Beef Short Rib and Kimchi Soup

Recently, a bronchial bug took hold of our household. We stayed in for days, glancing occasionally out the window as the cherry plum tree in our back yard slowly blossomed. At the beginning of the week, buds were visibly emerging from bare stems. Just four days later, the tree was filled in with blooms like a girl wearing hundreds of poofy pink bows in her hair, ready for a party.

Maybe it was the sight of the blossoms, or the appearance of blue skies two (two!) days in a row. Either way, we definitely started to feel more energetic. After lunch on the second day, we happened to look out the window to see a flash of bright yellow. Kingston immediately recognized it.

"Wood chipper!" He yelled running toward the door.

"Put on some shoes!" I shouted, "And a jacket!"

He stumbled over the piles of sneakers, boots and slippers in the front hallway and managed to shove his bare feet into a pair of snow boots. I hurled a jacket at him, and threw one on myself. Oh! And shoes. 

When we reach the cul-de-sac a minute later, we could see the city parks department guys already working, cutting off branches from a slightly tilted alder tree. One guy clutched a pole saw while the other worked from the high reaches of a cherry picker bucket. 

We watched from a safe distance and ended up staying for at least two hours, perched together on the edge of the curb. Kingston hardly took his eyes away from the whole operation while asking me question after question:

Q: "What that black thing on top of that part over there?" (Asked while pointing to the bright yellow woodchipping machine with the name "The Bandit" stenciled on its side.)
A: "Maybe that is part of the engine?" (Answered with a hopeful shrug.) 

I did my best, keeping in mind what I had once read in the Penelope Leach book, Your Baby and Child. There, Ms. Leach advises that if you don't know the answer to question, try to give one anyway. According to her, it isn't at all reassuring for a young child to hear an adult say, "I don't know." I don't doubt her one bit, as this definitely holds true for myself, an adult. When I have a question, I need answers!

While Kingston and I were still spectating though, one of the tree guys came over to tell us he was going to leave split firewood, cherry and alder, for anyone to take. Kingston declared that we should bring some home. By dinnertime, we had managed to move three Radio Flyer wagon loads up the hill. Then, with our hands, we reached into the wagon and plunked the wood down until we had a helter-skelter pile next to the house.

Hauling wood is tiring. It makes your arms and shoulders ache. It makes your belly rumble. So I was very glad that there was a pot of soup in the house, one I'd made over a couple of days. It is by no means an "authentic" or "traditional" Korean recipe, though the dish it might most be like is kimchi jigae. Rich and umani, this soup is neither too salty nor spicy, and is filled with fall-apart tender beef. It's fortifying and just right for the changing seasons, the return of health and hands on, spirit-lifting work. 

Beef Short Rib and Kimchi Soup
I like what Andy Ricker has to say about "authentic" and "traditional" foods in his Thai-centric cookbook, Pokpok: "The words imply an absolute cuisine...Both terms are nonsensical designations -- as if traditions are the same everywhere, as if they don't change, as if culinary ones don't evolve with particular speed." I wasn't trying for authenticity here. I just wanted to make some that's warming, soothing and super flavorful.

This is a weekend project type of recipe for most people, so do it a bit at a time. For example, cook the onions in the days prior, then the short ribs the day before, maybe squeezed in between other things you happen to be doing around the house. For me, this soup is easiest and most relaxing to make when I do it over a couple of days.

Adapted from thekitchn.com and Momofuku.

Serves 6.

Ingredients
3 large yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
4 teaspoons neutral oil, divided
2 lbs. beef short ribs, bone in, English cut
8 cups beef broth, divided
6 cups kimchi, preferably napa cabbage or a mix of napa and daikon, roughly chopped
Couple handfuls of dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi)
3 tablespoons mirin, plus more to taste
3/4 cup sliced rice cakes
kosher salt, if needed
fresh black pepper, to taste

scallions, sliced on the diagonal, for garnish
julienned carrots, a couple of handfuls, for garnish

Instructions
For the short ribs:
Sprinkle short ribs with salt. Set aside. 

Heat a dutch oven or other large, lidded pot over a medium-high flame. Add 2 teaspoons oil then the sliced onions. Saute until they begin to soften then lower heat to medium-low, stirring every few minutes so that the onions don't burn. Continue cooking onions in this manner, lowering heat as needed, until they begin to caramelize, about 30 minutes. Remove onions from pot and set aside.

Turn heat to medium-high. Add another teaspoon of oil to pot. Sear the short ribs, allowing each side to brown before turning them using tongs. Once they are well-browned, about 15 minutes, return onions to pan and add 3 cups beef broth. Bring to boil then turn heat to very low, cover tightly and allow to simmer on stovetop for 2-3 hours, checking intermittently to make sure there is enough liquid so that it won't burn. Add broth as needed. You may alternatively cook this in a slow cooker for 8 hours on low. The meat on the ribs will be tender and gelatinous. Remove from bone and cut meat into bite-sized pieces. 

