OK so this is the second old post I am re-posting. Yeah I’m a lazy ass bum, But, but but but, I feel morally obligated to disseminate some at least semi- authentic kimchi info across the tubes upon hearing of Bette Midler’s recently becoming a kimchi ambassador of sorts. A friend told me she saw Ms. Midler on the Today Show demonstrating how to make something she claimed was kimchi. It apparently involved stacked cabbage leaves with some seasoning in between. Mysteriously, the google cannot seem to locate any evidence of this incident. Anyway here’s a video of Better Midler preaching the kimchi gospel to Kelly Ripa. Pretty surreal shit, man:

Whoa. So anyway, I guess I can’t really complain about the motherland’s greatest gift to the world getting some press, but I dunno, it all just seems very, very wrong. Original post follows.

So I finally broke down and wrote a Citypaper piece about kimchi. It’s tantamount to, I dunno, someone from Iowa writing about corn. Actually that’s a terrible analogy, point is it just seems a bit cliche, but I know that’s irrational. In any case, in my defense it was under duress and I believe it to be interesting to Korea-philes if nothing else. Anyway the full text can be found here. Below are some hopefully helpful pics.

Korean cucumbers are a bit more irregularly shaped than hydroponic, pcikling, or slicer cukes, and also have small bumps and a yellowish cast. They can be found at most any Asian market, and are generally around $2/lb:

Cut into 2″ lengths – make sure to trim the ends, apparently there is an enzyme in the flower bud end that causes the cucumber to become mushy, so trim both to be safe:

Carefully bisect the sections lengthwise, leaving about a quarter inch intact – use the standard bagel slicing method:

Rotate and repeat so that you end up with a mostly quartered section:

Place the partially quartered sections into a bowl and salt thoroughly, making sure to salt the cut flesh. Allow to sit for at least two hours (sorry no pic). In the meantime, combine the seasonings to form a fairly thick paste:

After a couple of hours of salting, the sections should be a bit more pliable. Brush off any excess salt (do not rinse!) and discard any collected liquids. With a teaspoon, fill the sections generously with the seasoning paste:

You should end up with sections that look like this:

Pack as tightly as you can in the closest fitting containter you can find:

Rinse the bowl you used to mix the paste with a bit of fresh water, perhaps a 1/4 cup. This will be used to submerge the kimchi, and should taste quite salty – add salt if necessary:

Cover cucumber sections with brine and cover with plastic wrap, making sure they are packed down well. Use a weight (e.g. soup can, brick) if necessary:

Leave out overnight at room temperature and taste – if the kimchi still tastes too fresh, give it another few hours, up to 24 total. Then refrigerate. Final product:

Alternative preparation – my mom tells me that the following is actually the more proper way to make this kimchi. It consists merely of a diffierent cutting technique. The above semi-quartering method is more convenient and quicker, while the method below yields more attractive results. Instead of quartering the sections, make a deep score, about a third of the way through. Repeat 4-5 times evenly spaced around each section:

After salting, fill the scores with spicy paste and proceed as directed above. Final product:

Recipe:
Sue Hong’s Easy Oh-Ee Soh-Beh-Gee (Cucumber Kimchi)

Ingredients:

6-8 medium Korean cucumbers* OR
8-10 Kirby or pickling cucumbers OR
3-4 seedless hydroponic cucumbers
1/2 cup Korean red pepper powder
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup finely chopped scallion or chives
1/4 cup coarse sea salt, or slightly less to taste (table or kosher salt will yield mushier kimchi)
2 tbsp fish sauce (Three Crabs brand is very good)
1 tsp sugar

Cut the tips off both ends of cucumbers (this will ensure crunchiness), then cut into 2-3 inch segments

Quarter the segment lengthwise, cutting almost but not all the way through, leaving four spears attached at one end

In a bowl, salt the pieces thoroughly with sea salt, and allow to rest for 2 hours

In another bowl, combine all other ingredients and enough salt to make the mixture quite salty, but overpoweringly so; add just enough water to make a thick paste

After the salted cucumber has rested, wipe off any remaining salt and discard any collected liquid

For each segment, using a teaspoon, generously smear the spicy paste in between the cucumber spears (should still be attached, but a bit more flexible now)

Pack tightly in a glass or stainless steel container, vertically if possible

Add fresh water to the bowl that contained the spice paste, swirl and rinse any remaining paste into the water, and pour over cucumbers, adding only enough to barely cover

Cover the container and allow to rest at room temperature overnight or about 8 hours, then taste for sharpness and acidity; if desired, leave out for a total of up to 12 hours before refrigerating for up to a week

*Note: Do not use the smooth, dark green “slicer” cucumbers, as their skin is too thick and seeds too hard. All ingredients listed above can be found at Hanareum or Lotte Asian supermarkets, both on Rte. 40

-Henry Hong

Hello all, long time no, uh.. nothin. I’m sure I’ve used that exact phrase here before, but it has yet again been a too-long hiatus since my last post. Sorry! Anyway, today I spent another fun ass hour with my homey Dan Rodricks, a rare Tuesday appearance on the second hour of his show on WYPR. The subject was Thanksgiving dishes in general, but Dan was pretty taken by the dessert I brought along, essentially pumpkin pie, with my EZ crumb crust, and with acorn squash instead of pumpkin (in the above photo, it’s on the right, the more yellow one).

