Labor Day 2015 ('Murrca!)

My cousin, who recently came to the United States for school, visited me for Labor Day this year.  We romped around the DC Metropolitan area for 3.5 days, eating amazing food, enjoying DC yuppie life, and even getting a little nature time outside of the city.

This being my cousin's first American Labor Day, I thought it would be fun to show her a simple American way to celebrate every summer holiday: slapping some meat on a grill.  Only, I tried to make it anything but simple.  Having two days to prepare, I capitalized on time as my primary resource and did some research into good marinades for steak.  I pulled ideas from various websites to come up with a savory garlic two-day marinade (based largely on this recipe).  And in order to ensure that the quality of the steak matched that of the marinade, I bought two three quarter pound rib eyes from Whole Foods.

The marinade was made with the following:

• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 entire head of garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• salt to taste

After one day, I flipped the steaks over in the marinade to ensure even soaking time.  Here is what the steaks looked like right after I put them on the grill (So. Much. Garlic.):

Here are the steaks after the flip.  I am still working on mastering the art of grill marks:

Here are the finished steaks:

They look a little darker because I let them cook a little longer to get to a medium-well finish.  Unfortunately, I did not do a good job with heat control, and I did not have a good grasp on the cut of meat itself.  The steaks turned out slightly overdone as a result, although the tenderness due to marination may have saved the day.

Overall, the flavor was slightly on the acidic side due to all the vinegar and lemon juice.  Next time, I would cut back drastically on the vinegar and add more lemon juice.  I would also use some Worcestershire sauce as the recipe linked above suggests (I did not have any on hand this time).

The only thing missing from this meal?  Some good ol' home baked American butter rolls, which I did not have any time to prepare.  So we went with a healthier carb option.

Sweet Onion Pork Belly Kebabs

Recently, I received a grill as a gift of sorts, which means a whole new branch of food (and additional challenges and experiments in preparing it) has opened up to me.  What piques my interests, of course, is that many different cultures and peoples, each with their own style and techniques, have separately developed the art of grilling over several millennia.  Being Chinese and American, it makes the most sense for me to explore these grilling cultures first, and then maybe converge on the old world spanning from Western Asia (or as Americans call it, the Middle East) through the Mediterranean to Europe.  Interspersed in that, I may also try learning how other East, South, and Pacific Asians grill.

First experiment: American Barbecue.  While I was at work on Friday, I got the idea that pork belly would taste amazing on kebabs.  I had no time to pick up the ingredients for dinner Friday night, so I let the idea marinate as I salivated through the night.  Saturday morning, I ran out to grab all the ingredients and began preparing the kebabs.  I bought pork belly that was prepped for Korean barbecue so that the slices were very thin and therefore stackable on a skewer.  I chose this approach rather than large cubes for two reasons:

1. Thinly sliced meat takes much less time to marinate.
2. I thought that thinly sliced meat would cook a little more evenly, rather than having a cube burn on the outside but still be raw on the inside because heat had not yet penetrated.

The marinade was prepared by combining half of an onion minced, minced garlic, minced ginger, laoganma (老干妈) chili peppers, some cayenne pepper powder, mirin syrup, vinegar, and a little soy sauce.  Many of the ingredients were substituted based on what I have at home versus what I envisioned to be a good American Sweet Onion sauce.  Because I usually do not cook Western food, I lacked ingredients like ketchup, apple vinegar, apple juice, and mustard powder.

The kebabs were designed to maximize the juices of the meat and the properties of the vegetables in a way that made sense to me.  Doing some online research, I initially learned that most folks do not stress too much about the design of their kebabs since this is supposed to be one food item that is quick and convenient.  Regardless, I thought I would try implementing what I have learned about ingredients.  The pork belly was always tightly cupped between two concave slices of onion to encourage the enzymes in onion juice to seep into the meat while the meat juices flavored the onion.  Following that, I placed two layers of green and red bell peppers to refresh the palate between bites of rich pork belly.  While grilling, I brushed the leftover marinade onto the kebabs generously on all sides to ensure that the flavor soaked into the kebabs.

The finished result was kind of beautiful and mouth-wateringly delicious, but the credit goes to the meat.  As one website said, making the best kebabs starts with selecting the cut of meat, so I gave myself a good head start by picking pork belly.  Next time, I would spice up the kebab even more as the chili and cayenne was mostly lost in the tangy sweetness of the sauce.

There is No American Cuisine, But There Could Be

A friend shared this video with me from the BigThink YouTube channel.  I think it is the beginning of a very curious discussion about what could be an American cuisine.  Every other nation and/or congruous culture has had many hundreds, even thousands of years to develop a cuisine that was heavily driven by environmental factors.  America has existed for slightly over two hundred years.  In this video, Dan Barber starts to get into the idea that the lack of similar environmental pressures in a temperate, bountiful land has created a food culture of excess but no creativity.

Tots, Beer, and Grilled Cheese

A daily rotation of beers on tap, 24 of which are served each day.  Killer tater tots.  Heavenly Grilled Cheeses.  There may not be a better reason to come to Falls Church.

Before a friend in college re-introduced me to the tantalizing world of grilled cheeses, I did not have a very high opinion of these sandwiches.  At that point, my only prior experience with grilled cheese was the nasty chunk of questionable dairy product on bread that American grade schools serve for lunch.  Living in Cleveland for a long time, I did not even manage to visit Melt Bar and Grilled.

But this piece is not about the Melt.  It is about an unassuming 21+ dive bar tucked away between two corporate office buildings in Falls Church, VA.  I am writing about Spacebar.

I have been there a few times now, and each time I visit, there is something new to try.  Of their grilled cheese specialty, they serve 20 different house sandwiches.  If you do not like what you see on the menu, you can customize or put in an order with your own sandwich build.  Below are three sandwiches from the two times I stopped in.  Because the interior is pretty dim, some of the photos are grainy.

Bacon, roasted red pepper with feta and mozzarella on sourdough.

Pulled bbq pork, crispy fried shallot, sharp cheddar on rye.

Roast beef, garlicky sautéed spinach with feta and mozzarella on sourdough.

And of course, the meal would not be complete without beer (not shown) and their amazing tater tots.  Next time, I want to try out their other tots item, tatchos, which is tots with any cheese or ingredient on their menu added on top.