I made the buns soon after the cookbook came out, during a full day of frantic Fuku cooking. Trying four new recipes from the cookbook isn’t recommended in one afternoon. There were lots of “oh yeah, I forgot I have to pickle mustard seeds” moments. Besides these buns, I’ve already posted on everything else I’ve tried (pork belly ssam, chicken wings, English muffins, fried chicken). I’d cook everything again except the fried chicken. I don’t believe the steam/fry method really adds anything except more work. The chicken wings were unreal. UNREAL!

The dough recipe includes pork fat, naturally. Ya form them into ballz, let ‘em rise, yadda yadda.

‘

Roll out, fold, let them rise again on wax paper so they can steam individually and they won’t stick to the steaming basket.

Before steaming they kind of look like this.

My parents’ kitchen didn’t have a bamboo steamer, so my photo doesn’t look super official like they would if this had occurred at my place. Also, some of the buns came out a bit retarded deflated looking, like the one on the right. No idea why.

A streak of hoisin, a few quick pickled cucumbers, and slices of roasted pork belly…not too shabby. But damn those buns made a mess and took up a lot of my time. And half of them looked, well, less than blog worthy. Tasted good enough though.

Part 2 – How to make steamed buns, easy edition.

1) Walk into Super H and pick the bag up from the floor freezer, pay $2.99 and leave.

I ate them with some leftover roast chicken, cilantro, and a streak of gojuchang and hoisin.

Do I regret trying out the recipe to make them from scratch? Nah. Was the frozen version as fluffy and fresh tasting? Nope. Will I ever make my own again? No sir.

More fun with miso, this time kimchi based dumplings. One batch with firm pressed/minced tofu, another with ground pork.

The great thing about using kimchi for dumplings is it has inherent flavor, and this kimchi had scallions, so I didn’t need to add a bunch of ingredients for flavor or filler. It’s super fast to make them too. I used frozen dumplings wrappers, which are also convenient because they thaw relatively quickly. I did add a little miso to kick them up a notch. BAM!

Yes, I went Emeril on you.

I tried various cook methods. Cast iron, non-stick, and regular steel pan. I would sear for a few minutes then add a tablespoon or two of water and cover. These below were regular steel pan, and had the best crust, but a few of them stuck to the pan too much and tore while lifting.

This is the non-stick. It didn’t develop that nice even crust I desire.

P.S. Yesterday I had the best gyoza I can recall. Stay tuned for more.

(keep ‘em coming with teasers!)

On my recent visit to the BuHi Farmer’s market, I decided to pull the trigger and purchase some miso paste. I’ve known that there are loads of options for this fermented soybean product, but I had yet to dig into the possibilities.

Miso can be used in a variety of ways – a condiment, the base of a sauce, or perhaps just a flavor enhancer; miso is naturally high in umami. Adding a dollop to every day recipes can round out the flavor, making it more savory and enhancing other natural flavors. Almost like a natural version of MSG.

The consistency is thick, which is what led me to my idea for a snack yesterday. First I par-boiled some tiny Chinese noodles until al dente, which only takes a minute or two. I often use Asian noodles for quick snacks because I don’t have to wait very long for the noodles to cook.

Meanwhile I cooked a few strips of uncured bacon from High Farms (thanks Liz!) and melted 1 tablespoon of butter in another pan. I minced the bacon, added it to the butter, then threw in my noodles. I added a splash of water and stirred to create an emulsion with the butter, then added 1 tablespoon or so of miso paste. It was a little thick so I added another splash of water, then a couple shakes of rice vinegar, and served.

Only after I cooked this did I notice it looked a bit like carbonara. The pork and the rice vinegar helped balance the sweetness of the white miso. While maybe a bit too sweet, it was a very interesting snack, and the gears are moving with all the ways I can use miso in my every day cooking. I’ve also been reading the new Ideas in Food cookbook, and they have a recipe for white miso pasta where the miso is actually part of the pasta making process. I highly recommend this cookbook – I’ve already learned a good deal about brining, pickling, and cryo-blanching in the first thirty pages.