I’d experimented last year for citypaper with butternut, but it didn’t turn out so well. The important advantage of acorn over pumpkin is that it’s readily available year-round, and it seems to work better in sweet applications better than the more savory butternut. Indeed, I just made a batch of hobak jook (recipe will be posted shortly), which is really just squash puree, but in Korea it’s made with something called dan hobak (literal transalation: “sweet squash”). Anyway dan hobak looks almost exactly like acorn squash we find here, and though the Korean vegetable is naturally much sweeter and orange-er, acorn squash is an excellent stand-in with the help of some added sugar. So enough yappin, here’s the recipe, or you could also just go here for my more in-depth pumpkin pie recipe from last year’s citypaper article, except of course substitute acorn squash for pumpkin. Duh.

Food Nerd’s Acorn Squash Bars

(btw the name was Dan’s idea)

Ingredients:

2 acorn squash

2 eggs

1/2 can condensed milk

a bit of milk or water to moisten

1/2 tsp sweet paprika

1/4 tsp ground black cardamom

a few drops of orange essential oil

1/4 stick butter

maybe 10 gingersnaps (non-iced)

some chopped pecans

salt and sugar to taste

Directions

1. Halve the squash lengthwise and scoop out seeds, then halve again to form quarters

2. Roast on a sheet or shallow pan in a 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until squash is tender

3. While waiting, pulverize the gingersnaps into a pretty fine powder. Gingersnaps are really freakin durable, so you’ll need a tool, food processor is best but mortar and pestle or even strong paper bag and a mallet will work. Combine with pecans in a mixing bowl.

4. Grease a 9 x 9 baking dish (or if you’d rather call it pie, a 9″ pie plate) with the 1/4 stick of butter, then put butter into a small saucepan over low heat. When butter has melted, add paprika, cook for 15 seconds,  then add to gingersnap mixture.

5. Combine butter and gingersnap crumbs thoroughly, then press into baking dish or pie pan to form a crust.

6. When squash is done, remove to a bowl and allow to cool, covered. Leave the oven at 375.

7. While waiting for squash to cool, par-bake the crust – place baking dish in oven and cook for about 10 minutes or until you start to smell it, then remove and allow to cool.

8. When squash is cool, peel carefully with a sharp knife, and place in a food processor with eggs, condensed milk, cardomom, and orange oil. Begin pureeing, adding milk/water a tiny bit at a time, until it just begins to liquefy. Add sugar ad salt to taste, and continue to pure until smooth.

9. Pour mixture into the baking dish, wiggle and tap a bit to even out mixture, and place into the oven (should still be at 375). Cook for about 30 minutes, but start checking on it at 25 minutes. When a toothpick inserted into the center pulls out dry, it’s done.

Notes

-Pureeing the squash in a blender seems to whip in too much air and makes the pie too loose imo. If you don’t have a fodd processor, I guess you could mash it thoroughly by hand but I fear this will leave too many of the long fibers intact. Mortar and pestle might work too.

-You’ll notice I don’t use the usual pumpkin spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, nor do I even add vanilla. This is just me protesting against the overly spiced so called “pumpkin” flavored stuff they sell in stores. This way you really taste the sweet squashiness more. Either way I’m sure is good.

-You can also boil the squash, which is in fact faster, but it seems like roasting noticeably enhances flavor, what with the Maillard reactions and all.

A few weeks ago, I’d been running around craving pizza ALL FRIGGIN DAY, but the thought of an overloaded pie with an underdone crust disgusted me more than usual, enough to defeat my sloth even. Solution? Grill it up son! I started doing this last year, after grilling flat bread and using that as a crust. Pretty good, but not actual pizza, per se.Homemade pizza dough is just too much trouble for the payoff, except for those few souls who are absolutely committed to perfecting it. I eventually found that some pizza places are willing to sell you balls of their pizza dough, which makes the process a whole lot simpler. My go-to spot is Angelo’s in Hampden, where a large dough ball is $3.50 (they also make a very good [UPDATE: The quality of Angelo's cheeseteaks has taken a brutal nosedive! Dry meat and not a lot of it... So bad I thought it must have been anomolous just a few days ago, but conversations with other fans confirm that for now, Angelo's has officially fallen off, as the kids used to say], if not very Philly-esque, cheesesteak). [UPDATE: Frozen dough balls are less than 2 bucks, work just as well, and can be found at most area Italian delis and many plain old supermarkets]

