Crossroads at Junction City

  I was asked to provide a lunch for a group of executives where I work. With nine people attending, they would be ready to eat around 1:00 PM on a Thursday afternoon. I did not hesitate when I was asked if this was something that I would be willing to do.  I knew that I was capable. Almost a week went by before I received an official ask from the president of our company if I would provide this lunch.  I casually stepped up with a cool, "I could do that."

For the last 4 weeks on Fridays, I have produced a light lunch for 12-16 people in the office without any previous notice. Because of that, for some people, it was lunch, for others a snack, and for others something to take home for dinner. From gourmet popcorn, Korean street toast, lomein, and fried rice, I have had the opportunity to share with coworkers. It has been fun for me, for them, and overall a great life experience for all.

In 2019, I cooked at 2 summer lunchtime cookout events, with up to 165 people attending at work. The first time was Korean street tacos, which technically there is nothing official for this. My take on this was inspired by watching Mike Greenfield knock out a bibimbap burger on Brothers Green, now known as ProHome Cooks. I saw what Mike was doing and thought, "Why can't I create a taco that contains bulgogi beef, topped with several appropriate side dishes that are normally built into the famous Korean mixed rice dish, and top this with a spicy gochujang-based sauce?" This was a huge hit.

A few weeks later, by popular demand, southwest eggrolls were requested. Again, the 165-person cookout contained regular summer favorites grilled up by our leadership, burgers, hot dogs, and a nice spread of slaws, potato salads, and desserts. The eggrolls were a big hit, served with a homemade cucumber dipping sauce. Even more fun was that several coworkers helped me prep and roll the eggrolls the night before. Close to 200 rolls.

In 2018, I did these egg rolls at the Claremont Farmers Market. It was a good day, but it included 7 hours of intense prep the night before ending at one that morning.

These experiences made it possible for me to say yes. I also received major support from someone named Jessica who taught me, throughout a couple of years since, about tools that made me believe that I could take the culinary hill one small task at a time, without internally disassembling my confidence by getting overwhelmed by the big picture.

When I was officially asked to do this executive lunch, the president stated "If there is a way for them to participate, I know several would really like that." As soon as I saw those words, I knew, this lunch needed to be Korean Barbeque. There is no greater participation, than cooking something yourself.

At first, I was so focused on this meal that I mistook the date for next week's Thursday. When I came up to the next Monday, a friend pointed out that it was not taking place for another week and a half. I already had 5 days of testing done, I made Kimchi the previous weekend and was not happy with it, despite it leveling out later on to what I think is acceptable in its own right. It just wasn't the kimchi I was aiming to make.

I purchased a 2nd tabletop grill personally because having 2 of these even for family events cannot be wrong. We made several meals in which we tried different types of meat, sauces, vegetables, and pastes. Most noteworthy was, that I found a video of a Korean Chef showing the process of how they make brisket into super thin shaved steak to put on the tabletop grill to be cooked by the people dining. I followed this video on making the right cuts. The one thing I do not have is a commercial meat slicer. I semi-froze the marbled cut of meat, then pulled it out to cut with a very sharp knife.

That Saturday night when we sat at our kitchen table ready to test this brisket idea out. It was horrible! There is a reason Texans smoke this cut of meat low and slow all day long. It's tough. It is not gristle. It is just the meat. It requires a half hour of chewing per mouthful! When I thought about how I almost did not test and went straight to lunch with this cut of meat, I shuddered inside at the thought of what a chewing festival that would have been. All of the uneasy and polite smiles while they all screamed inside their own heads, "Never again!"

There was an old commercial back in the 90s when landlines were still the primary telephone. It would show a person driving a great distance, wasting time to buy or see something that actually was found to not be available when they arrived. The commercial always ended with its trademark tagline, "You could have called." So anticipating that I needed some professional butcher help getting some of the beef and pork belly cuts right, I called. The only grocery store in driving distance that will slice, cut, and grind meat around here is Market Basket. All the rest are owned by international, greedy conglomerates who could care less (Yes, especially you Scammaford). 

In the 2 calendar weeks leading up to the lunch, I placed calls asking the meat department all about what I knew I was going to need. They immediately said yes to the slicing of the pork belly, to the band saw cutting of the flanken cut beef short ribs, and to the paper-thin slicing of the boneless short ribs. I asked about how much time they needed beforehand and their availability.

