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Recipe: korean glass noodles

I have to admit that I wasn’t exposed to much Asian cuisine other than Chinese when I was growing up. It was a big deal when my mom started cooking more western style foods when I was in junior high. When Dad began his foray into gourmet cooking, he went for the big splashes like rack of lamb or roast pork loin – something that makes your guests go “wow!” while you serve it up with a flourish.

I had been eating sashimi since I was four or five years old, but wasabi was my only introduction to Japanese food and it was prepared unceremoniously at our house as opposed to a sushi bar. And on rare occasion in Washington D.C. my parents would take me to a Vietnamese place for pho and then they’d order all sorts of things I refused to eat like tripe… When I went to college, I began to frequent the sushi bars, Thai restaurants, and other joints around the LA basin serving up good authentic Asian fare. Imagine my surprise when I took my parents to our favorite Thai restaurant and their reaction was, “meh.”

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Tomorrow’s the fourth of July and that means barbecue installment #4: pork ribs. These are the meaty St. Louis style cut of ribs. I know everyone is all agog about baby back ribs, but honestly, it’s a sack of bones with not so much meat. I don’t relish the idea of cooking something for 10+ hours that has such a low yield of consumable material.

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I had a craving for this Japanese-style ginger salad dressing the other night. I’ve had it in a handful of Japanese restaurants and the stuff is addictive. One of many things I love about the web is that I can access a dozen recipes at the drop of hat and figure out how to make something – like this dressing. It’s actually carrot, ginger, sesame oil, sugar, vinegar, and miso paste. I love it.