This size ball is good for two large thin-crust pizzas, and the dough keeps incredibly well, more than a week no problem:

After starting your charcoal get the toppings ready – we used some dry salami, arugula, fresh mozzarella, smoked mushrooms, roasted pepper, and a can of chopped tomatoes:

To roast the pepper, place it directly on the coals, wait til the down side chars, and turn. I generally use hardwood, not briquettes for grilling, but this was spur of the moment. Was that a douchebaggy thing to say? :

While this is happening, get some smoke into the mushrooms and soften the onion [UPDATE: It's a much better idea to saute some moisture out of the onions and mushrooms first. This seems to help smoke absorption while mor importantly preventing excess moisture from making the crust soggy.]

Season up the greens and shrooms, I used oil, lemon juice, and salt:

When the toppings are ready, prepare the dough by cutting the ball in half, and gently stretching the dough over a cutting board 11/17:

Brush with olive oil and add and pepper:

Carefully transfer to your hot grill, oiled-side down, then salt, pepper and oil the up side. When bubbles appear, it’s time to flip:

Then add toppings:

Add a small chunk of wood and close the lid. [UPDATE: Protip- move the pizza off  of directheat after about 3 minutes. Then inspect the bottom and rotate underdone areas back onto direct heat as necessary, closing the lid between adustments] 8 minutes later, dinner time. Easy as pie, no? (Disclaimer: pie is NOT in fact, easy). Note to be more careful than when removing your pizza from the grill:

Our favorite (i.e. only) guest blogger Brian insisted on ranting publicly about the erstwhile genteel-sounding Mt. Vernon Flower Mart.  Frankly though, I’m not a fan simply because it occurs on weekdays, further choking traffic in mid-town where drivers tend to be even shittier than your run-of-the-mill Baltimore non-driving stupid motherf…but I digress. Enjoy.

It’s the time of year that every sensible city dweller dreads. Spring kicks off various festivals and glorified flea markets that bring hordes of slack-jawed county folks pouring into the city to wander aimlessly, endanger pedestrians, and look the other way as their filthy spawn gleefully trash some poor bastard’s sidewalk garden. The only good thing about these nuisance events? The food of course! There’s something special about being able to walk a block from your apartment and enjoy a gyro, a waffle cake, and a beer or two while standing on the sidelines and checking out the jailbait as they shamelessly flaunt themselves about.

Flower Mart, Mount Vernon’s first spring event, happened this weekend and I experienced something truly saddening. Each year the festival foods seem to get at least a dollar more expensive, that’s a given, but this year there was a noticeable decline in the quality of said treats.

Friday, the first day of the Flower Mart, I navigated my way through the crowd, lightly buzzed from a short happy hour. I remembered, possibly erroneously, that a friend recommended the pit beef sandwiches offered at this particular festival. The biggest food stand happened to be the first one I came across. Biddle Street Catering offered pit beef, pit turkey, hot dogs, and various other standards. The line was sizeable but moved quickly, and after few minutes I handed over $6.50 for a foil-wrapped pit beef sandwich that the lovely young lady working the stand retrieved from a buffet warming tray. I didn’t feel like hanging around and listening to a band of 40-somethings bang out dubious covers of Motown hits, so I took my prize home. Practically salivating, I unwrapped the sandwich and found this:

“I paid $6.50 for this?!?”

This sorry-ass squashed little thing seemed to look back at me and shrug, “Hey man, what did you expect?” Hesitantly, I lifted the bun and examined the supermarket lunchmeat-quality slices of roast beef that sat unevenly on the bun, unappetizingly grey in color. That was it. No onions, no horseradish sauce, nothing. With a sigh, I slapped some mayo on the sandwich and ate without joy.

Undaunted, or perhaps just plain stupidly, I headed out on Saturday for another stab at carnival food contentment. With chicken souvlaki on the brain, I made my way to the “Quesadilla Hut,” or at least I think that’s what it was called. When I got within eyeshot of the menu I balked: $8.00 for a chicken souvlaki? The hell with that. Still wary from the pit beef, and not wanting to get burned to the tune of eight bills for another failure, I changed my mind and ordered the old standby – a nice $5.00 Italian sausage with peppers and onions. The lady handed it over, in foil but partially unwrapped, and what I could see of the Italian sausage did not fill me with confidence. Things looked awfully skimpy in there. I was chased off once more by threatening rain clouds and a woman on stage with an acoustic guitar performing an extremely earnest version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” so I dodged the milling unwashed masses and went home. Safe in my kitchen, unwrapping the rest of the Italian sausage confirmed my fears.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!?”

