Muir Woods and Brother's Korean BBQ, Inner Richmond, SF.

It was my first trip to Muir Woods! I can't believe how long it took me to get there, but there are some great hikes and it was actually very beautiful with the mist (not the greatest weather!). The hikes are nice, too, but we were all starving! Haha.. classic.

After talking about Korean food we decided to actually get some. We went to Brother's, which I'd been to once before and liked. They give a good array of banchan.

Spicy pork and kalbi. These were very good.

This was the worst tofu kimchi I've ever had. EVER! You normally can't go wrong with tofu kimchi, but this wasn't even the right dish! :( Here is the Google Images link to tofu kimchi.. Yea.. you can see why I would be confused.

Food coma!

A big thanks to Tony for a fun day. :)

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Asqew Grill, Upper Haight, SF.

Chicken skewer with couscous.

Steak skewers with mashed potatoes.

Southwestern salad. Didn't love it.

BBQ burger. This was okay.

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Kalbi dinner at home, Spokane, WA.

We grilled up tons of my parents' amazing kalbi for my last night in town!

This is what I call hardcore marinating. :)

Mmmmm. This was the first batch.. there were many more to come!

Apologies for the blurry photo. This was the spread, with banchan and kalbi!

Here is one of my ssams! Ssam is the traditional way to eat Korean BBQ. You take a piece of sang-chu lettuce or a sesame leaf (some even layer up with both!) and you create your own lettuce cup of sorts. My ssam (pictured above) included rice, ssam-jang (spicy soy bean paste), walnut banchan and a piece of kalbi. Sooo great!

When my parents and I cook we just use our hands and taste along the way so the below recipe isn't exact, but it's one I found online that sounded the closets to how we make it!

Kalbi Recipe
Ingredients:

• 2 lbs beef short ribs (flanken cut)
• 1/2 cup light soy sauce
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons sesame oil
• 3 tablespoons garlic (finely chopped)
• 3 tablespoons rice wine (or Soju)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 green onions (finely chopped)
• 1 cup Coca-Cola

Directions:

1. Place the ribs in a dish for marinating.
2. Mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl, being sure to add the coke last, as it will foam up a bit when added to the other ingredients.
3. Pour the marinade over the beef and massage it in for about one minute.
4. Cover and let marinate for at least 4 hours turning at least once.
5. Heat gas or charcoal grill to medium hot.
6. Remove the ribs from the marinade and place on the hot grill.
7. Grill the ribs, turning once, to desired doneness, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.
8. Serve with rice and a variety of Korean side dishes such as kimchi, namul (trio of vegetables) and musangchae (white radish salad) for a delicious Korean meal.

Alexa's birthday BBQ at Artillery, Mission, SF.

Backyard BBQ birthday party at Artillery AG!

The fabulous birthday girl miss Alexa with Aldo! I adore the crew at Artillery!

Lots of amazing food! Great guacamole, pico de gallo, BBQ meats, chips, donut holes, etc! :)

Memorial Day BBQ, grilling with City Hall in the distance--what could be better?! :)

The grill! Mmmm!

Corn salad.

Kimchi.

Tzatziki.

My chips and blue cheese bacon dip were here, too!

Grilled chicken with chili Lizano sauce.

Sherbert, Sprite cocktail.

The grill: part 2! :)

My sausage! Amazing. I used a bit of my bacon blue cheese dip as spread, then put down the hot link and tons of caramelized onions--mmmm! Superb! :)

Cherry pie and my peach amaretto ice cream for dessert! :)

Such an amazing BBQ to lazy away Memorial Day! Pat has such a lovely rooftop and rounded up a fine bunch of friends to celebrate and eat all day with!

Garlic, bacon blue cheese dip.

I didn't use exact measurements, but I used a lot of heavy cream, some cream cheese, blue cheese, sour cream, a little flour, garlic, garlic salt in a medium pan and kept stirring it over medium heat.

Baaacon.

Mix in the bacon, add some freshly ground black pepper to taste. I should have topped this with some chives and bacon bits, but was in a rush and forgot! The dip was awesome though! :)

Off to the BBQ! :)

Peach Amaretto lime ice cream sorbet.

My amazing friend Pat was hosting a Memorial Day BBQ! I wanted to do a side and a dessert, so I thought I'd do bacon blue cheese dip as my side and then some ice cream as my dessert. I was so in love with my roommate's Almond Ice Cream that I thought I'd make that for the BBQ! I thought I'd also do a Peach Amaretto Lime sorbet.

4 peaches in the food processor.

Pureed! Meanwhile you make a simple syrup and mix it with the pureed peaches. I then decided to add lime juice, almond extract and amaretto to make this like a SoCo Amaretto Lime cocktail sorbet!

FAIL! The machine didn't take with all of the Amaretto I put in there! I realized it just wasn't going to work, so I figured--the flavors in my two ice creams both go well together and both have amaretto so why not mix them and see what happens? Thus, I set out on a new path to make a Peach Amaretto lime ice cream sorbet. Or creamy sorbet. :)

Almond ice cream mixture. I mixed the sorbet mixture into this and made two batches of ice cream in my ice cream maker.

