Summer Grilling Correspondence begins now.
Your Winter Stew Correspondent has a new role.
I have retired my thick-bottomed stewpot (and my favorite stew-eating sweater and mitten set). It is time to move outside, into the sunshine, to eat with friends and neighbors and birds and bugs and all the great living things of summer. Are you ready? Man, so am I.
Over the next few months, we're going to grill some easy and delicious things together. It will be great. Here are the rules:
1. The stuff we grill will be easy. We shall not grill anything that can't be composed more or less from scratch ingredients in a park or on a rooftop with a basic grilling setup. Or anything that becomes prohibitively difficult after two or three (or four or five) tallboys.
2. It will be casual. We shall not grill anything that requires an elaborate serving setup. This correspondent believes that grilled things are best eaten hot off the grill, more or less family style.
3. It will be a little out of the ordinary. Hot dogs and burgers will be forever delicious, but here we shall plunge boldly into the world of grillables beyond. (But remember, every BBQ that happens within these shores is in their debt — please pay homage to hot dogs and burgers from time to time.)
The Korean-style short-ribs (kalbi) we're starting with satisfy all the aforementioned commandments. Kalbi is a fatty, rich cut that becomes very flavorful on the grill--they'll be both unexpected and familiar to anyone who loves beef. Plus they're bite-sized, they cook in less than 10 minutes, and each even comes with its own bone-in handle. No utensils required.
They were also the first thing I grilled this season. (I'd just come back from a trip to Hawaii, where I'd eaten close to my weight in grilled kalbi at a very wonderful place and still wanted more.) They turned out so delicious that I think everyone should get to eat them. So let's do this.