The shriveled little sausage (there was one in there, I swear) didn’t even fill up the bun. I put some mustard on it and once again ate with a heavy heart.

Perhaps I managed to acquire the two sorriest excuses for food that the Flower Mart had to offer this weekend, but this seems to be the beginning of a disturbing trend. I assume that the vendors are pretty much the same from festival to festival. Intelligently commenting on the controversy of increasingly ridiculous food prices would require research that I don’t feel like doing right now, but I can say one thing: This lack of quality will not stand. If the vendors expect someone to blow upwards of twenty bucks for a meal as pathetic as the two I had the misfortune of “enjoying” at the Flower Mart, they have well and truly lost their minds. Time to step it up, folks. Artscape, I’m looking at you.

BBQ season ‘09 foodnerd-style has officially commenced! In what was surely a personalized message to me from the universe (or Safeway’s marketing dept., whatever) I trekked to the supermarket at 10:00 p.m. to placate a serious Stouffer’s French Bread pizza craving when I happened across a truly beautiful bit of signage:

99 cents a pound for spareribs?!? Suh-weet! They only had 3 boxes left, so I grabbed those and because it was the last day of the sale, indeed the last couple hours, I then drove 20 minutes to the next closest Safewaw and got 2 more.

50 pounds of ribs for 50 bucks! To put that in perspective, spareribs from Whole Foods are 6 bucks a pound, or $300 for the same amount of ribs. But of course the big difference is that while flavor and texture are comparable, Whole Foods’ ribs are beautifully trimmed, as has been documented in this space in the past. So I thought it might be helpful to post about trimming up ribs at home.

Rib Trimming Tutorial. Begin.

Here we see a couple of racks from a box of the sale ribs (which were imported Danish fwiw). These are actually not so bad, since although the floating rib meat flap thing is still attached (highlighted in yellow), they have been been trimmed of the extra layer of tough meat and fat that’s sometimes left covering the actual rib bones. A notable example of this totally untrimmed style of ribs is Chaps Pit Beef, and their thoroughly disgraceful ribs.

In any case, you can see that this flap has small cartilaginous rods running through it at an angle to the rib bones.

And at one end there are typically some larger bones to contend with, but the whole section is relatively easy to cut away from the ribs.

Simply locate where the cartilaginous rods and the rib bones meet, both visually and by virtue of that fact that the flap will bend easily at the interface, and starting at the non-bony end, carefully and slowly run a very sharp knife right down the seam and if you’ve found the sweet spot, it should cut with minimal effort.

When you get to the bony part (can’t think of a relevant Napoleon pun sorry) lay the rack down flat and cut forcefuly through. Not too much force is required again if you are cutting through the correct area though, so move the flap around and again locate the joint before cutting.

Here’s what the two pieces look like separated. Now you’re left with what’s referred to as St. Louis style ribs above, and what’s sometimes referred to as “tasters” below. This is because that scrap meat is useful for testing seasoning and doneness when smoked along with the ribs.

Next turn the rack over and you’ll notice a semi-opaque whitish membrane covering the underside. The thing about this membrane is because it’s mostly collagen, it breaks down at a higher temperature than is employed for smoking. So in properly barbecued ribs, it remains tough and leathery – if this layer is soft and tender, you’re probably eating baked ribs, and should thus promptly go stand in the corner and wallow in shame.

The stuff has to go, so starting at a corner slowly peel this layer away. You may have to use a knife cut to get the layer off the bone initially, and using a paper towel will help with grip since the membrane can be slimy and slick.Also, it may not all come away in one piece, but peel away as much as possible in any case.

You may then notice there is yet another membrane below the one you just peeled away, and this is in fact what holds the ribs together as a rack (you can see some cross-grained filaments that give it an appearance similar to that of packing tape). Now this shit is really difficult to get up, in fact I’m not sure it’s possible without seriously damaging the ribs, so I cheat and simply cut through the layer between the ribs.

As you can see, though you must be careful to cut into the meat as little as possible, it’s important to cut through the membrane completely, and it will be fairly evident when you do because the cut edges will retract away from each other slightly.

By doing this, it appears to me that the membrane shrinks in toward the bone during cooking, and when eating the ribs, it is completely not noticeable. Mission accomplished.

So in this particular ten pound box, you’re left with 4 1/2 racks of trimmed ribs…

…and this amount of tasters. I was curious as to the final usable weight, and found that the ten pound box actually contained 11 pounds of meat – 8 pounds of trimmed ribs and 3 pounds of tasters. That comes out to a still paltry $1.24 per pound of trimmed ribs, not counting labor – it took me exactly fifteen minutes to trim the whole box for the record. Bottom line, awesome deal. I should’ve gotten more, because 4 racks is really only barely enough for one cookout. Oh well.