For the soup:
Heat a dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the last teaspoon of oil. Add kimchi, black pepper and bonito flakes and saute until warmed through. Stir in mirin, remaining broth and any remaining juices from the kimchi. Add short ribs, along with the onions and any juices and broth left from cooking the meat. Heat until meat and broth are warmed through. At this point, taste and adjust seasonings. If the soup is overly spicy, you can add a bit more mirin to temper it. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Once you've adjusted the seasoning to your liking, add the rice cakes to the soup. Cook until the rice cakes are warmed through. 

Ladle into soup bowls and garnish with scallions and carrots. Serve with cooked rice on the side. 

Lapsang Hot Cocoa & Thoughts About Vulnerability

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student in psychology, I read about the work of the Italian researcher, Alessandra Piontelli, who had done ultrasound scans on mothers of fraternal twins. A number of times, she watched as one particular set repeatedly pushed against the thin membrane that separated them, reaching toward one another. 

Piontelli visited the various mothers and twins a year after they were born, including that specific brother-sister pair. She observed the now toddlers playing a game where they stood on opposite sides of a curtain, pushing against it with their hands, trying to locate one another. 

Though many years have passed, this is an image that still suddenly pops into my mind. Each time, I am surprised by the emotion that wells up in me. It feels like yearning, perhaps a simple recognition that the image has everything to do with the human impulse to be connected to another person -- an impulse so basic that it can appear even when we are in the womb.

The image also makes me think about vulnerability, which is essentially a reaching out toward another. This is not always an easy task and can stir up many emotions, including anxiety.  It can feel dangerous, an act of exposure. Yet, making yourself vulnerable and being willing to reach toward someone else without knowing what will come back to you is also the best way to ensure a deep connection to another human being.

I did just that a few nights ago, reached out, when at a post-New Year's get together with my writing group, I shared a personal essay. I was nervous because it was about some traumatic things that had happened to me as a very young child, not things either easily shared or taken in. Over time, though, it has seemed increasingly important to write about and share these experiences with people in my life.

As I began to read aloud, I knew that I was among sensitive souls with whom I felt safe. So I continued on, until I reached the bottom of the second page. My words and everything they embodied were accepted with empathy and kindness. 

I was grateful. The experience made me consider how vulnerability goes together with authenticity, being willing to reveal to others the truth of who you are. It felt good, a relief, to do this with my fellow writers. Afterward, I felt more solid in myself. Less a pile of wobbly little pebbles, more a mound of stones that mostly fit together without rolling away at the slightest touch.

By making yourself vulnerable, you give others the chance to feel what it is to stand inside your experience. It can feel a little strange and contradictory -- to feel more real, more anchored inside yourself, the more you are exposed. 

But this, I believe, is what we need more than ever -- to be willing to allow others to know what it is we know and feel, in order to create a world of greater compassion and understanding. 

This new year, let's not make generalizations about others or act in the belief that we already understand all there is to know about the world. Let's listen to what the people around us far and near have to say. Let's dare to open ourselves up. It's not impossible. Perhaps a first step can be taken by sharing a meal, a cup of hot cocoa or even a simple sip of tea.

Lapsang Hot Cocoa
I know it might sound weird to some of you, but the smokey taste of lapsang souchong is so delicious with the richness of chocolate. If you aren't familiar with it, lapsang souchong is a Chinese tea that has all sorts of myths and lore attached to it. It is essentially a black tea that is smoked over pine needles, absorbing all the aromatic flavors. If you want the smokiness to be stronger in your beverage, let it steep longer. I like mine to have a good balance between the tea and the cocoa flavors, so five minutes works just right for me.

Makes enough for two.

Ingredients
1 teaspoon Lapsang Souchong tea (loose leaves)
2 cups whole milk or milky beverage of your choice
4 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons high-quality cocoa
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of ground cinnamon
pinch of salt

Instructions
Heat milk in a saucepan until hot. Place tea leaves in a tea ball/strainer and steep in the milk for five minutes (more if you like a smokier taste). Remove tea then whisk in sugar, cocoa, vanilla and salt until everything dissolves and is slightly frothy. Divide between two cups and serve with a long conversation.

Roasted Carrot and Kale Farrotto

My grandmother was way too busy to cook. After she came to live with us in L.A. in the seventies, she was always going to the dim sum parlor to yum cha with her friends. Or, she could frequently be found riding the bus around the brown, smoggy city with my brother, Simon, making him hand out to unsuspecting passengers tracts and flyers about Jesus and the Second Coming, two things in which she staunchly believed.

