Recipe for ground beef topping

This is how I made the ground beef that went into the bi bim bap for lunch today. I wanted to make enough so that I could have extra for kim bap (Korean rolled sushi) and bento lunches next week. I was very pleased with how it turned out; it was just a little salty. So, here's basically what I did. It's kind of like soboro, a Japanese ground meat dish that can be made with all kinds of meat, from chicken to beef to tuna. Although it is different from my recipe, you may want to look at Maki's recipe for basic meat soboro for additional information.

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground beef
3 Tablespoons Japanese cooking wine (ryorishu), or mirin
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
about a 1-inch piece of ginger root, minced
sesame seeds, salt, and pepper to taste

In a medium bowl, mix the beef with the cooking wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil, and set aside to marinate for at least 30 minutes, or in the fridge until you're ready to use it (I just let it sit out while I made the other toppings and rice for the bi bim bap).

In a wok or frying pan, heat a small amount of oil (vegetable or peanut oil) over high
heat. When oil is hot, add the garlic and ginger and stir, cooking until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add the marinated meat and stir until it is pretty much broken up and starting to brown. Leave it in the wok pan, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has pretty much evaporated. Add the sesame seeds, black pepper and salt towards the end.

When the meat is completely cooked and the liquid is cooked off, taste and adjust for seasonings.

Serve as the ground beef topping for bi bim bap, or as a bento protein item, or in kim bap, etc.

"Bi Bim Bap" Lunch at Home

It continues to be freezing cold here. Last night, on his way back from the laundry room, M. encountered a man snoring in the stairwell. I wouldn't want to sleep outside in weather like this!

This afternoon we visited the Natural History Museum and its Korean and Rastafari exhibits. The celadon pottery they had on display in the Korean exhibit was beautiful. I also like the sentence that supposedly kicks off many Korean folktales, "Back when tigers smoked and rabbits talked to dragons..."

Although my original plan had been to make a lunch to take with us on our outing, it ended up making more sense to eat lunch at home, so I made my version of bi bim bap (Korean mixed rice):



and the dish, once mixed:



Contents:
-Short grain brown rice topped with...
...carrot kinpira (original recipe on Just Bento, here
...seasoned ground beef (for a description of what I did, see here)
...handful of pea shoots from our CSA that we just picked up this morning
...a soft fried egg, placed on top of the pea shoots so that they cooked a little
...kimchee

Such a beautiful and satisfying bowl of food! I wasn't hungry at all for the entire afternoon. This would fit well into a bento box; the only change that I would make would be to hard-cook the fried egg.

Heading out tomorrow for the opening inaugural ceremonies at the Lincoln Memorial. Freezing in a crowd of hundreds of thousands and eating kimbap in front of a jumbotron, can't wait! (In fact, this is one of those things that I would seriously regret if I did not at least try to attend it...)