yakiniku

bleh, I haven't had time yet to photograph the lovely things I'm doing for my giveaway, so you can consider this a fluff post;

The other weekend my family and I went to a yakiniku restaurant; it's basically a korean restaurant where you can cook you own food! Yakiniku is a Japanese word meaning "grilled meat" but Koreans have adapted this cooking technique and have added their own cultural flair. In a yakiniku restaurant, each table has a little oven in the middle, and when you are seated the host or hostess lights the burner. Then you go up to a buffet line and pick your raw food; you can usually get pork, chicken, beef or tofu marinated in Korean sauces (like soy sauce and chili paste with ginger and sugar), as well as various types of vegetables such as watercress, lettuce, onions, mushrooms, zucchini. You can also get kimchee, which is a marinated cabbage that has been fermented with chili paste, fish sauce and other goodies! Once you select your items, you can start cooking your food yourself... it's a great way to converse with people because you are all waiting for you food to cook (plus, I think it's more fun to cook when you don't have to do all the prep and cleanup!). My favorites are the mushrooms an chicken (yummy!) but the traditional Korean yakiniku food is a little beef rolled up in lettuce leaf with lots of freshly cooked garlic cloves. The whole affair was a blast! So if anyone ever asks you if you want to to a yakiniku restaurant, give them an emphatic yes!