I’m totally making excuses, but yes the ribs are as dark as they appear in the pic above. It was a shitty, rainy, cold Saturday morning, and I was hungover, and didn’t regulate my fuel properly. The ribs were thus subjected to too high temp and were overcooked, resulting in texture and moisture deficiencies. Guh, when will I learn to always follow my own mantra – “You cannot half-ass ribs. Ever.”

And now for your viewing pleasure, a gratuitous drunk Rock Band video of my cousin Jerome trying to pull off the rare singer/drummer act a la Night Ranger, and a DAS BOOT (capitalized because you cannot just say “das boot”, you must yell “DAS BOOT” – this is a rule apparently) video from that cookout. Enjoy.

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[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Sorry folks, stupid godaddy’s terrible ftp server is making my life miserable.  Anyway, last Thursday I was on the reddio with talk show extraordinaire Dan Rodricks, this time chatting about my round-up of tamales in the B-more area. It was in the annual food issue of Citypaper, and I gotta admit they might as well have called it  the Henry Hong special edition, because, pardon my French, but I was all up in that piece! I had the cover story about tamales, a normal ‘Eat Me’ about raw food (for which I got amazingly little flame), plus I was on the Eat Guide cover as the token non-black ethnic-type and I wrote a fair number of the mini-reviews therein. (Audio of the show inside)

In any case, as usual Dan’s truly remarkable talent for putting guests at ease helped me settle in quickly – when I first got there, I must admit I was a sweaty, vibrating wreck due to hangover-induced coffee overload and blinding road rage from negotiating the obstacle course that is Charles St. currently. The highlight of the show has to be when the winner of Dan’s lil trivia challenge was won by no other than my new friend Macon Hardy, which apparently rendered me totally speechless for a good few seconds. Listen here:

And regarding fish tacos, Dan seemed to be unaware of their existence, which is too bad because they are thoroughly awesome (when done right). Also, on the show I mention they were invented in Encino, when in actuality they appear to have originated in Ensanada. Got my En-”s”-sound cities mixed up. Another friend messaged me right after the show, aghast that we were talking about fish tacos on NPR! Why I asked? – duh, fish taco is a euphemism for a certain part of the female anatomy. I always associated the term “pink taco” with vaginas, but I can see it both ways.

Recipe for above tamal pictured above here

Interesting fact is that the term “hot tamales” was apparently southern slang for, um, kitties, as was made popular by the great Robert Johnson in the double entendre-filled classic (what blues standard isn’t really?) “They’re Red Hot” (later covered notably by RHCP). Which makes the already repulsive “candy” Hot Tamales that much more unpalatable. I mean, seriously, that kind of sadisitc douche invents candy that hurts? But more importantly, this means Dan and I spent the whole show unwittingly talking about vaginas. On NPR. Cross another one off my lifetime to-do  list! Speaking of NPR, Dan and I both had a laugh at the fact that the first several callers asked about vegetarian, non-wheat, non-pork fat (i.e. kosher) tamales. Oh, public radio!

Last note on fish tacos, Macon revealed that her family makes “Rocko Tacos”, which are hard-shelled tacos filled with rockfish meat! A local version of fish tacos, how awesome is that? Whether or not this is prevalent on the Eastern Shore (where she’s from) I do not know, but I trust Macon will shed more light on the subject, hopefully complete with recipe, shortly. Got that Macon?

Before things get too crazy, I believe introductions are in order. I’m a 30-something guy living in Baltimore who started cooking for real mainly to impress girls. (Fellas – remember not to set the bar too high on the first meal!) The neighborhood I live in has only one small grocery store within easy walking distance and I don’t own a car. Plus, I’m pretty lazy. Consequently, I often have to make do with a painfully limited selection of items for my culinary adventures. On the plus side, this lack of choice forces a bit of creativity to stave off boredom and/or full blown Five Guys addiction. By no means do I think of myself a master chef, I routinely “discover” basic herbs like they were the dead sea scrolls and use them with reckless abandon for weeks at a time, but I’ve made some things that I am pretty proud of, and I am always learning. Of course, I would like to use nothing but the freshest and highest quality ingredients, but due to the aforementioned lack of options and laziness, plus an occasional bout of penny-pinching, I sometimes cut a corner or two.

