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High Fashion Frozen Yogurt

Sleek, stylish, cool, green--these are words that come to mind when I think of Tutto Tutti, a new Korean-owned frozen yogurt place on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

It adds so much class to an undistinguished mall at the corner of Melrose and Mansfield Avenues that it almost seems out of place.

An interior designer and art team from Korea collaborated on the look. (Too bad they couldn’t have done something for the market plastered with trashy liquor ads next door.)

The owners, husband and wife team Seung and Soo Kim, worked for months to perfect yogurts as elegant and subtle as their shop. Soo, a chef, has an Italian Korean restaurant in Seoul. She became enchanted with gelato while in culinary school in Italy.

The initial flavors--the shop opened in January--aren’t so much Italian as Korean.

Super Bee blends honey with finely ground pure Korean ginseng root. Freckle Snow White isn’t freckled at all, although made with black sesame seeds. It’s so delicately colored that you have to look closely to distinguish it from other flavors. Double Wonder (sea salt and caramel) is just as subtle.

The base for all of them is organic fat-free yogurt, as verified by a tub of empty Horizon yogurt containers at the door.

The creamiest flavors are White Velvet (vanilla), Seven Grains and T, which combines Ceylon tea, fat-free milk and honey. New flavors contemplated for summer include mimosa, sangria and perhaps one that combines ginger and mint.

The toppings are as fresh and healthy as the yogurts—a puree of blackberries and strawberries; balsamic marinated fruit, fresh blueberries, strawberries and balsamic raspberry puree. The closest the shop gets to candy toppings is caramelized walnuts.

Tutto Tutti opens at 7 a.m. The ideal yogurt to have at that hour would be Seven Grains, because it offers a jolt of protein and fiber. The grains include black beans, black rice, black sesame, oatmeal and wheat, with a bonus dash of seaweed.

The real reason for opening so early is coffee, based on espresso made with organic beans. There’s iced coffee too, produced by an elaborate glass contraption that swirls about like high fashion lab equipment. In 10 to 15 hours it transforms cold water into coffee that is acid free and low in caffeine, yet richly flavored--healthy coffee to drink with healthy yogurt.

Flavored yogurts are $4.50; Virgin (plain) yogurt is $4; toppings are $1 to $2, depending upon the number of layers desired.  Tutto Tutti is located at 6803 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Tel: (323) 939-9424. Open daily from 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

A Craving for Kimchi

Talk about consuming passions. No, not the usual man-woman thing, but a deliciously spicy passion, an intense addiction, an ecstatic love gratified morning, noon and night with—kimchi.

I’ve not met anyone with more devotion to this fiery hot, garlicky Korean pickle than my friend Clark Akers. Not even the Koreans I know speak of it with such awe.

Clark always had kimchi on hand at home. He would eat it for breakfast with bacon and eggs, at lunch with a sandwich or soup and at dinner instead of a salad. He adored it so much that I think he would have eaten it even with apple pie.

When we would meet for lunch in Koreatown, Clark would demolish all the kimchi that came with the banchan, ask for more, then order more to go. One of the highlights of his life was when a Korean friend brought him a jar of his mother’s homemade kimchi.

Clark has now moved on to other realms where, I hope, the kimchi is as heavenly as he deserves. I never eat Korean food without thinking of him, and I prize the one tangible memento that I have—his recipe for kimchi soup. Clark brought me a taste one day, and it was as good as he claimed. Luckily, I asked for the recipe.

Here it is, in memory of my friend, Clark Edgar Akers.

CLARK'S KIMCHI SOUP

1 quart water
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
½ small red bell pepper
2 to 3 green onions, including some of the tops, thinly sliced
1 slice bacon, cut in bite-size pieces
2 tablespoons frozen green peas
2 mushrooms (any type), sliced
1 beef bouillon cube
1 (3-ounce) package ramen noodle soup with seasoning packet
1 1/3 cups cabbage kimchi, cut in short lengths if in long pieces

Place the water in a large saucepan and set aside.

Cut the carrot in half lengthwise, then crosswise in ¼-inch slices. Cut the celery stalk in half lengthwise, then crosswise in ¼-inch slices. Quarter the bell pepper lengthwise, then cut crosswise in ¼-inch slices.

Add the carrot, celery, green onions and bacon to the saucepan of water. Bring to a boil, then boil gently, uncovered, 15 minutes.

Add the bell pepper, peas, mushrooms, the bouillon cube, the  ramen noodles and their seasoning.  Cook 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the kimchi and cook until heated through, about 2 minutes.

Makes 4 side dish servings or 3 servings as a main dish.