Then came the week of the lunch. I decided for good measure to call 2 days in advance. Suddenly, availability was a problem, and the person I was speaking to stated he had 29 years of experience cutting meat. As our conversation progressed, I also could extrapolate that this is someone who has probably made the statement hundreds of times in his life: "I am a meat and potatoes man." This tripped me up with fears of falling into the 1950s post-World War 2 establishment mentality. I was cooking meat that sometimes was considered a seasoning, an accent, or a social experience, and I was trying to procure this from someone who saw meat as a brick or blob of something that sat on Corelle Ware, next to overcooked vegetables, god-awful mashed potatoes just waiting to be assaulted with A-1 steak sauce and pointy steak knives that were purchased on clearance when KMart closed it's doors. 

Every item I asked about was met with some sort of negative feedback, even if in undercurrent. The conversation was filled with a lot of awkward pauses, sighs, and "aaahhhh's" to finally end with, "I think it would be best if you called my manager tomorrow morning." The man was always courteous and respectful, but he clearly thought I was asking too much and some things, he did not know what I was requesting.

My friend and colleague Sabrina, who has worked with me on the 2 large cooking projects we did back in 2019 and another cooking class event last year, was really looking forward to taking up the sous chef role in Thursday's lunch.  At 3:08 PM on Tuesday, a driver came off the interstate who did not stop at all for the stop sign at the end of the ramp. A vehicle accident was the result. She and her little girl were bruised and shaken up because of the collision and thankfully were able to go home after getting checked out at the hospital. Of course, Sabrina could not be my sous chef this time.

Because I was working in the office on Tuesday, I ran to the store that evening, picked up some items, and brought them back to place in the large refrigerators at work. That seemed like a good idea. My fridges at home are usually overwhelmed with stuff I am doing. Also, on Wednesday night, after Noah's award ceremony up in Hartford, I would just come back here and work till 11 or 12 at night, prepping side dishes, and marinating the meat for LA Galbi (Korean beef short ribs).

Wednesday was a busy day for me. I got right on the phone and spoke with the Meat Department manager. He was OK, but he did mention his slicer is old and may not cut the pork belly as thin as I wanted. He could not do the boneless short rib paper-thin strips for sure. 

I had regular work and an appointment at the VA at 2. I then hit the produce market,  the Asian market, and BJ's. While at BJ's I did find some sirloin strip steak with perfect marbling. I would freeze this a little so I can hand slice it into paper-thin strips. They had slab pork belly there which if I partially froze it I could slice it ultra thin. They also had the flanken cut ribs, already cut the way I needed them. Wisely, hoping for failure or latency, I called Market Basket to see if they got to my order yet. Of course they did, it was ready. Oh well, hopefully, it all works.

I was really hoping that I would have time to run into Claremont to pick up the meat that I had ordered from Market Basket. There was not enough time. I got home, threw the steak in the freezer that I purchased at BJ's and we headed up to Hartford for Noah's National Technical Honor Society Award Ceremony. This was such a wonderful thing. He had worked all his school career, two significant runs of homeschooling, and public school that he put himself back into in 7th grade. He was also part of the Pandemic Generation, those Gen Z's who had to school at home through Google Classroom. If you ask me, homeschooling actually gave Noah an edge on this. All of this manifested itself and he put into great effort just like he does with all adversity, and achieved this recognition.

After this, it did not seem right to not have a celebratory dinner and for this, Noah chose Applebees. Liam and Haylie joined us and by the time we got out of there, it was 9 o'clock. I got home, pulled the steak out of the freezer, and successfully sliced it as thin as I could with a knife.  I made the marinade for the LA Galbi and put that in the refrigerator. I was not exactly happy with it. There were eight cloves of garlic in it and they did not taste very sweet to me. As I tried to prepare more for tomorrow, I detected that I was making little mistakes. This was the sign that it was time for me to go to bed.

I got up early and made sauces, packed up the truck with everything that I could think that I needed, and went to get the meat order from Market Basket. One more stop when I realized that I did not consider drinks. By the time I got up in the kitchen, it was 10 AM. I knew the 3 hours would go by fast.

LA Galbi is at its best when it marinates overnight. Here I was, 3 hours before serving and I have not even started yet! I knew that the very first thing I needed to do was to get the meat into that marinade immediately. Quickly, I pulled out a clean container, placed the meat in it, and poured the marinade over it, making sure, all of the meat surface was in contact with the liquid. I covered it and moved on to another task. 

It was about 10 minutes later as my brain was organizing what I had done so far with what I still had to do that I realized I had made a terrible mistake. When ribs are cross-cut on a band saw, it leave behind little pieces of bone fragments all over the meat. This and any residue produced by the cutting have to be thoroughly washed from the ribs before they go into the marinade. This was not something I could just let go of and hope it would be sufficient or not noticeable. The taste is affected by not washing and of course, to have little pebbles of bone in the meat would make it inedible.