Also, here’s a great article from the SF Chronicle about how miso is made, the varying varieties and how they are best used, with some recipes for salad dressing and the ever-famous miso marinated cod.

I was driving back from Greenville to Atlanta on Friday, which of course meant I’d be stopping in Duluth to eat. Duluth is so far from my place on the Westside, and my schedule has been so busy, I really don’t get up that way to eat much lately unless I happen to be passing through.

I’m a huge nerd, so I keep a Google Docs spreadsheet of all the places I want to try up that way, but on this occasion I just wanted to get take-out and I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate. So I went right to the source and texted Chow Down Atlanta. She came through, naturally.

It’s well known that I’m a complete idiot with directions, so it took a long time for me to find her recommendation, Dan Moo Ji, a Korean restaurant that I’ve been eager to try. Google will tell you it’s possible to make a left directly onto Steve Reynolds off of Pleasant Hill. I think you can cut through a shopping center directly off Pleasant Hill, but you’re better off making a left onto Old Norcross, then a left onto Steve Reynolds. The Nukoa shopping center is maybe half a mile on the left.

Anyways, I walked in what I thought was Dan Moo Ji, but turned out to be a different Korean restaurant to the left of Windmill bakery that didn’t have an English sign. Dan Moo Ji is to the right of Windmill. I was too embarrassed to walk out after ordering a drink so I ended up eating there. The dolsot bi bim bap wasn’t bad.

I still ordered my take-out from Dan Moo Ji though. I ordered ten wings and some kimchi fried rice and waited in the small, post-it note decorated restaurant, all the while trying to avert my eyes from the high school aged waitresses wearing skimpy, eccentric outfits. Everyone in there seemed to be sixteen. I haven’t felt that old and out of place since I visited an underground hipster bar in Columbia.

Even after a thirty minute drive, the food rocked. The wings were still crunchy and warm, the thick wing batter is flavorless, but the peppery wing sauce quickly remedied that. I saved the rest of the wing sauce. It’s worth saving.

The fried rice was also excellent. Tons of kimchi flavor, well distributed throughout. Crunchy and pleasantly oily.

Dan Moo Ji is a style of Korean restaurant that is new to me; young, cool, a genre-buster with a menu that begs to be explored.

I can’t pretend to know a bunch about this cuisine though. For more info read Chloe’s post that I linked above, or Jen’s Creative Loafing post.

The Momofuku recipe for chicken wings starts with a warning – “This is the world’s longest recipe for chicken wings. Sorry. But they’re very, very good chicken wings”.

The writing in this cookbook takes this tone often, but I like it. It’s straight forward, and often admits that some things are ridiculously tedious, whereas the Ad Hoc cookbook casually mentions that one tiny step in the recipe will take you three hours. That Ad Hoc cookbook is deceivingly time consuming.

I started by cutting off the wing tips and brining the wings. I left the drum and the flat attached. No idea why.

The sauces starts by browning the wing tips.

Then sake, mirin, and soy sauce is added. This sake is Koji Sake, the inexpensive name brand from the local sake master. I went to a tasting where Koji discussed sake and let us taste a variety of styles – I learned a lot and got a nice sake buzz. He does these throughout the year, I recommend trying to find one.

The sauce reduces for almost an hour, or until you can scrape a rubber spatula across the bottom and it leaves a trail. That’s a good measure of moderate viscosity.

The wing tips are strained from the sauce. No one else was around, so I popped a few of these in my mouth and enjoyed the collagen/salty/sweet flavor for a few moments. I’d do it again.

After the wings had brined, they are covered by the reserved pork fat and they cook in the oven for 30 minutes. I don’t really understand how 30 minutes at that low of a temperature is enough time to confit the chicken, so I gave them an extra 30 minutes in the oven.

