Jessica's Dinner Party

by jessica yoon

NaBloPoMo

Alice Waters’ Italian Meatballs

I never got around to writing about what we ate at the mini road trip my friends and I took before I left New York.  Week after week passed and when November hit and I decided to, a little absentmindedly, participate in NaBloPoMo, I tagged this recipe in my head for that one day when everything falls behind and it’s almost midnight and I still don’t have a clue what I’m going to write about.  I was pretty organized that first week.  I made something during the day, wrote about it at night, and posted it the next morning.  But this week has been a bit of a struggle.  I’m not at that point where I want to tear my hair out and beat myself over the head for doing something crazy like promising to post every day for one whole month.  Somebody told me today to post a picture of a fried egg, but I won’t go that low…yet.

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Kimchi

The kimchi is done!  It took two full days to complete, but if I were to do it myself, I think it would’ve taken weeks.  Experiencing the whole process really made me appreciate kimchi in a whole new way.  It’s such a standard presence on my dinner table, that I don’t think I’ve ever really given it a second thought.  But that’s exactly why kimchi is so important, because I eat it everyday.  To know where all the ingredients came from and how much preparation went into it makes you enjoy it more.  I found it really impressive how authentic and culturally intact each part was.  All the ingredients were local, seasonal, and all the methods used could have been seen 100, 300, 500 years ago.  Well, maybe except the mandolin we used to cut the radishes.  That probably cut three days worth of work to two.

In theory, this batch is supposed to last one year, so you can imagine how much of everything we needed (we’re talking restaurant kitchen proportions).  No recipe was used and I lost count after 50 cabbage heads, that I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

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Sweet Potato Kimchi Pancakes

It’s kimchi season right now, which means many Korean families will be making enormous amounts of that famous spicy fermented cabbage.  We’re in the middle of making our own right now, and I must say, it is quite a fete.  I can see why many families forego the whole ordeal and just buy some at the supermarket.  It’s not only a long process, but we’re dealing with pounds and pounds of cabbage, more than you would believe you’d eat in a lifetime.  However, nothing beats food made at home.  There’s that love and trust that is absent elsewhere.

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A Few of My Favorites

Ever since I started JDP, my sister has fallen head over heals into the blogging world.  She’s constantly emailing me about cool new sites that she’s found and has even become more up-to-date with the food bloggers than I am (which is saying a lot!).  I thought it would be fun to come up with a short list of blogs we frequent and love:

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Brown Butter Pound Cupcakes

I picked up Gourmet at the airport last month when I was flying over here and felt a pang of sadness as I carefully flipped through the penultimate issue.  Even for me, a foodie and blogger newbie, I felt that great sense of shock and disbelief to be witnessing the end of an era.  The legacy and recipes will live on, but all in all the food world has lost one of its greatest pillars.

 

In honor of Gourmet, I thought I’d do a round of recipes from the magazines archives.  So, for the next couple of weeks be on the lookout for those Gourmet recipes you always wanted to try, but never got around to!

To start, I picked the brown butter pound cake recipe in the October 2009 issue.  It hit a chord with me because I love almond meal and thought that brown butter could be pseudo alternative for those who have nut allergies.  I have a friend who’s highly allergic to peanuts and almonds and have always felt like I was wagging a bone in front of a dog whenever I raved about it.  So this is for her and all those other nut allergic individuals.

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