Feasting on Kalbi Chim

Getting invited to a home-cooked Korean dinner is a rare honor any time. But this night, the main dish was to be one of my favorites--kalbi chim, a succulent, slightly sweet and irresistibly good dish of braised beef ribs.

My friend Sejung Kim had offered to cook. Knowing how much I like kalbi chim, she had consulted with Seong Yeon, a friend in Seattle who is expert at this dish.

The ribs, rice and a salad would have been enough, considering that it takes three days to make kalbi chim properly. But no. Sejung cooked everything else she could think of to make an extraordinary Korean meal.

The food was beautiful, like art work. Just one example—kamja bokkeum, strands of potato and bell peppers woven into an artful design.

We started with a soup. toenjang jjigae, based on a delicate broth made from anchovies and kelp. Into this, Sejung had put cubes of beef and potato, tofu, zucchini, shiitake mushrooms and onions. And of course toenjang, which  is fermented soy bean sauce--Korean miso.

Most Korean restaurants serve marinated bean sprouts, sukju namul, and Sejung had made them too, seasoning the blanched sprouts with rice vinegar, sugar and sesame seeds.

We also ate dried young fern shoots (kosari) in an appetizing blend of soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds and green onions—basic seasonings for much Korean food.

There were sliced Persian cucumbers marinated with spicy red pepper paste (kochujang), garlic and sugar. And white kimchi, mild and delicate rather than spicy with red pepper.

Plain rice would have been fine, but Sejung had made an ornate dish of short grained white rice combined with both sweet and regular brown rices and black beans.  This is called kongbap, kong meaning beans and bap cooked rice.

The vegetable dishes may sound simple, but some of them required hours of preparation. The kosari for example, had to be soaked, rinsed, boiled, soaked again, then sautéed.

The highlight, of course, was the kalbi chim (sometimes the dish is spelled kalbi jim,  kalbi tchim or galbi jjim), ornamented with Asian red dates and chestnuts, and sprinkled with  pine nuts and hairlike strands of dried red chile, called silgochu. 

In Korean restaurants, I usually drink Korean beer, but Sejung likes Sangiovese or Shiraz with Korean food, and by chance I had brought along a Mosby Sangiovese 2004.

We finished with fruit, a pretty dish of white nectarines in syrup flavored with white Zinfandel.

The following weekend, with the taste of kalbi chim still fresh in my mind, I went to a Korean market, bought the ingredients and started the three days of preparation.

The results were sumptuous. The procedure isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Much of the time is devoted to marinating the meat to concentrate the rich flavor. 

I’m not the only one who thinks that kalbi chim  is a wonderful dish.  In his column The Minimalist in the New York Times Dining In section (February 13, 2008), Mark Bittman  ranked  French style braised short ribs and “the standard Korean kalbi jim”  as “stunning classics.”

The kalbi chim that Sejung makes is far from “standard” though.  Its intricate flavors and painstaking preparation place it on a level that, as far as I’m concerned, is in the stratosphere.

SEJUNG’S KALBI CHIM

4 pounds kalbi  (beef ribs, labeled big beef ribs in the Korean market where I shopped), cut in short lengths
½ cup grated Asian pear
¼ cup sake
3 tablespoons sugar
½ cup soy sauce
½ medium onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons minced green onion
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons sesame seeds
½ cup water
1 inch ginger root, peeled and cut in thin slices
15 jujubes (Asian dried red dates)
15 fresh or dried chestnuts, optional,
1 tablespoon pine nuts
Fine dried red chile strands (ask for silgochu in a Korean market), optional 

Start the preparation 2 days before serving. On the first day, place the ribs in a large bowl or dishpan and cover with cold water. Let stand 2 hours.

Drain the ribs, rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Place them in a container with a lid. Grind the pear in a food processor or blender. Combine the pear, sake and sugar with the meat and mix well. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator 1 hour.

Combine the soy sauce, onion, green onion, garlic, sesame oil and sesame seeds in a food processor or blender and process until pureed. Add to the meat. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, place the meat in a Dutch oven. Add ½ cup water, cover and bring to a boil. Add the ginger root slices. Reduce the heat, cover and cook over medium low heat 3 hours.

Meanwhile, soak the dates until softened enough to slit them and pry out the seeds. After 2 hours, add the seeded dates and the dried chestnuts, if using, and cook 1 hour longer.

Let the meat cool. If any bones have separated from the meat, remove them and discard. Return the meat and cooking juices to the washed storage container. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove as much of the congealed fat from the meat as possible. Turn into a Dutch oven and reheat to serving temperature.  Transfer the meat and juices to a large heated serving container. Sprinkle with pine nuts, and with dried red chile strands if you are bold.

