Bag Inside of a Bag, Wing Sauce, and Driving on Monday After a Rainy Weekend in LA
What I am grateful for this week
A long week for me. I was on set producing a shoot while battling the beginnings of a cold. Lots of Tylenol and caffeine. There was a version of this SGOW that was 5x as long. The wing sauce I mention later opened up a big can of worms for me. I wish I could put it all together, but I! am! tired!
Bag Inside Of a Bag
Maybe it’s redundant. Maybe it’s an excuse to buy more smaller-bags — pouches, sleeves, covers — to fit inside more bigger-bags — totes, packs, sacks. The bag inside of the bag is a teenager’s bedroom; the separation gives the contents inside meaning. Feeling organized, I possess a healthy certainty, knowing that inside my bag is a smaller bag and inside that is exactly what I need.
re: Bald Eagle Cams
The fledglings never hatched. One of the eggs was stepped on, so it became breakfast. Spring continues.
Wing Sauce
Last weekend, a couple friends and I went to Yangban in the Arts District. The streets were deserted. Coachella, the Christmas of the spring, was in full effect, and it left the city delightfully sparse.
The meal was jam-packed with really delicious riffs on classic Korean foods — sujebi in a beurre blanc sauce, doenjang-infused caramel, $30 worth of various banchan highlighting local produce1. The standout dish of the night was not actually a dish. It was the simple, bright “kimchi sauce” that accompanies the restaurant’s take on a soy-glazed Korean fried chicken.
In a night full of inversions, this was the smartest one. A classic hot wing sauce, like Frank’s Red Hot or Louisiana Crystal, is a thin, vinegar-forward, and pepper-heavy liquid that goes well on just about everything. These same attributes are mirrored in kimchi and, by extension, kimchi juice. This is a well-thought out marriage of cultures. The sauce homages classic Southern fried chicken in a cool, nuanced, and very Korean way2. The simplicity is what makes it so surprising.
Today, I grabbed a bottle of Louisiana Crystal and a jar of overripe kimchi; this is my best approximation of that sauce.
Yangban-inspired Kimchi Wing Sauce
Yield
1/2 cup of sauce
Time
Quick
Ingredients
4 tablespoons of overripe kimchi juice
2 tablespoons of hot sauce, preferably Louisiana Crystal
1 tablespoon of lemon juice or red wine vinegar
Directions
Mix kimchi juice and hot sauce in a medium bowl. Taste immediately and adjust using the lemon juice or red wine vinegar. The final flavor should be tart and funk-forward. Serve with wings or fried tofu.
Driving on Monday Morning After a Rainy Weekend in LA
Subsiding storms, green mountains. Traffic.
$30 for non-refillable banchan… We learned well from the white man.
THE FUNK! SO MUCH FunK!