At this point the chicken can be reserved in the fat for a number of days. When it’s time to serve, the fat is warmed up, the chicken wings are removed and drained, then the wings are seared in an cast iron skillet. I had two cast iron skillets going at once.

Once there is nice color on a side, the wing is flipped and pressed again.

Finally, the wing is tossed in the tare sauce and garnished with pickled habaneros and scallions.

ZOMG! For real, Chang wasn’t lying. Everyone was moaning over these. The sauce was deliciously salty and sweet and sticky, but any sauce could rock with this chicken, which was a crazy combination of crispy and tender that I’ve never had in a wing. They easily fell apart, like a smoked wing, but they weren’t dry. I imagine I have the brine and the confit to thank for that.

This was a pain the ass, but when I do it again, I will brine then confit a boat load of wings, and save them in the fat and eat them throughout the week, lessening the blow of spending this much time on one fourth of a meal.

Please try this dish if you like wings.

As soon as I saw the recipe for this month’s post, I ear marked the page and knew this would be the recipe I’d make. I’ve been wanting to deep fry an egg for a while, well, because I love deep frying, and I love eggs. Double bonus that this recipe comes from Jeremy Fox, chef at Ubuntu.

I started by soft boiling the egg in lightly simmering water.  Like a dumbass I didn’t gently lower the egg into the water, I dropped it in there, and it cracked when it hit the bottom. Instead of cooking another egg I just let it go, curious if it would still work. The egg spilled out of the shell slightly, but cooked instantly and created a seal in the opening. After plunging in the ice bath, I peeled the egg, and though the egg is shaped funny in the bottom, it all worked out.

For the bed I quickly sautéed some kale and turnip greens.

Then breaded the egg in the panko/flour mixture. Instead of semolina, I used Korean potato starch.

The egg didn’t get quite the exterior that is shown in the recipe photo, so perhaps using the exact instructions will provide that more even and rich coating.

The remoulade was easy and tasty. I didn’t have mayonnaise so I quickly made my own using a method I found online last year. Crack one egg in a tall, plastic measuring cup, add 1 Tbsp of cider vinegar (lemon juice is often used, but I didn’t have any – any acid will do), 1 tsp of Dijon mustard, and a pinch of salt. Then stand up a hand held immersion blender in the cup and pour in 200mL of olive oil. Mix until it’s whipped into mayonnaise. Easy.

Note – I didn’t add cornichons, tarragon, or hard boiled eggs to my remoulade because I didn’t have some of that stuff and it seemed a bit tedious for a sauce that tasted great without them. Though, this recipe comes from a restaurant, and that’s one great thing about restaurants – they take the time to do things I’m too lazy/busy to do.

How did it taste? Fantastic. Deep fried eggs, with a creamy yolky center, spiced up with sriracha…that one is quickly being added to the super easy yet cool repertoire.

Thanks to my brother Thomas for the chopstick/plate/spoon set seen in these photos.

I can’t believe it’s already Christmas. It always sneaks up on me. So is it any shock that I’m behind on buying gifts?

This Saturday I made a mad dash to try to wrap up my Christmas shopping, plus I needed to buy some stuff for a cheesy Christmas sweater/pot luck party that night. Instead of cooking I decided to get a spread of charcuterie and cheese from Star Provisions, but on my way there, I hit a pothole (seen above) on Huff Rd. and blew out two tires. Merry Christmas.

So as I sat there in my car waiting for a tow truck, across from the street from a speaker store that was blasting rap music in the parking lot (“I wanna, lick lick lick lick ya from ya head to ya toe”), thinking about how this was some sort of penance for prior sins, when I realized I was walking distance from urban pl8.

I walked over to find they were still serving brunch. I contemplated eating in so I could relax with a bloody mary, but decided missing the tow truck would be the icing on the cake, so I ordered huevos rancheros to go, then sat in my car and ate while the apartment complex security guard curiously watched me from afar.

