Bulgogi Beef

BULGOGI BEEF!
I always feel like I have to yell bulgogi beef. It's almost as fun to say as it is delicious. Sweet, salty, beefy and amazing. If you've ever been to a Korean Barbecue, I hope you tried it. If you haven't, it's time to find one near you. Korean food is delicious. Try everything on the menu, especially if you get to cook it on a grill at your table.

Anyway, I can't always go out for Korean food, but with the magic of making my own bulgogi beef, I can get a darn good approximation at home.

Bulgogi beef is made with some special Asian pear that is not regularly available in the states. Some recipes replace it with sugar, but it's really not the same. It also doesn't have the acidic properties of juice. I make mine with apple and pear and I think that it gives a similar flavor. Also natural sugar hooray!

Mexican Chorizo Monkey Bread

I love the color the avocado gives this!

Thanks to the folks on pinterest, I've recently been exposed to images of monkey bread. For those of you who have not been sucked into the addictive world of pinterest, let me explain.

Traditional monkey bread can be described as a cinnamon roll cake. Little balls of dough are covered in cinnamon sugar and baked inside of a loaf pan, cake pan, or bundt pan. When it comes out, the little balls stick together, but can be pulled apart easily instead of slicing. I've never eaten traditional monkey bread, but it sounds pretty delicious.

The variety that I've seen on pinterest most often is pizza monkey bread. In this incarnation, the dough balls are stuffed with mozzarella and pepperoni and then dipped in marinara sauce. This seemed like an excellent ideas, but  I didn't have pepperoni and I did have some pretty tasty Mexican ingredients. My variation is a little bit different, stuffed with Mexican chorizo, corn, onion, tomato, cream cheese, avocado, and mozzarella. I made some cumin sour cream to dip it in.