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)....

Sunday, April 25: Jumbo Shrimp

Our favorite oxymoron

We don't have any running water.  There is a water main break in our back alleyway. No running water in any of the neighbors' homes either.  But, that won't stop us from making a great meal and drinking a fun wine.

We picked up a 4 lb. package of colossal shrimp from Costco today.  The whole package was $55.  Today, we will try to replicate a dish Laura ate in Avignon in the Provence region of France some years ago.  We will start the meal with a stuffed mushroom appetizer and pair both dishes with a Pinot Noir we picked up in Sonoma last year.  It is from B.R. Cohn winery. 

We really enjoyed the tasting room experience at B.R. Cohn and picked up several wines after our tasting, including a very nice port.  We learned that the owner is the manager of the Doobie Brothers and that he started the winery very early in his career.  One of the incredible things they do each year at B.R. Cohn is to host a fund-raising concert (The Benefit Concert for Veterans).  Of course, the Doobies play every year and sometime another band is thrown in the mix, such as Journey.

B.R. Cohn winery, Sonoma Valley, CA.  Award-winning BR Cohn 2007 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir (about $35)

STUFFED MUSHROOMS

6 large white mushrooms
ham
mushroom stems
onion
garlic
butter
white wine
parmesan cheese
bread crumbs

I'm not sure of the exact measurment of ingredients for this dish, because I've made it so many times.  These are very easy to make and it's simple to switch up ingredients in the filling. 

Pop stems out of mushrooms and reserve.  Hollow out center of each mushroom.  (I hold the mushroom firmly in the palm of my hand and use a teaspoon to scrape away a good bit of the flesh from the center.  This is much easier with larger mushrooms.)

Dice the stems, onion, garlic and ham and sautee in butter until soft.  Add some white wine and simmer for a few minutes.  Turn off the heat and stir in parmesan cheese and bread crumbs.  Stir until cheese is melted and breadcrumbs are blended in.  (It should have a sticky moist consistency. I usually add the right amount of breadcrumbs and cheese to make the filling clump into a ball when mixed.)

Put hollowed out mushrooms on a baking sheet.  Fill each with the filling.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.

PROVENCAL SHRIMP

1 lb. cleaned, deveined large raw shrimp 1 cup lima beans 2 cloves chopped garlic 1 small onion, chopped 1/2 lemon 1 cup fresh chopped, de- seeded roma tomatoes 1/2 cup white wine 1 cup chicken broth 6 tbsp. olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 3 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped 3 tbsp. fresh mint. chopped 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary 2 springs of fresh thyme Place 3 tablespoons olive oil in large frying pan. Add garlic and onion and saute 1 minute. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon into pan. Add tomatoes, broth, and white wine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add fresh herbs. Add the lima beans & simmer covered 15 minutes. Remove lemon. Add raw shrimp and cook just until shrimps turns pink, turning once.

Saturday, April 10 - The Spicy Inaugural Blog

Our first post. Very exciting. After a week of unseasonably warm and sunny weather (oh wait, this is LA), we're back to slightly cool and overcast. Mike started our herb garden early this year so we're rooting for some warmer days ahead.

On this lazy Saturday afternoon, we decided to warm up with a cocktail. This gives us the opportunity to tackle one of our favorite drink recipes we've picked up in recent travels. Mike travels often to Austin, TX for work. Laura joins him for the occasional long weekend. We discovered a local bar named Peche that makes amazing old school cocktails. We take a few liberties, such as substituting Maker's Mark for rye (who has rye in their home bar?)...and Laura is very excited to have a use for the Absinthe she picked up in Paris a few years ago (but now is legal again). So, this our our spin on Peche's recipe for a Sazerac, which happens to be one of the first cocktails invented in America, pre-Civil War! I know, we'd never heard of this drink either. It's delicious, but strong!

BROBES' SAZERAC (for 2)

4 oz. bourbon
2 tbsp. simple syrup (cheap at Trader Joe's!)
4 dashes of Angostura bitters
1 splash Absinthe
2 small pieces of orange rind

Chill 2 highball glasses. (We put ice & a little water in them for 2 minutes.) Empty & line each glass with a splash of Absinthe.

Pour bourbon, simple syrup & bitters into cocktail shaker with ice. Shake.

Pour mixture into absinthe-lined glasses. Cut a small section of orange peel. Light it with a lighter, squeeze (be careful--it will give off a flame!), and drop into glass.

For fun, we like to throw in a brandied cherry. (All we did was buy a few dried cherries at Whole Foods and throw them into a bottle of old brandy for 2 weeks, until the cherries soaked up the brandy.)

YUM!

NOW ONTO THE MAIN COURSE...

OK, here's a confession. We like spicy food. So if spicy food does not agree with you, alter the recipe accordingly to suit your tastes. (That would mean never coming into contact with a habenero pepper.)

This is the first dish Laura ever cooked for Mike when we were still dating, and it's still one of our faves to this day.

However, since we started making this dish, Mike started making our own pasta. It's remarkably simple, and once you start, you never want to eat pasta out of a box again.

MIKE'S PASTA DOUGH FOR 2:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 pinch salt

2 large eggs

a little water, as needed

Add flour and salt and form into a pile with a well in the center. Add eggs into well, beat with a fork and slowly blend together with the flour. Mix as completely as possible without actually working or kneading the dough. Add a splash of water and knead for 15 minutes. Cover and let rest for an hour. Roll and cut into linguine strips.

PASTA & SHRIMP EN FUEGO

1/2 lb. large shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

2 tbsp sea salt

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 medium bell pepper, cut into short slivers

2 bay leaves

pinch dried oregano

1 tbsp crushed red pepper

1 small habanero pepper, minced (optional ... this is for real heat!)

2 tbsp capers

1 28 0z can whole tomatoes

fresh linguine

fresh parsley & basil

Marinate the shrimp in lime juice with a dash of sea salt (our new favorite is Pink Himalayan salt) for 10 minutes.

Heat a large pasta pot with water & bring to boil.

Heat olive oil in a deep skillet, add garlic & sautee. Add red bell pepper until it softens. Add the bay leaves, oregano, thyme, (habenero pepper if you are so inclined), crushed red pepper & capers. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Mash the canned tomatoes in a bowl with a potato masher. Add the crushed tomatoes to the skillet & cook for an additional 5 minutes. Make sure all the tomatoes are broken up.

Once the sauce begins to reduce, the pasta water should be boiling.

Add the pasta to the water & the shrimp to the sauce. Cook for about 4 minutes until done.

Add the parsley & basil to the sauce about a minute before serving.

Drain the pasta from its water. Put in a large bowl & toss with the sauce.

A NOTE ABOUT OUR WINE SELECTION FOR THE EVENING...

Since our pasta sauce is both tomato-based and spicy, we chose a red wine, but one that's fruity and light, almost sweet. This should complement the pasta in red sauce and balance the heat. We pulled a 2007 Cambria Clone 2A Pinot Noir out of our rack. It's a top-notch reserve Pinot from Laura's favorite central coast winery. We've visited Cambria many times for tastings and events and believe their reserve Pinot Noirs are some of the best in the state and are well worth the $40 or $50 price tags. This particular wine goes for about $48 a bottle.