Henry has graciously allowed me to post chronicles of my triumphs and failures in the kitchen. I would have liked to present these feats as normal recipes with a nice bulleted list of ingredients and such, but unfortunately, I am terrible with measurements because I never use them. I season and cook by eye and by feel, so any attempt by me to assign units of measurement to anything that I’ve made would most likely end up in disaster. Also, I usually drink when I cook, so I can never remember exactly how much of what I put into any given dish. Every meal is an adventure!

One day at work, where these things usually happen, I decided out of the blue that I was going to attempt some sort of pasta bake with my brand new Pyrex baking dish. I did a little research online to get the general idea of the standard cooking times, techniques, ingredients, etc., and stopped by the store on my way home.

Foolishly eschewing a list, and thereby almost certainly guaranteeing that I would forget something important, I gathered my ingredients with well-honed market-ninja skills. In no particular order, I picked up a medium yellow onion, a large green pepper, garlic, a large can of crushed tomatoes, sausage, and cheese. The idea had previously occurred to me to put one layer of sausage and one layer of pepperoni in the pasta bake, but all such thoughts were washed away when I saw the package of prosciutto ham glowing among its lesser deli meat brethren. That’s right, shit was about to get fancy! Everything else I needed I already had at home.

After some liquid courage to get me through this daunting new cooking challenge, I prepped everything that needed chopping, preheated the oven to 350 degrees, set a large skillet to medium heat, and put a pot of salted water on to boil.

First step was to brown up the sausage in the skillet. My local Italian sausage options are limited, so I ended up using a classic orange tube of Eskay pork sausage. I picked up the hot variety, partially because I always like a little kick, but mostly because I am always working to covertly build up my girlfriend’s tolerance for spicy foods. When the sausage was just browned, out went the fat into the special “sausage/bacon grease that I’ll probably never use for anything because there are little sausage bits in it and that is gross” coffee can that I keep in the fridge.

Next to join the sausage in the pan was the can of crushed tomatoes, about half a cup of olive oil, five or so cloves of minced garlic, the whole diced onion, half the diced green pepper, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning (oregano and thyme), sugar (just a shake), and red pepper flakes (amount depending on desired spiciness level). I let this simmer at medium heat, occasionally stirring and tasting, and adding more of this or that as necessary while I prepared the pasta.

I used whatever pasta I had at home, which happened to be egg noodles and thin spaghetti. It was kind of a weird combination for something like this, but they did the job. While the sauce and meat mixture simmered, I cooked the noodles per the instructions. The spaghetti took a little longer for al dente so it went in first.

When the pasta was ready, the tomato and sausage mixture had been simmering for about 20 minutes. Ideally, I would have liked to let it cook out for much longer, like I would if I was making spaghetti sauce, but I was getting pretty goddam hungry. I spread the cooked pasta on the bottom of the baking dish as the first layer. In retrospect, I should have mixed the pasta and sauce mix together before adding both to the pan. Instead, I added the sauce mix over the noodle layer. Unfortunately, this created patches of dried up noodles on the bottom where the sauce didn’t settle through during baking.

With the base layers down, next came a layer of cheese. I used the Sargento Italian Cheese Blend, which consists of shredded mozzarella, provolone, asiago, romano, fontina, and parmesan. It took almost the whole package to cover the entire dish.

Next up: the big guns! I can’t attest to the quality of the prosciutto brand that I used because I am far from a connoisseur, but I thought it was quite tasty. The lovely strips of meat went on top of the cheese layer as shown below.

Finally, I covered the prosciutto with the rest of the cheese and a sprinkling of Italian-style bread crumbs, just because it seemed like the right thing to do.

To cover or not to cover? I couldn’t find a majority consensus online. This quickly proved to be a moot point because I discovered that my list-snubbing ways had caused me to forget the aluminum foil. The matter settled, I popped the whole thing into the over for about 20 minutes. When it was ready, the top was nicely brown and the cheese was bubbling.

The results? Not too shabby! I was pretty happy with how it turned out, and there were no complaints from the little lady. Good thing, because I made enough to live on for a week. Thanks to my lack of foil, I had to cram the leftovers into multiple square Gladware containers.

How it could have been better: I thought the sauce was a little bland. This I attribute to the short cooking time before I added it to the bake. Also, I would have liked the sauce to be a little saucier, I may need to add more liquid next time. Finally, more meat! That tube of sausage was stretched a little thin when spread around the whole dish. Maybe that additional layer of pepperoni shouldn’t have been omitted after all….

