FatManSeoul

Yukhoi is where it’s at!  Don’t let its reputation as an iffy selection at the wedding hall buffet line stop you from enjoying its sweet pleasures.

There’s few foods in the world that feel as luxurious as an elegant serving of Korean-style steak tartare, and even fewer that are as easy to make.  But while the effort is small, the reward is enormous.

Fatman-style 육희

You’ll need:  a few hundred grams of red meat, an asian pear, an egg or two, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, powdered red pepper, garlic, and green onion.

First, get thyself to the local butcher and ask them for 300 grams or so of some nice, lean red meat.  Beef is the most common, but lamb, venison, or even horse (어머나!) will work if the meat is very fresh, and very high quality.  Heck, you could probably do this with a nice bit of emu steak or ostrich or kangaroo . . . Now that you have your nice slice of meat you need to take out your sharpest knife and attack:  You want to take out every bit of gristle and fat that might obscure the beautiful crimson flesh before you wrap it up and chuck it in your freezer.

Eventually you should remember that you  have a nice, expensive hunk of beautiful meat sitting in the back of your freezer with the leftover pot roast and frozen mandu and that Tupperware container filled with something you don’t really recognize anymore.  Hopefully you’ll do this within a few hours, and not several years from now.  Pull the mostly frozen meat out and start slicing it into pieces just a few scant centimeters thick (that’d be something like 1/4″ slices for you slowpokes still not using metric measurements).  Then slice your slices, so you end up with matchsticks of meat.  This is a great opportunity to gross out small children by telling them you’re going to serve them earthworms for dinner.   And as long as you’re running around with a knife in your hands, you should also shred up some green onion or scallions, and smash a clove of garlic or two into mush.  Vent any remaining frustrations on a small pile of pine nuts by chopping them finely.

Now, in a bowl you’re going to throw together:

a splash of soy

a drizzle of sesame oil

a pinch of sugar

a dash of powdered red pepper

and mix that all together, along with everything else so far except for the meat.

Now comes the time of reckoning:  You must make a choice, and the wrong choice will lead to disaster, fire, famine, and the loss of face.  The right choice will lead to parades in your honor in Gwanghwamun.  Chose wisely.

You may

a) use one raw egg yolk from a duck or chicken

b) a couple of quail eggs

In either case, you may

a) mix it into the sauce

b) reserve the egg to set on top as a very elaborate garnish, to be mixed in right before eating

c) try to do b, but break the yolks and pretend like you always intended to take option a, secretly realizing that you’ll never get to compete on Top Chef.  Cry into your pillow at night.

While you’re contemplating this monumental decision, peel, core, and chop an asian pear into matchsticks.

If you’re going to be inelegant, just throw everything – meat, sauce, eggs, pears – together into a bowl and mix.  Your hand will get very cold from the now only semi-frozen meat, but remember that suffering builds character.

If you’re going to be very 1960’s Vincent Price cocktail party fab, mix together the meat and sauce.  Heap that mass of flesh on a  plate, making a depression in the top of the mound.  Place the egg in the depression, and proceed to waste precious minutes arranging the pear into fantastic patterns around the meat.

Whatever presentation method you’ve chosen, strew a few pine nuts over the top.   Otherwise the Iron Chef will automatically win this kitchen battle on presentation points, and you’ll be forced to retire in shame, train your knife skills while sitting under an icy waterfall, gather legions of evil sous chefs, and try again.