Girls Cooking Night: Food on Sticks

For our food on sticks theme, I wanted to try to recreate my favorite Korean street food - the meat-wrapped dokbokki (rice cakes) on a stick.

I mixed the ground pork with minced ginger and garlic, soy sauce, egg, sesame oil, and pepper, the night before. I bought the dokbokki at the Asian market (it's the shaping of them I think that's the real pain in the ass of making your own), and even though I soaked them in warm water for about 20 minutes, they still didn't really soft enough to skewer on the sticks. I got them onto the sticks, but they didn't really stay on.

So I ended up giving up the stick idea, and just threw them on the grill as meatballs, and served them with my own made-up sauce concoction: roasted gochujang, Shaoxing wine, and sweet chili sauce. Brownie grilled lamb kofte (and yes she got them on sticks) and Melissa grilled asparagus on skewers.

Kim provided a salad (not on a stick), while Debbie made mozzerella s'mores and for dessert - frozen chocolate-dipped fruit skewers.

The next day I cooked my leftover dokbokki the traditional way, stewed in hot sauce. Usually there would be a lot more hot sauce, but I've been very parsimonious with the sauce I brought back from Korea. That's until I find a grocery around here where I can get it! Luckily I can get my fix of dokbokki right here in Princeton at Nassau Sushi Bagel - they make it nice and spicy in red sauce with fish cakes and hard-boiled egg.