I enjoyed the breakfast. Two corn tortillas with two sunny side eggs, salsa, refried beans, sour cream, and cilantro. You can’t really see the beans in the picture, but that was the best part. They created a refried bean cake and cooked it on a griddle so that it was crusty on the top and bottom. The salsa was above average too. Recommended. Also, the staff at urban pl8 are super nice.

The tow truck finally arrived and towed me to Gordy Tires, across from Flip. A little over $400 later, and I was on my way.

I finally did get that charcuterie at SP. It was a hit at the party.

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This photo has nothing to do with this story, but it’s my Sunday breakfast from this weekend. I’ve been making rice bowls a lot for breakfast since our house got a rice cooker. They are great for using up vegetables in the fridge. This one is rice + bacon + asparagus sautéed in bacon fat + two poached eggs + sriracha + soy sauce. Delicious.

Of course imitators have followed, such as Calbi, another LA truck which recently sold out to Baja Fresh, who is trying to franchise the idea. Yes, the same Baja Fresh that had multiple locations around Atlanta, only to pull out of the market entirely, and is now trying to come back and get new franchisees. Why would anyone want to buy into a franchise that less than ten years ago decided they couldn’t compete in this market?

Myself, I’ve never tried Kogi or Calbi, but when Hankook opened up within walking distance of house, I was excited to try Atlanta’s first foray into this hip genre. But one problem was that with my knowledge of Kogi, expectations of quality and creativity were high. Not only that, everyone I know was so eager to try it, we dashed there in the first two days they were open, and it seemed the general consensus was that it was a little boring and execution and ingredients were slightly off. At least that’s what I thought, I hate to speak for others, though I linked to a bunch of other blog posts at the bottom of this page.

My bulgogi taco from my first visit was just too bland. The meat was soggy, like it had been in the steamer too long, the flavor wasn’t what I expect from bulgogi at all, and there was lots of empty space in this average tasting tortilla.

The fish and rice cakes from the visit weren’t bad, I liked the texture, but the flavor of the sauce wasn’t my favorite.

I also got the bibim-bop on this visit. This was a ton of food, a good value. I liked the variety and flavor of the cold sprouts, mushrooms, and marinated cucumber, but it was the same meat from the bulgogi taco.

It was almost two months between my first and second visit, and on the second visit I was in a rush on the way home, so I popped in and got two tacos to go. I went with the bulgogi again, as well as the “dae ji gogi”, which is a spicy pulled pork taco.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and unwrapped my tacos. The tacos just looked better. They were more full, the toppings were more vibrant, and there was noticeably more meat.

Also, because the hot tacos were wrapped in the foil for a few minutes, the tortillas were softer, a nice side benefit of the to-go order.

I really enjoyed both of these tacos. The flavor of the meat was wonderful. I could taste the sweet and salty marinade on the bulgogi, and the additional meat balanced better with the flavors of the hot sauce and the onion and cilantro toppings. I could really do without the cheese and the large amount of lettuce, but no big deal.

The pork was similarly delicious. There was plenty of tender pork, with just enough, but not too much, of the spicy BBQ sauce.

I’d enjoy some more exciting vegetables in these tacos like kimchi and radish, or really any of the pickled/fermented vegetables that are offered as banchan at many Korean BBQ restaurants. I also think there’s a lot they could do create more interesting and flavorful fusion sauces. The tortillas could probably benefit from a few seconds on the grill too, or perhaps they could experiment with corn tortillas, which is what Kogi uses.

But I don’t mean to be too big of a complainer – I was very happy that I tried Hankook again. At under $5 for two tacos, I felt like it was a good value.

I made my final stop today, as on my visit last week I noticed some new offerings on the “street snack” section of the menu. I had to try one more taco though, so I started with the tofu taco. Again, the cheese and tortilla aren’t my favorite, but I loved the soft tofu and the bean sprouts. If this had some of those aforementioned vegetables, it would have been rocking.