I called Donna, while still not knowing how I would remediate this. I was thinking that I could salvage as much of the marinade from the ribs as I could, wash the ribs, and then strain the marinade through a very fine mesh strainer. My first concern was maybe that would not get every fragment out. That worried me. I also knew that I was going to lose a lot of marinade too and I would need to add more. This was easier said than done because the marinade contains a whole Asian pear. Those are sold in 3's at Market Basket for ten dollars. 

In the first sentence, I said the words mesh and strainer, but then something happened when my brain finally added up all of the concerns above. Like listening to someone else, I heard myself say, "Take 2 apples, half an onion, and 3 garlic cloves, put them in the bullet, puree them, and bring them to me." I was not even thinking about that itself, I only had worried about residual bone fragments, and adding to the marinade = DO NOT REUSE. Make it with what you have. 

Once I had this, I dumped soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and brown sugar into the container, placed the lid on, and shook it to mix. I dumped the ribs into a huge bowl scrubbed them under cold running water and put them back in the new marinade. Que Sera Sera.

Between 11 and 12, Liam arrived and did everything I requested perfectly. It was like making myself into two. I could think of something and he would take on that task while I did another. I was so thankful to have him working with me. Had he not been there, I know that I could not have been ready because we were ready for 1.

We grilled the marinated beef short ribs for the LA Galbi. It was sweet, savory and smokey. Perfect! The pork belly was grilled since it was cut 1/2 inch thick instead of 1/8 as I wanted it to be. It was great despite a little blackening from yellow flames when the grill decided to flare up due to residue. No beef brisket was served today and as far as I can determine, that is something you will never catch me serving. The nicely marbled strip steak that I cut paper thin by hand the night before was excellent. After 30-60 seconds on the tabletop grill, it was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. 

The banchan (Korean side dishes) included sauteed carrots, cucumber, zucchini, spicey braised tofu, two types of kimchi, two kinds of beansprouts, one savory and one spicy, sauteed daikon, bean paste, onions, scallions, sauteed peppers, fresh peppers, mushrooms, and peppers. Sweet-miso-soy sauce and bibimbap sauce, ssam-jang. White rice, lettuce leaf wraps, and pickled daikon wraps.

At 1:15 Liam announced that the lunch party was arriving. We greeted everyone and gave them an overview of how this Korean Barbeque would work. You could tell, no one was expecting anything like this.

Over the next hour, we filled the space with smoke from the grills and with an experience that our executives will not forget. The look on their faces as they entered the room was the best. A meal they could participate in cooking made the whole room buzz with team-building excitement. They had so many questions and there were so many conversations as a whole and between individuals that the whole room became socially dynamic. In fact, without Liam to fill me in on what he saw and heard, I could only have experienced maybe half of the experience.

It was a wonderful day for me working with Liam. It reminded me of our summer or fall nights working at a local farm resort as help during weddings. Only, this was better than that. The experience of working with my son that day was priceless. 

I was stressed a lot leading up to this day. It was not because I was worried that I would fail, it was because although I knew I could do it, I lacked the experience of putting out this kind of meal to this size group and in this setting. We occasionally do Korean Barbeque at home, but this is what I would consider a safe space. My space where I have all of my staples, just the right vessels and utensils. Repeatedly putting out meals at work on Fridays has provided that M*A*S*H unit level of adaptability and I like that. 

Thanks to testing dishes on my family, note-booking, whiteboarding, and researching collectively have brought about success. Multiple people also said that my level of expectation and standard could make even a less than my standard experience seem great to someone who is not used to eating my food, but make no mistake, this was not a "less than standard" experience.

The LA Galbi that I rescued came out exceptional and grilling the pork belly worked since it was cut thicker than I wanted it. Were there shortcomings? I never got to prepare the spinach side dish, which would have been a treat, but we had plenty of side dishes. We missed putting a wooden spoon or paddle in the rice cooker, so people were trying to manage taking rice with little plastic spoons. The extra stop that I made for drinks that morning was for nothing because, I never announced that drinks were in the kitchen, nor did I offer them at the meal. No one seemed to notice.

This experience has made me realize that my type of cooking is going the way that I have always wanted it to. To be ready anytime, and anywhere. No borders, no restaurants, and no limits. Basically, a Swiss army knife of options that can be whatever it will be.

In 1999, in Junction City, Kansas, I had no idea that on that day, everything would change starting right then and there. Over the next few years, I dreamed of the day when instinct and technique would become the principles upon which I created meals. There is no doubt that it happened. Wanting something so much that I did not understand and yet led to achieving it anyway. If I could go from where I was to where I am today, it can only mean that any of us can achieve anything if we want it bad enough.