Makes 4 to 5 servings.

Goat Stew and Barbecue on Oakland's Kimchi Row

Just try to get a table Friday night at Sahn Maru Korean B.B.Q. in Oakland.

My group of seven was relegated to a back room reserved for private parties from the looks of the disco ball overhead. But we were grateful for any place to sit.

I gather it is always this way. Friends who live in Oakland were hunting for good Korean food. When they saw the crowd at Sahn Maru, they tried it out, and now they eat there every Friday. Never mind the wait for a table. The food and the friendly service make up for that.

Sahn Maru is located on Oakland’s Kimchi Row, a stretch of Telegraph Avenue that is lined with Korean restaurants and bars, a Korean market, housewares store and  community center as well as African restaurants and, next door to Sahn Maru, a Japanese restaurant.

Of course the menu features barbecue, because that is what most non-Koreans want. But Sahn Maru has another specialty, black goat.

And so we ordered heuk yum so tang, a sizzling hot stone pot filled with goat meat, fragrant sesame leaves and green onions in vibrant orange broth. One of three goat dishes on the menu, it is spicy and strongly gamey, perhaps too gamey for anyone who doesn’t like lamb. But I thought it was delicious. No wonder the restaurant is proud of this dish.

There’s no table top barbecuing at Sahn Maru, so our barbecued beef was cooked in the kitchen. Rather than the usual glistening, charred bul gogi, it seemed  to have been sautéed, which is what Koreans might do at home, and was a pallid gray.  Still, it was flavorful, tender and satisfying.

Braised beef in a mild, slightly sweet sauce, another Sahn Maru specialty, came with clear noodles, vegetables and chewy tubular rice cakes, a nice blend of flavors and textures.

The restaurant offers a good variety of banchan, the small plates of such things as marinated fish cake, broccoli, eggplant, spicy-sweet marinated radish, bean sprouts and kimchi that accompany Korean meals.  So our table was covered with food, including an enormous zucchini and jalapeno pancake on a sizzling flat skillet, rice and barley tea.

Afterwards, we were given small white cups of cold, sweet cinnamon-ginger tea with a single pine nut and slice of Korean red date floating on the surface, a  refreshing way to end a highly flavored meal.

The name Sahn Maru means top of the mountain, according to the menu. Kimchi Row is quite flat, but we did have a summit sort of experience that night as far as the food and the nice feel of the place were concerned.

Sahn Maru Korean B.B.Q., 4315 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA 94609. Tel. (510) 653-3366.

Spicy Pork in Koreatown

I had heard that Koreatown Plaza was a good place to eat, so I toured the food court there the other day looking for a likely spot for lunch.

So many people were ordering at Gamjabawi that it seemed the place to try.  The women behind the counter were setting out trays as fast as they could, and dishes were emerging from the kitchen at great speed.

One of them looked so delicious I had to try it. “What is that?” I asked the woman at the cash register. “Broiled pork slices, number 7,” she said, busy with a handful of orders.

Illuminated photos overhead show each of the 26 dishes on Gamjabawi’s menu.  The names are in English and Korean, making it easy for anyone to order, unlike one stall, where the menu is only in Korean.

Luckily I had chosen a table close by. My tray was so loaded with bowls and dishes that I could hardly carry it, even a short distance. The heavy iron plate with the pork was sizzling hot, adding peril to the trip.

Spicy and a little sweet, the meat was mixed with glistening strands of onion, green onions, shredded cabbage and a fragrant soft green that I think was sesame leaf. Sesame seeds were sprinkled over the top. And, yes, it was as delicious as I had anticipated.

A plate of banchan, the side dishes that always accompany a Korean meal, held cabbage kimchi, marinated bean sprouts and crisp chile-hot cucumber slices. Sticky, short-grained rice was packed to the brim of a shiny metal bowl, far more than I could eat.

There was soup--clear fish broth with seaweed slices, making this a sort of surf and turf meal.  In another bowl, chunks of daikon floated in a cold, clear, tangy-sweet liquid that helped cool my mouth between bites of spicy meat.

The big room bustled with shoppers taking a break for lunch.  Next to my table, parents and kids tackled a spread of food; a young couple pulled up shiny brown noodles from black stone bowls, and women gossiped over cups of hot barley tea.

Prices are low, servings are generous, and the food, at least what I had, is as good as my Korean friends had told me.

Broiled pork slices with steamed rice and side dishes (No. 7) is $7.99 at Gamjabawi Korean Restaurant, No. 128 in the International Food Court of Koreatown Plaza, 928 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles CA 90006. Tel: (213) 387-5581.