in perfect late (more…)

What do stuffed eggplant with lamb and pine nuts and sloppy joes have in common? Not much, on the face of it. One is an exotic, aromatic dish with Turkish origins found in the cookbook Jerusalem, and the other, a quintessential American school cafeteria food.

But on the palate, they’re not that far off, particularly when sloppy joe filling is made from scratch. Both ground meat fillings are (more…)

There is no Prince Pilpelchuma, at least not as far as I know. (Any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.)

Though fictional, Prince Pilpelchuma’s name is taken from two very real foods: a fiery hot condiment called pilpelchuma, a recipe for which can be found in the cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi; and hot chicken, a type of spicy fried chicken found in  (more…)

One day, wanting to make use of some tofu and scallions in the fridge, I came up with this very simple stir-fry. Having just spent several weeks cooking from Grace Young’s cookbook The Breath of a Wok, I felt emboldened to improvise with what I had on hand.

Once you do some wok time with the recipes in The Breath of a Wok you begin to get into a wok rhythm, and to gain a (more…)

If you’ve got some rice, some water, and a saucepan you can cook rice. There’s no need for measuring cups and no need to measure the rice or water. All you need is your index finger.

I learned this freewheeling finger-in-the-pot method from Grace Young’s cookbook The Breath of a Wok, the current DCCC pick. To be honest, I’d come across the method previously in other Asian cookbooks, but it’s only now, after building my kitchen skills to their current level (due in part to this cookbook club) and with Young’s well-written and assuring book at my side, that I felt confident enough to leave my measuring cups in the cupboard. Once I took the leap of faith and made my first pot of rice this way, I felt liberated.

Besides being freeing, the method is also (more…)

Today Chinese people all over the world are enjoying the Lantern Festival, which marks the last day of the Chinese New Year season. The traditional food for the festival is Yuanxiao dumplings, made with sticky rice flour.

Instead of dumplings, I made a rice noodle dish found in the cookbook The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young. In an email, Grace had suggested it to me as a very auspicious New Year’s recipe to try. “The noodles symbolize (more…)