Skip to main content

My first time making LA Galbi

 It was a dark and cloudy Monday night in June in Vermont. The air cool but heavy with the threat of an evening thunderstorm. Birds singing all around me and yet in my head Ronnie Van Zandt singing over and over again in my head, play me a song Curtis Lowe.

It was on this night that I decided to finally cook one of my favorite Korean dishes, LA Galbi. I understand that it is best cooked over a wood or wood charcoal fire. For this reason I decided to set up at the Weber Grill that’s been stored out in the backyard. This is not the best option For my usually very fluent cooking style. Many days and nights I can balance the outside deck grill and burner running inside to the kitchen to tend to food prep and other side dishes sautéing on the stove. There will be none of that tonight. 

If it involves my grill out on my deck or my wok and pans on my stove my cutting boards my chef knives, I can move through that space like Jackie Chan almost with a rhythm. But tonight, here I am out in the backyard what feels like miles away from my kitchen and from my deck just trying to make this wood fire work. The whole scene screaming to me that perhaps I need an outside kitchen.

My inexperience with this shines through here, but not for long.  These delicious sections of meat are usually snipped up with kitchen scissors and enjoyed.
I did do pan seared Asian cucumbers, rice and carrots, but it was nothing compared to the left overs the next day.  There are more beef short ribs in my freezer downstairs.  Yall hold on, I got this.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Universal Antagonist

There is an underrated movie from 1967 called “The Presidents Analyst”. It tells the story of a presidents analyst who cannot talk with anyone about what he knows. This creates more anxiety than he can deal with. It leads to catastrophic paranoia. In the meantime, various government agencies are trying to kill him. The phone company (a unit with the same power as Facebook, google, and other large personal data collecting monsters) wants what he knows to further their cause of power. He ends up being  protected by a suburban “Liberal” family that has more guns the the “right wing wackos” they are protecting themselves from. With many crazy mind bending plot twists  that were  common in the movies of the late 60’s, the kind that Austin Powers liked to spoof, in the end, the main character realizes the “it’s the phone company” behind all of the evil in their lives, behind all the evil in the world. Hollywood was serious about their message in an insane package. This movie wa...

The passing of seasons

  I always thought it would be easier living after the cats were gone. We were always saying that we were not going to do it again. Very smugly taking beautiful things for granted. Even Donna said, we just did not understand how exceptional they were. Lava's final cries in pain were of death itself, I just know it, and they were the most harrowing sound I have ever heard. It tears me to the core.  Doctor House was right though, there   is   no dignity in dying, we all do it alone and it's ugly and horrifically terrible. The only thing we can do is live with dignity.  Our daily numbness makes us not even do that so well. And in Goodbye, Farewell, Amen, there were light points of this and deep ones too. Even in hardship, we can take the good for granted. Hardship, well yes, it can have lasting effects. And that is on a chemical level. I heard a summary of societal decade disintegration. I know this all means something yet I am losing the drive to put the idea into...

The thin line between hiking and cooking

   I knew I should have prepped the cabbage last night. Instead of razor-thin shavings of bright green cabbage, I opened the cooler and there they were, two green bowling balls without the holes. But, hey, I am good with a knife. I am not stupid-fast, more like efficient. I got this. My one-hour lunch excursion into the culinary burst of what I view Fight4Taste to mean could happen. Right? All along there was a song playing in the background, come on Gen-X sing it if you know it..."A THREE HOUR TOURRRRRRRR!" Once the cabbage is shredded, it is evident I am in that episode of the Twilight Zone in which time is moving at 6 times its natural speed. I note to myself, that the next time my hands are clean, there is an important call that I need to make. I step off the curb to work on the rest of the build and then, I am again transported 37 minutes into the future. If I were home, the projections meet the reality and simply translate into a hungry family eating later, a kitchen be...