seoul train

i have had many food crushes over the years.  a tart for tarts, a strumpet for crumpets, when it comes to food i am most definitely a lover, not a fighter.  some of these crushes started early in life (i never met a pickle i didn’t like).  some came to me slowly and shyly as a teen, as i batted my eyelashes across the classroom at plates of shrimp and clams and oysters, realizing them not the tattooed bad boys i had previously thought.  “JF heart habanero 4EVA” was lazily doodled on the back of my hand as i climbed onto the bad boy chile’s motorcycle, tossed my hair over my shoulder, and we screeched off together to the tune of some aerosmith song or another.  but some of these food crushes found me later in my years, creeping up behind me with broad shoulders, soulful eyes, and surprising me with their passion and vigor.  (muy escandaloso!)

korean food falls under the umbrella of these more recent obsessions.  i was woefully blinkered to its existence in my younger years, but crashing into my life it eventually came.  and now i find myself googling memes of bibimbap with grumpy kittens, and looking up pictures of kimchi in its knickers (what?  i don’t do that).  

(for the record, this is hands-down my favourite kimchi in the world, by the way.  oh, firefly, you had me at "fermented.")

i suppose david chang and ed lee would probably be the clooney and damon of this culinary crush; the le bon and the taylor.  (and they can fight between themselves over who gets to be whom.)  but recently, in small part to top chef, and in larger part to his engrossing memoir/cookbook “LA Son,” i’ve been spending much more quality time with roy choi (the boy so nice, they named him twice.  kind of). 

roy crushes hard on his hometown of los angeles in the same way that i do for my adopted hometown of seattle.  he lusts after the spindly palm trees the way i do the hearty evergreens; he drinks up the gritty vistas of k-town the way i do the sun setting over the olympic mountains.  home is, as they say, where the heart is, and roy’s heart can be found smack bang at the cross streets of wilshire and western.  combined with his traditional korean roots, this deeply ingrained love of his hometown and all of its latino influences essentially defines choi's culinary viewpoint, and epitomizes what eventually became his signature dish: korean tacos.  brilliant.  perhaps less “fusion” so much as “mash-up,” choi takes the best of both cuisines, and makes them sing together in a perfect duet you never imagined possible.  before my very eyes (if 1200 miles to the south), my crushes were colliding in a way that you only hear about in 90’s soft-rock ballads.  add that to the theory that i believe pretty much everything tastes better with kimchi, and suddenly i knew that roy and i have had this date with each other from the beginning…

however, long-distance relationships can be hard (trust me, i know), so for those of us who do not live within striking distance of the kogi food truck fleet of deliciousness, we must turn to our pantries, our asian supermarchés and our mercados, and we must do our best to make our own choi-inspired mash-up.  i decided to tackle his caramelized kimchi & pork-stuffed pupusas and his kalbi beef “east LA” tacos.  the pupusas are made with fresh masa, but fried; a tamale meets a pancake.  MY pupusas, however, were more like brick meets mortar.  heavier than a beret-sporting teenager tackling nietzsche, my pupusas were less delicacy than murder weapon.  pish posh, let us poo poo the pupusas and leave them to roy choi and his boys.  onto the real deal, the very thing that set us down this road in the first place.  put some seoul into your soul, and let’s make some tacos.  and unlike so many of our teenage crushes, this one shall not disappoint.

kogi-style korean beef tacos (inspired by roy choi's recipes and general world outlook)

kalbi marinade:

1 cup soy sauce

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup mirin

1/3 cup sesame oil

1 onion, roughly chopped

Small knob of ginger, roughly chopped

3 scallions, roughly chopped

2 tbsp. sesame seeds

(roy uses a chopped up kiwi fruit and asian pear as well, but i had none, and thought it a fine marinade in their absence)

1.5 lbs flanken-cut short ribs (or other beef of your choosing.  i’ve also used hangar steak)

whizz marinade ingredients in a blender until mostly smooth.  pour over beef and marinade for 4 hours or up to overnight.

1 cup shredded green cabbage

1 cup shredded romaine lettuce

½ cup thinly sliced scallions (green and white parts)

fresh cilantro

fresh corn tortillas

salsa rojo or salsa verde, or both if you’re loca like me

chile vinaigrette:

1 tbsp. kochugaru (or red pepper flakes in the event that you not have a pantry of weird Korean ingredients on hand.  it happens)

¼ cup soy sauce

2 tbsps. sesame oil

½ tbsp. diced ginger

2 scallions, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2 tbsps. sugar

1 tbsp. salt

a few grinds of black pepper

1 cup rice wine vinegar

½ cup canola oil

place all vinaigrette ingredients into blender and puree.  (makes more than you need, but dressing is ridiculously delicious and will keep in the fridge for future adventures in salading.)

toss shredded cabbage, lettuce & scallions with some of the chile dressing in a small bowl and set aside.

get photo-bombed by cheeky 5 year-old whilst trying to take awfully & terribly serious food pictures.

remove beef from marinade and cook on preheated grill  to desired doneness.  flanken ribs need only a couple of minutes per side; hangar steak reaches melty perfection for me at 4 minutes, flip, then 3.  or, you know, yada yada, USDA, 145 degrees, yada, hashtag-don’t-sue-me.  let rest for a few minutes then thinly slice against the grain.

heat tortillas and pile high with beef, slaw, cilantro, and slather with as much hot sauce as you can take.  

and as roy says, pour a little on the ground for the homies, too.  word.