I definitely considered this dish a success for a first try. Next time, allotting more time for the sauce, adding a bit more substance, and using a more traditional pasta should really smooth out the rough edges. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

First up we have Myojo Chukazanmai, which I’ve had little luck translating, but “chuka” means Chinese…anyway, the flavor I tried is “soy sauce with chili oil pack”, which is more aiming for a basic Chinese-style broth. They’re also available in more Japan-style flavors like miso. I originally thought they were a Japanese product, but now I hear tell they are actually made in Singapore. Hmmm. I will investigate. Ratings are on a 5 scale:

Price: $1.69
Flavor: 4
Texture: 4.5
Spicy: 0
Extras: Oil/Soy Sauce packet

The noodles are non-fried, and thus they’re very hard and compact. This flavor comes with one packet of powdered soup base, and one pack of liquid flavoring:

The fat content and heart-stopping sodium content is most likely from the liquid flavoring, which is a mixture of spicy oil and salty sauce. Omitting or using very little of the stuff should help cut back on these two baddies some:

The ingredient list, as is the norm for instant noodles, ain’t a pretty sight:

You can see that the noodles, having been boiled in plain water, exude very little oil:

One thing about these particular noodles are that thet aren’t actualy crinkly, rather they achieve erstz squiggle but simply denting them, the cheap bastards:

But the noodles have excellent texture, resilient, springy, sligtly chewy…. And the broth is clear with a clean soy sauce, ginger and pork flavor, with a strong perfume of sweetness, rice wine, and five spice. Smells like char siu, or yakibuta in Japanese, which is that reddish Chinese roasted pork. It’s a commonly used topping for Japanese ramen.

This is the liquid soup base – the oil is slightly spicy, and the black stuff is unbelievably salty. Adding some does improve the flavor, but not more than a few drops before it gets way too oily/salty:

Here’s an example of how you might prepare a bowl for a quick meal. It’s topped with some sliced brisket, an egg I fried and sliced, scallions, and sliced mushrooms. In the end, as close to real ramen as I’ve gotten in an instant noodle. Really, really good:

Oh poor poor instant ramen! It’s shocking that so many people have no concept of how broad of a variety exists, and the enormous meal potential that resides within each humble little pack. It suffers a stigma in the US, in the inintiated’s mind mainly the domain of indigent college students. I must admit that even many of my very own friends know only of Top or Cup o Noodles (which are in fact made by Nissin, the company that marketed the original instant ramen invented by the late Momofuku Ando). Yes these particular friends are non-Asian, but seriously people it’s 200 freakin 9 already! Get to know ramen.

The range of flavors (and quality)  is truly awesome, and with just a few tweaks, a sub one dollar portion of food can be made into a fine repast for two. With some additional time and effort investment the horrifyingly unhealthy aspects can even be somehwat mitigated. In the next several days, I’ll be posting detailed reviews about some more interesting brands, stuff I couldn’t fit into my Citypaper article this week, which includes a general overview and some buying/cooking tips.

Grace Garden

410-672-3581

1690 Annapolis Rd, Odenton, MD 21113

Holy crap it looks like these images are from June 23rd, I know it’s been a while, but I didn’t think it was that long ago. Anyway if there is anyone left still reading, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been on something of a hiatus. This can be mostly attributed to major Godaddy problems, but I suspect it’s also related to the malware problem on citypaper.com a while back. Anyway it seems I was infected with a keystroke logger and some asshole bot screwed up my hosting account. Long story short, I’m back and now posting about Grace Garden seems almost passe. But thanks to Dmnkly over at donrockwell.com, I managed to check out this place quite a while before it more or less blew up, having been reviewed recently in citypaper and in the Sun, I think.  The praise is deserved I gotta say, although some of the more gushing reports may be a bit exaggerated.

It’s located in freaking Odenton of all places, which up til just a few years ago I only knew of because my grandfather used to take multiple buses from Baltimore to get his hair cut out there. Never understood why he went to all the trouble, until a) I realized later in life how important a good barber is; and b) there is apparently a mini-Korean business area in Odenton, the current remnants of which consist of a liquor store, restaurant, and a night club, I think. Anyway, driving west on 175 from 95, you’ll pass by the prison and then by a high school, directly across the street from which is Grace Garden on the left.

The dining room is spare but clean, and after all you don’t drive to Odenton expecting ambience. TIP: Ask for the “real menu“. Dmnkly was immediately recognized and we got the VIP treatment as it were, so in addition to the entirely excessive amount of food we ordered, we were treated to some extra goodies, such as taro soup, which was pretty subtle and clean tasting, but a bit substantial for a first course:

the classic stir-fried kai-lan, or Chinese broccoli:

and what turned out to be by far the best dish of the night, a trio of bovine anatomy: tongue, tendon, and tripe that the chef had not yet named and called simply “Lovely”. Now I love tongue, and his was amazingly well prepared, an excellent balance of tenderness and recilience. I’m not crazy about tendon, but again the preaparation here is unimpeachable and the tendon was just the right level of gelatinous. Finally, I usually despise entrails, but the tripe was probably the best I’ve ever had, with 100% of the usual funk eradicated expertly, its spongy texture subsequently soaking up the delectable peppery, savory, wok-hai-y flavors of the dish. Man it was good. In our post dinner re-cap, both Alvina (go-to food nerd and Chinese person)
I agreed it was the pinnacle of the meal:

We thought for sure the star was going to be the tea-smoked duck, which requires 48 hours advance notice. And it was indeed very good, though not spectacular. The duck was well-seasoned, if a tiny tad salty, and really skillfully smoked, and I know from smoking folks. Very light, sweetly fragrant smokiness pervaded the meat, which was tender and moist. Thing was, and this is a problem with all smoked poultry imo, was the skin, which tends to become rubbery in the low-temp confines of a smoker:

Also outstanding was the Taiwanese-style fish, with very fresh-tasting tilapia(maybe?) fillets in an incredibly savory, aromatic, and bracingly spicy broth offset with little bits of Chinese pickles and bright, crunchy celery slivers. I think I liked it so much because it was essentially a Chinese jigae, the meal soup of Korean food:

And the much talked-about fish noodles, which in made from fish paste squeezed out into boiling liquid to form delicate, flavroful protein strands that look like noodles. Pretty cool, taste and texture similar to a quenelle as one might imagine:

In the less than overwhelming category were the kinda interesting but uninspiring hak-ka tofu:

crispy eggplant, which I ordered because I’d heard the chef used to work at Hunan Manor, which used to have an exemplary version of the somewhat touristy dish. It was really, very good, but I was chided to ordering such a pedestrian dish. Whatever yo, it’s one of my favorites, and Grace Garden’s is top-notch, if a tiny bit too sweet:

Perhaps the only real disappointment was the salt and pepper shrimp, which had a batter here, something I haven’t really seen. The few times I’ve ordered in the past I’ve always gotten unpeeled shrimp burnished to a golden brown in a stupid-hot wok with just salt and pepper. The shrimp here had a coating that became soggy and a bit heavy, and the shell was thus not as crispy as it should have been. I got some shit for not eating the heads, as these specimens were head-on, but you know what? Head on shrimp are a tricky thing, and these guys didn’t taste impeccably fresh to begin with (although they were bo no means NOT fresh). From what I understand, head-on shrimp need to be alive or flash frozen and used immediately after thawing lest the flesh takes on that weird, slightly gritty, mushy testure. And these did have that, if only slightly:

The chef very graciously ended to meal by treating us to an unusual dessert, basically a torte of custard, sweet red bean paste, and meringue, garnished with peanuts. He said it was a specialty of northern China, and was indeed a major change of pace from the mostly Taiwanese-style entrees. It was quite tasty, but a bit heavy to cap off the enormous and rich meal the preceded it:

If rumors are to be believed, the lease for Grace Garden’s Odenton space is set to run out. I’d like to say that convincing them to move to Baltimore would be a good thing, but I honestly can’t say if there is enough of an interested or savvy population in Baltimore these days to support this kind of place. Also I must comment on the incredibly efficiency of this guy – his wife and daughters attend to front of house duties, while the chef is pretty much alone in the kitchen. And yet, he manges to execute many, varied, and complex dishes at a formidable clip. Serious skills on display here, yall.

The other, perhaps equally amazing discovery of the night was made at the aforementioned Korean liquor store around the corner. Folks, I’ve had a lot of soju in my day, and the stuff we get here in US is utter crap. Even the cheap-ass plastic bottle stuff in Korea is superior to what they export to us. When I was researching building a soju still a couple years ago, I’d read on some random blog that one of the first exports to the US from the DPRK, or North Korea, was to be the governemt-issue soju, like Stoli is to Russia. Anyway, before we started our meal I walked over to pick up some beer, and lo and behold I see a small display of “Pyong Yang” soju. Pyongyang is of course the capital of North Korea, and I held my breath as I inspected the label – SWEET this was the stuff, straight from North Korea:

I asked to to kids behind the counter in Korean if they’s tried it or heard anything about it. They seemed nonplussed, indicating it was nothing special. Fools! People, this is by a long, long shot the finest, cleaned, smoothes, most delicious soju to have ever touched my lips. Seriously. I’ve seen it at two places now, this one in Odenton and te liquor store nest to Lotte in Ellicott City, but I imagine it’s available at any place that carried soju. It’s $5.99 per 350 ml bottle, which is a ridiculous deal, especially considering that a bottle of the relativley harsh Chamiseul or Green soju will run you over 15 bucks at a Korean restaurant. Stock up, this shit is the shit! But always remember that soju is the ultimate in “creeper” booze, and the smoothness of Pyong Yang could set you up for a major ass-kicking if you’re not careful. By the way, it’s pronounced “PYUNG YAHNG”.