I went to Home Depot to look for a replacement sponge insert for my Quickie floor mop. Home Depot bad. They decided to drop the Quickie brand and replace them with another brand. Home Depot just lost another of my consumable item to Amazon. Way to go. A trip not all loss. Read on.
Whenever I go to Home Depot in my neighborhood I always drop by the Korean grocery store across the street to pick up a few things and this trip is no exception.
I also like to park on the street right in front of the store instead of risking getting door dings in the Home Depot parking lot.
The Korean grocery store always have some good quality vegetable. Late spring is when perilla leaves are in season so I snapped up a pack for $1.99. Perilla leaves are like gold in weight and $1.99 a pack is the cheapest you will find. There are typically 20 leaves in the package. When I first encountered perilla leaves in Korean store I had no idea what you are to do with it. Soon I realize it is most commonly for eating raw in a Korean barbecue or grill. Amongst other things, I also picked up 3 bunches of scallions, which the store always sell as a loss leader. There is also the Korean twisted peppers that is in season and cheap.
I have a piece of pork butt at home so I decide to use some of it for
Korean grill. I freeze the pork to harden it a bit so it is can be sliced easier on my German home meat slicer. Normally I don't bother to slice the meat myself. It is much easier just pay a bit more and buy the pre-sliced one at a Korean store but since I already have the meat I made an exception this time.
There is no such thing as too much garlic with Korean meals. Too is chili peppers. Here is one head of garlic. How do you peel that much garlic? It is actually very easy with a technique I leant watching Martha Stewart cooking show. You put the garlic groves in a container with lid and shake the content very hard. The collision causes the garlic to bruise a bit and release some liquid which help separate the skin from the meat. It is very fun and you would not believe your eyes of the result.
I actually struggle what to call this Korean stove top inverted wok. I don't want to call it barbecue as there is no open flame involve. There is another version that you grill the food with open flame, or a red hot electric element. This version is more akin to Japanese teppanyaki 鉄板焼き. I prefer this for indoors as it produce less smoke. BTW, there is no such thing as Chinese Mongolian bbq. Mongolian people is nomad.
Their cuisine is very simple with their livelihood on barren locales under extreme Continental climate.
If you don't feel like cooking, Korean grill is the ticket. There is very little preparation. You eat while you cook and you are the one making the calls of what and how to cook. You are the composer, the conductor, the performer, and the audience of the symphony that is the meal. When I first started doing the Korean grill, I use a butane stove. Before long I realize I could just put the grill onto a gas burner of my kitchen range and take advantage of the extractor vent. This also save the cost of the butane fuel cartridge.
i usually set the burner to medium low for my eating pace
i use a wok ring to support the Korean inverted wok grill - the small ceramic dish is to catch the fat dripping should you have a lot of fatty meat
each leaf is 10 cents
i also use some grille pork to make a bowl of soup noodles for another meal/snack
In the photo it seems like so much meat. The truth is there is only about 6 once and you actually eat quite healthy as you consume a lot of vegetable, and a whole head of garlic.
the perilla leaf is used to warp the grill meat, garlic, scallion, pepper and whatever you wish in a packet; the perilla leaf is an acquired taste but you should get to like it if you appreciate real Asian cuisines
the next day I went shopping and I stop by G-mart (another Korean store nearby) to pick up more ingredients - two types of mushroom and some sliced beef brisket
the store have a promotion for butane canisters if you buy by the box of 28; at $29.99 it worked out to be just a bit over $1 apiece, instead of as much as $3 in some stores; with so many butane canisters i would be having nightmares of the house going kaboom; i feel like a survivalist with a lifetime cache of butane fuel supply
this one on Amazon tops my expectation; note the curious note "for used in Iwatani butane stoves and torch"; while I respect Iwatani makes excellent butane product I don't subscribe to this for a moment; i recently bought an
Iwatani Japanese yakitori grill and any generic $1.07 Korean butane canister works just fine - thank you very much
Korean barbecue is now very popular in China. When I was in Dalian for a business trip my host took me out to a Korean grill place. We had a great time. The host brought a bottle of special Chinese liquor that is brewed for the company officials and is not for sale. They told me it is near 80% alcohol content (160 proof). It can really burn your throat and stomach.
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