From the street snacks I tried the kook-su, soba noodles and vegetables in a spicy “vinaigrette”. There was too much sauce and lettuce for my tastes, but the actual flavor and heat of the sauce was great. The vegetables were carrots, cucumbers, scallions, and onions. These are pretty much the same vegetables I see in every dish and again, some variation would be welcome.

I also tried the pa-jeon, the vegetable pancake with dipping sauce. Definitely tasty, I recommend sharing an order as it’s huge. Mine was slightly undercooked, but no big deal, I took the leftovers home and when I reheat them on my grill they will come out perfect. You better believe I also brought the dipping sauce home too, it’s my favorite part.

OK, so there’s my marathon post on Hankook. Yeah, it’s very much a “here’s a picture of what I ate and what I thought” sort of post, but from my visits I’ve also formed a strong opinion about Hankook.

I’ve decided that even though it isn’t perfect, I’m a fan. Maybe it’s not as good as Kogi, not that I or many others in town would know. Some preparations and ingredients could be better. Perhaps some things aren’t authentic, exciting, or inspiring. But there is nothing like Hankook ITP. They’re whipping up an ever-changing menu, with many items that I would consider progressive for our town. They are pushing our palates. AND they are doing it in an awful location. I think if they last, it’s only going to get better, and I’m getting in on the ground floor.

Hankook on Chow Down Atlanta
Live to Feast
Foodie Buddha

Sean took the lead, ordering all the food, and cooking most of it too (sorry Sean), and we had a great time. “All you can eat” Korean BBQ makes me a little wary, but I was pleasantly surprised. The quality of the meat was solid, they didn’t skimp, there was a lot of variety, and the meat was replenished often.

The banchan wasn’t the best in town, and there wasn’t an extremely interesting variety of offerings, but I was pleased with it considering the banchan is self-served from a buffet. But for less than $25 a person, it was very reasonable considering all that we ate. Read Sean’s post for full details, but I highly recommend trying Song Do. The Google directions are off, so just know that isn’t almost directly next door to Haru Ichiban. If you search for the Haru you will easily find Song Do.

Another tip: Sean asked the server to replace the grill grate a number of times, as it was becoming very charred and will impart a bitter flavor on the meat if you don’t change it. They will happily change it for you, but only if you ask.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to read Tami’s Day 3 post on Running with Tweezers. She talks about Project Open Hand, a local Atlanta charity which offers a variety of food related services, including meals on wheels. I’ve really enjoyed reading the posts from the other participants in this challenge, but not just for their buying strategies and the dishes they create. Many of the bloggers have touched on the hunger issues that affect us locally and nationally, and I need to give this more attention as it’s the basis of the Eat on 30 challenge. I would like to do some more research on this when I get back home, particularly in regards to how it affects people in Atlanta and the various ways to help. I will be sure to pass along what I find.

For now, I have to get to bed, I have another long day ahead of me, including waking up a bit early to cook my lunch for tomorrow. Below are my photos from today.

I had a banana for breakfast ($0.28) and hit the road. Before I left I printed a coupon for QT from coupons.com which offered a free sandwich or wrap with no other purchase necessary, not a bad deal at all for $4 sandwich.

For lunch I had chicken noodle soup, using the broth from yesterday. Nothing fancy, just some egg noodles, chicken breast, celery, and carrot. The cost came to $1.64. I had half the soup with lunch, along with my average, but welcome QT sandwich.

lunch 3: chicken soup + turkey/roast beef gas station sandwich – cost: $1.65

For dinner I ate the rest of the soup, then made some pot stickers. I had never made the wonton dough from scratch before, but it was technically easy, I can’t say I will be making them myself very often, as it’s fairly time consuming and the $1 packs of wrappers from an Asian market are pretty good.

The filling was a small amount of ground pork + blanched/chopped cabbage and zucchini.

They weren’t bad at all, but it was very sticky and I had a hard time getting the dough thin enough.

dinner 3: pork + zucchini + cabbage pot stickers – total cost: $0.72