The final product! A hybrid ice cream sorbet! :) It was very tasty. The flavor mix kind of made it taste like cherry for some reason, but in a good way. :)

*This was a big hit at the Memorial Day BBQ! :)

Peach Amaretto Lime Ice Cream Sorbet

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup water
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp lime juice (can add more later to taste)
• 3 tbsp Amaretto liqueur
• 4 peaches, sliced
• Ingredients for the Almond ice cream.

Recipe:

1. Make simple syrup by dissolving sugar in water.
2. Add lime juice and Amaretto liqueur. Mix well and let cool.
3. Puree the peaches.
4. Mix the peaches and simple syrup in a large bowl.
5. Create mix for Almond ice cream.
6. Combine peach mixture with Almond ice cream mixture with a whisk.
7. Since this is two mixtures, pour half in the ice cream maker and turn on for 20 minutes.
8. Place other half of mix in tupperware and place in freezer.
9. When the first half is done, put it into tupperware and freeze. It will be a more runny than normal ice cream from an ice cream maker.
10. Place second batch in ice cream maker and turn on for 20 minutes.
11. When the second batch finished, pour it over the first batch, or in a separate tupperware container.
12. Freeze overnight--this will take awhile to freeze because of the alcohol, so freeze it for as long as possible!

Sad about Stone Korean, Financial District, SF.

Korean beer and soju (some Japanese, too) at Stone Korean! This brought back some Korea nostalgia. :) I bought the Groupon for Stone Korean last week and was SO excited to try it! I've heard a lot about it and have heard good things.. sadly, I was very disappointed. :(

Get this, I had to ask for some banchan! What kind of Korean restaurant do you have to ask for banchan at?! The banchan was good though and I think it was more that we had a bad server.. She didn't once check on us and we ended up just walking up and getting our own water refill, because she never came by.

We did the Ssam for Two (쌈밥) dinner and chose the spicy pork (above) and kalbi. Ssam is just a barbeque style meal where you make lettuce wraps. You get take a piece of lettuce, and maybe a little rice and meat with Korean hot bean paste. It's so yummy and you can really put anything you want inside of the wrap. It is the traditional way to eat Korean BBQ.

I thought the spicy pork was going to be spicy pork bulgogi, but it was actually samgyupsal (삼겹살), which is like Korean bacon. It was okay, but was sliced too thick and could have been spicier. The kalbi was too tough, and was cut too large to make ssam. Traditional Korean restaurants will give you scissors to cut the meat as you grill, but here they didn't even provide a fork and knife. We ended up asking for a set, but they should know these pieces are way too big for ssam.

With the Ssam for Two, you get to choose between soondooboo and kimchi jjiage (김치찌개). We chose the kimchi jjigae. Traditionally, when you get ssam you get the banchan, and then meat with ssam, then rice and soup. That way, you don't have too much going on and the soup doesn't get cold. They brought everything out at once though and it was just too much. Everything ended up going cold, too. The soup was pretty flat and awful cold.

I don't know if LA just upped my standards for Korean, or what, but I just don't buy the hip ambiance and location over good Korean good done right. I do want to try the happy hour menu and see how the small plates are, but I wouldn't go back for entrees. I do want to like this place though, so I hope the small plates are better!!

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Korean kalbi and kalbi taco BBQ at my brother's place, LA.

So many amazing plants in LA! It seems like every yard has fruit trees! So great.

Big, bright, beautiful flowers were everywhere, too. :) I don't think I could stand having that nice of weather all the time, but the flowers sure do make you smile.

My brother's awesome backyard, where we had a Korean BBQ with the wedding party.

Table setting. :)

Daddy, manning the grill. :) My mom and dad are too funny--they made the kalbi in Spokane, with my aunt, froze it and flew it down for this BBQ. My parents rock. :)

Korean taco set up: salad mixed with sesame-ginger dressing, cilantro, sesame salsa, sesame seeds. My brother put this together and it was excellent! I guess for the sesame salsa you just mix salsa with sesame oil--easy!

A light yummy salad one of the bridesmaids brought.

상추 traditional lettuce wrap for the kalbi, with red pepper paste sauce.

Yummy!

My taco was amazing. Although, I don't like tortillas.. Hahah. So the next one I had was sans-tortilla, but with some rice, more like a naked burrito. It was scrumptious. I'm definitely going to make these at home. :)

Roadside BBQ with fresh roadside strawberries.

Pulled pork sandwich and sweet potato fries.

After our beautiful Land's End/Sutro Baths hike, Erika and I decided to make a pit stop for some Roadside BBQ. It was gorgeous out so we got takeaway and ate it up on my roof!

I got the pulled pork because it's on the SF Big Eat 2010. It was all right, but not my favorite. It could have used a bit more slaw, but the bread is fantastic! It's like an English muffin--a very underrated bread, if you ask me! I'm going to start making English muffin sandwiches now. SO exciting.

As for my side, I was debating between the sweet potato fries and the mac 'n cheese. I was "good" and got the fries, but they weren't the crispy kind that I looove! They were all right, but I definitely prefer criiiiispy fries!

On our way home, Erika bought a box of strawberries from a guy on the corner. One box for $11, two for $20. I kid you not, this was the most perfect looking box of strawberries that I've ever seen. And they were soooo fragrant, ripe and delicious!

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