@KogiBBQ Style Asian Fusion Tacos

Like so many of my blogs, Twitter has pulled me away from posting on a regular basis. Properly formed sentences or even paragraphs are gone and in their place, 140 character statements along with the occasional TwitPic. High time to get back to some real blogging and get up to date with some pretty exciting stuff.

Even though I have made a few meals since my last post, I am just going to skip to the most recent. Pictures of the other meals can be found at http://www.twitpic.com/photos/failkitchen. There were some good ones, especially the berry pie and our Thai / Indian inspired meal of Tandori Chicken, Spicy Pork Skewers and Cold Peanut Noodle Salad.

Last week, we took a brief road trip to California and I had really wanted to try and track down a KogiBBQ Truck. They have become something of a Twitter phenom @kogibbq, as well as a hip eats in LA. However my plans were dashed as no one had the energy to make the hour long drive from our lovely spot on the beach.

Rolling into this weekend, it was just too damn hot to grill, running around 114 in Vegas, so I needed something easy and indoors for the Sunday meal. I don't remember if I had the idea before or after we hit the store, but I decided to try my blind attempt at making an Asian fusion taco based on the KogiBBQ cuisine.

I picked up some cole slaw mix, standard with cabbage and some carrots along with some thin sliced beef for the filling, a couple of store marinades, chipotle lime and a sesame ginger. My thinking was the chipotle for the meat, the sesame for the slaw mix. Other ingredients, I probably had at home, oh and flour tortillas (I read Kogi uses corn).

So here is what Kogi lists on their web site, regarding their Korean Short Rib signature taco. Marinated beef, grilled and caramelized, topped with sesame-chili salsa roja , julienne romaine lettuce and cabbage tossed in Korean chili-soy vinaigrette, cilantro-green onion-lime relish, crushed sesame seeds, sea salt, garnished with lime wedge, orange wedge and red radish wedge.

The next day after studying that a little closer, I realized I need some extra produce, I picked up some green onions, daikon radish, bean sprouts, cucumber, cilantro and jalapenos. My first thought was to do a take on the cilantro-green onion-lime relish. I would classify what I made as more of a salsa, then a relish, but it tasted good.

Basically I finely diced a chunk of the daikon radish, about half a cucumber, two green onions, cilantro, one jalapeno, added the juice of one lime, some rice wine vinegar, mirin, sriracha and chili garlic paste. It was spicy but the cucumber and radish gave it a nice balance.

I used my packaged slaw mix, threw in some bean sprouts, mixed in some sriracha, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and some sesame ginger sauce. I wanted to make this a bit more on the sweet side to balance the heat from the other mixture and the meat which was marinade in the chipotle lime sauce.

Chopping done it was just a matter of quickly grilling the meat on the Foreman Grill, slicing it up and making tacos. That was it, done and done, pretty tasty I thought and a good jumping off point to expand on the idea and make it again for friends.

All the pics can be found on Twitpic and I want to thank @KogiBBQ for the kind shout out on Twitter.