Korean foods

J loves spicy foods. For the last six (and a half) years, I've been suppressing J's intake of spicy food because my own spice tolerance is so low. But we've really been expanding our southeast Asian food intake, which also means an increase in my spice intake. I've even started eating my pho with sriracha. This is pretty amazing.

So now that we've found a great Korean place (Myung Ga Won in Duluth), the cravings come often.

A couple weeks ago, we both had the craving for Korean bbq. Myung Ga Won has gas grills so you don't leave smelling like oil or smoke. For those of you who have never been, I took some pictures. I think I've raved about Myung Ga Won before, but who can resist gushing some more?

You start off by ordering your meats. J and I typically get very conventional items like rib eye and short ribs. They have other things like beef tongue, but we tend it keep it simple. Myung Ga Won serves only Angus meats so that explains the great quality of the meat. Once you've placed your order, they bring all the banchan, or little side dishes. These can be eaten as either appetizers or sides. I've read that at some places, they don't really like to refill the banchan, but here they are very generous, refilling the bowls whenever they notice they are empty. It does sometimes take being a little vigilant in getting refills depending on the attentiveness of your waitress and your proximity in the general walking path. The range of banchan change from visit to visit.

In this picture, the center plate is hot-sauce spiced scallions. These are added to every bite, whether you are wrapping your meats in lettuce or daikon discs. (More on these daikon discs in a few.) At the top right are some spiced raw crab called gae jiang. Apparently the raw crabs are cracked and fermented with red bean paste along with green onions and garlic. For a great closeup picture of this, check out http://eatdrinknbmerry.blogspot.com/2007/06/koreatown-battle-of-tofu-houses-beverly.html about 2/3 of the way down the page. I am totally addicted to this stuff. It's so good. Which brings me to the question: can you order specific banchan?

Moving counter clockwise around the plates, you have some kimchi (J likes it but it's usually too stinky, I mean too spicy for me), spiced squid, some vinegary boy choy, and some spicy shanghainese bok choy.

These banchan on the other side of the table are more of a mystery to me. The stuff at the top was a rather gelatinous and bland. Moving counterclockwise is some potato salad and some odd soft starchy discs that were both helpful in putting out the fires of kimchi. They kind of remind me of a very smooth polenta but I'm sure they aren't. On the right are the aforementioned daikon discs.






Typically, one wraps their meat (swish swish in the sesame oil mixture), a little soybean paste, your spicy scallions, and a little rice in a lettuce leaf. Tasty. Here, they also give you these vinegary daikon discs where we put the meat and scallions and it's completely addicting. We end up going through several bowlfuls of them and probably only one basket of lettuce leaves.

So after you've had time to try all your little banchan and figure out your favorites, the meat arrives. The nice waitresses will adjust the heat on the grill and place the meat for cooking. Sometimes they keep careful tabs on us to flip the cut up the meat and sometimes we do it. I think they really frown on your pulling the meat out too early (read that as medium rare) so usually we wait until they cut it. I take that as my cue as "ready to eat". Typically, that's about the time they put some on my plate also. You'll see that in addition to the meat, they also bring some veggies like onions, mushrooms, or a squash. We end up burning them every time.

Here's a soybean paste stew that they were handing out gratis for everyone. It was good, but very very very spicy. I ate enough so as not to seem rude, but I was already pretty full.

So this past weekend, the craving for more Korean food surfaced but this time for busut bulgogi jandol. I did a lot of (mostly useless) research online to try to decipher the menu, but mostly all I learned is that bulgogi means beef and jandol means casserole.

An electric burner is brought to the table with a low pot on it filled with broth. Once simmering, they add in the plateful of ingredients, in this case thinly sliced beef, scallions, onions, some vermicelli noodles and an assortment of mushrooms: button, enoki, and shitake. The whole thing simmers until cooked and then they serve it up. I remember the last time we came, it seemed like we had to wait 45 minutes for it to cook, a rather long time for someone who is already hungry despite the presence of the spicy banchan.

This time, my research yielded that Myung Ga Won is actually a very known chain in Korea, and they are known for having a very excellent sulong tang, a long simmered bone soup with enoki mushrooms, thinly sliced beef, and as many sliced scallions as you wish to add. Rather tasty once you add salt.

So here's the busut bulgogi jandol once it has been cooked and served up. It's a rich, comforting taste, that is both filling and soothing. This is the perfect thing for a cold night after a long day at work.

Yum. I'm hungry. What's for dinner?