Growing up, nearly all the food we ate was Chinese, of the Cantonese variety. We lived in Chinatown and our mother did most of her shopping there, with eggs and freshly killed chicken from the place on Broadway, staples from the shop still at the corner of Hill and Alpine, slippery rice noodles from Bicycle Lee, who pedaled around the neighborhood hawking the most delicious wares from a metal box attached to the back of his two-wheel vehicle. 

The furthest afield we might have gone was downtown, such as the time when Granny (as we Americanized Chinese kids called her) purchased an enormous watermelon from the Grand Central Market, brought it home on the bus, and carried it up to the front steps of our house, shouting, "Ayyyaaaa, help!" because she was about to drop it.

There is really only one dish I ever remember Granny cooking, though: Oatmeal and ground beef porridge.

I know. Sounds a little strange, but it's what she came up with after my sister, Marilyn, learned how to make meatloaf in her seventh grade Home Economics class. The binder in the meatloaf? Not breadcrumbs or milk-soaked pieces of bread, but oatmeal. My grandmother seemed to think this combination genius. Soon after Marilyn made the Luther Burbank Jr. High School Home Ec special for us, Granny began whipping up her deconstructed version, complete with a soy sauce drizzle.

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Images of our oatmeal porridge-eating Granny. In the left photo, I am sandwiched between my mother and Granny.

When I came across a number of recipes recently substituting grains (farro, amaranth, etc.) in dishes where rice might more normally be used, I immediately recalled Granny's porridge. I imagined a pot of it simmering on our avocado green stove, the rich meaty smell floating through the rest of the house. Was her dish such a far cry from other savory grain dishes now in vogue? Maybe hers was a bit more rustic, but it was still filling, warming and worth eating on a cool, end-of-winter day.

When I began to think about it more, it occurred to me that what Granny was doing back then continues to occur today. People travelling across worlds to start over or just to visit briefly inevitably fold into their lives new ways of eating and seeing, thinking and being.

The oatmeal and beef porridge which we ABC (American Born Chinese) kids found to be such a strange combination had been created in the same spirit as that. Granny was taking the old Chinese technique of long-simmering rice and liquid (into jook, a savory porridge), and applying it to what for her was a new-world grain. In the end, she made a dish that was all her own.

Isn't that what the best of any kind of cooking, whether in a humble home kitchen or a critically-acclaimed restaurant is ultimately about -- being creative and using the best of what you have in a way that means something to you?

That's what I strive for, at least, with the hope that it will also taste good.

Speaking of which, this carrot and kale farrotto is something that falls squarely in that category, the tastes-so-good-I-can't-stop-eating-it one, that is. Cooked just like a risotto, using cracked farro instead of rice, this dish is filled with sweet, caramelized carrots and silky ribbons of kale, bits of parmesan that melt into the tender, nourishing grain.

Cheesy, sweet, nutty. This farrotto is something I can staunchly believe in. And, I am willing to bet my Granny would have loved it too.

Hope you like it!

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Let the light shine on your farrotto. Drizzle some herbaceous oil over top. Shower on the parmesan cheese.

Roasted Carrot and Kale Farrotto

Inspired by the many cooks and chefs exploring the beauty and flavors of grains. And by my Granny too, of course.

Serves 4-6.

Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs. carrots, chopped (about 1/2")
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cup cracked farro*
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 quarts chicken or vegetable stock, heated to a simmer
1 bunch kale, stems removed, leaves cut into thin ribbons
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Toss carrots with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Spread in a single layer on a greased or lined baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes, stirring at least once. The carrots should look like they are beginning to caramelize, with dark edges.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and the butter over medium heat in a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add the onion, garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Cook until onion is softened (do not allow to brown), about 7 minutes. Add farro and stir to coat with the oil mixture. Cook for an additional 2 minutes.

Add the wine and cook until almost completely absorbed, about 5 minutes. Add 1/4 cup of the hot broth and cook, stirring occasionally, until the broth is almost completely absorbed (there should be very little liquid when you scrape the bottom of the pan, but the farro should not be sticking). Reduce the heat if necessary. Continue to add broth in 1/4 cup increments, stirring occasionally and allowing the farro to absorb the liquid almost completely with each addition. Cook until farro is tender but still has some bite. (This should take about 30 minutes.) Add roasted carrots. Add kale and stir until wilted. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes.

Stir in cheese and an additional tablespoon of butter. Add 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup broth to moisten the farrotto. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spoon into shallow bowls. Sprinkle with additional cheese and drizzle with additional olive oil, if desired.

*A Note: I used cracked farro, but you may substitute whole farro if you wish. Please keep in mind that you'll need to cook the whole farro for much longer.