Saturday, May 15: Dolsot Bibimbap

Tonight we will be making a bibimbap for dinner ... a dolsot bibimbap, to be exact.  Huh?  What the heck is a dolsot bibimbap?  Until about two years ago, I had no idea.  Then one night, Laura and I went out in our neighborhood to Wharo for some Korean barbecue. 

We ordered the typical stuff any Korean barbecue novice would order, kalbi beef and spicy shrimp for grilling.  We understood that the entrees would be served with a fine variety of Korean side dishes, including of course, kimchi.  We ordered some sake.  The server turned on our grill.  We had been to Wharo before and knew we were in for a treat.

As we sipped some sake, we spied a great looking dish at a table near us.  It looked like a sort of stir-fry - a hot stone pot filled with rice and vegetables.  However, after the server brought the food to the table, she cracked a raw egg into the pot, added a few spoonfuls of a red sauce and folded the the elements of the dish together in the pot.  You could see the food steaming and hear it sizzling.  It looked and sounded delicious.

So, we called our server over and asked him about this mysterious, delicous-looking, fun new food.  He handed us a menu and pointed to the item ... vegetable dolsot bibimbap - bean sprouts, carrot, radish, mushroom and spinach over rice, served in a hot stone pot - with egg, add $1.  We ordered one with egg ... and another carafe of sake.

When the food came, the server did as we had seen earlier.  He cracked the egg on top of the vegetables in the stone pot and asked how spicy we wanted the dish.  We're not afraid of the heat, so we told him to kick it up pretty high.  He added a few hits of the unidentified red sauce and mixed the ingredients together.  *sizzle-crackle-sizzle* 

We spooned some of this concoction out onto appetizer plates for each of us.  Delicious!  We scarfed down a few forkfuls and dove in the dolsot pot for more.  The rice was getting crispy against the sides and bottom of the bowl.  We spooned out a few more bites on each of our plates.  The rice is delicious as it continues to cook in the pot, similar to the rice in a properly prepared paella.  This rocks!  I'm hooked ... time to find some stone pots and a recipe and try this at home. 

Our bibimbap recipe has morphed over time and I can honestly say that after making it a dozen times or so, we have never used the same combination of ingredients.  We swap out and use different combinations of the meats and vegetables in the recipe depending on what we have in our refrigerator or freezer and/or what we pick up at the farmers' market or grocery store.

This can require a bit of prep, but it's worth it.  Think positively ... the more you prepare this dish, the better your knife skills will get.

Servings:

2

Ingredients:
Marinade
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp green onion, chopped
Salt/pepper to taste

6 oz. rib-eye steak, thinly sliced
6 oz. shrimp, sliced or chopped

1 cup white rice
2 cups water

1/2 portabello mushroom, thinly sliced
1 cup fresh spinach, wilted
1 cup zucchini or cucumber, julienned
1 cup carrots, julienned
1 cup bean sprouts
1 cup onion, thinly sliced
4 large radishes, julienned

2 eggs

sesame oil
kochujang sauce (chili paste)


Preparation:
Make the marinade. Combine ingredients for marinade in a bowl. Add sliced beef and shrimp and refrigerate. 
Cook rice.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and place 2 Korean stone bowls in oven for 15 minutes.
Wilt spinach in a work or large frying pan.  Set aside.
Preheat wok with sesame oil to high heat.
Cook vegetables separately until soft (i do two at a time).  Set aside. 
Cook steak/marinade mixture in wok for 4 or 5 minutes.
Remove stone bowls from oven and place on suitable heat resistant surface. Brush bowls with sesame oil. Put rice into bowls and gently pack to the bottom. Arrange the vegetables and beef over each portion of rice. Add one uncooked egg (or sunny side up egg as we prefer)  to each bowl.
Serve with Kochujang sauce.


Prepped and ready to cook.

Sabrina endorses the kochugang sauce.

The finished product.

To complement our meal tonight, we went back to our wheelhouse ... the Cambria pinot noir.  This particular bottle is a 2007 Bench Break Vineyard.  It retails for $30 and I can easily mistake it for one of the very limited production Cambria clone pinots that approach $50.   (NOTE: Sabrina is in the background pretending to watch TV ... she's just trying to get in the picture.)

This wine should work well with tonight's version of the bibimbap ... steak and shrimp in a sweet soy marinade, vegetables stir fried in sesame oil, a spicy sauce ... only a pinot can dance with such a wide variety of tastes and textures.  It worked perfectly.

P.S. We're very excited for the first Federer/Nadal clash in a year in the Madrid Masters final, tomorrow at 9:30am Pacific, only on Tennis Channel!! Feddy won the last one a year ago, but Nadal is looking like his old bad clay self. Even Sabrina is sending good energy by spending the day on the racquet Feddy gave Laura several years ago (and, yes, we keep it under the bed)....