Since my last visit to South Korea in 2017, I have come to crave the comfort of Korean-style rice bowls: rice topped with little heaps of meat, vegetables, and a soft-cooked egg. Yolk permeating rice is one of life’s great pleasures.
The photo at the top of this post shows a fine example awaiting my consumption at moto-i, Minneapolis.
“Mixed rice” (or, in Korea, “bibimbap”) is a perfect tip-the-fridge meal. As long as you are not an authoritarian cook, it can be ridiculously easy to make a quick meal that’s a nod to bibimbap.
Last Saturday, this was our method:
We sautéed strips of leftover pork carnitas we’d saved in the freezer, shiitakes from the farmers market that morning, and sugar snap peas that had been in the fridge long enough. Toasted, flaked almonds entered the scene along the way.
We pulled the flavor towards Asia with garlic, fresh ginger (which we keep in the freezer), fermented fish sauce for savory/umami, and soy sauce for saltiness and more umami.
Had we wanted heat, we would have added chili paste. Sometimes I tip sherry on cooked mushrooms to deglaze the pan and add an element of sweetness.
Plating was simple: spoon rice into a bowl, top with separate heaps of pork, mushrooms, and sugar snaps. Homemade refrigerator-pickled red onions contributed sourness, acid, and crunch.
We topped the lot with a soft-poached egg. Fried is good, too.
The final flourish was a few drops of toasted sesame oil for a mild nutty flavor.
We dug in with the hashi (chopsticks) I had purchased years ago at the Bonimoriya department store in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan. A meal is more than just sustenance.
Note: pork carnitas is another tasty dish with a poached egg atop, and a great application for leftover rice we keep in the freezer.