Grease splashes and burns your skin.

It worked.  I woke up this morning to an email from my cousin, titled "Shin Ramen Pork Belly".  He told me to make edits, but no need - Cousin Paul delivers in a way that only he could.  Without further ado... ladies and gentlemen, my cousin Paul (insert applause and cheer):

Grease splashes and gets on your clothing.  Grease that splashes and gets on your clothes makes you smell like a fatty.  The grease that I am referring to comes from a part of a magical animal that produces the most delicious grease of all...PORK BELLY!  When I think of pork belly, better known as ssamgyupsal to our Korean readers, I vividly think of fried up ssamgyups (preferably crispy) alongside slices of fried garlic or even fried kimchi, stuffed it into dduk bosam or even lettuce wraps all served with an iced cold shot of soju (as I write this entry, I'm drooling...just sayin).  But after reading David Chang's Momofuku book, I was inspired. Inspired to take the pork belly to the next level. 

I've come up with some recipes before that's not worth mentioning but something about what I imagined was going to be special.  This must be how KanYe feels when he lays down a track.  At any rate, David Chang started his career by opening up a ramen shop in NYC.  In his ramen shop, Noodle Bar, he incorporates a lot of pork.  So as my wife was reading me some pages out of his book in bed, that's when I came up with this brilliant idea.

A slab of pork belly, dry rubbed with Shin Ramen flavoring.  That's it.  Simple, but extremely flavorful.

All you need is a slab of pork belly (2 1/2 lbs) and some Shin Ramen (4 packs).  serves 6.

• Rub the ramen seasoning, including the other vegetable packet (crush all dehydrated vegetables) all over our porky friend.  If your pork slab has pork skin on it, its simple to remove if the pork is still cold and you have a sharp knife.

• Cover the marinated pork belly and let sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
• Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
• Place the pork, fat side up and let it cook for 30 minutes.  Then flip it over and cook it for another 30 minutes.
• Once its golden brown and crispy on both sides, turn the heat down to 250 degrees and cook it for another hour.
• Remove the pork and let it sit in the refrigerator until its cold.
• Once its cold, slice the pork belly into 1/2 inch thick cuts.
• Warm up a cast iron skillet and fry up the cuts of pork belly on each side.

As our cuts of pork belly are getting a second treatment of frying, start boiling water in a large pot for the noodles.

For the sauce for the noodles you will need:

• a bunch of scallions
• a heaping table spoon of minced garlic
• a heaping table spoon of minced ginger
• a generous amount of soy sauce and sesame oil
• black pepper
• table spoon of sugar

Mix all this into a bowl and let it sit for a few minutes.

Since I had some onions and baby bok choy handy, i fried those up in a wok to put into my noodles.  You can put any type of veggies you like.

As soon as the noodles are done cooking, drain the liquid and throw the noodles into the veggies that you had cooked up.

Then throw in the ginger scallion sauce.

Toss together.  Place the crispy pork belly on top and there you have it.  Shin Ramen Pork.  I know, my buddy told me that I need a new name for this.

Thanks to Nary for sending me the Momofuku book, thanks to David Chang and his wild culinary imagination and thanks to the brave souls that tried my dish.  If it wasn't for all of you, this dish might have never been created.  Thanks to my wife for always being supportive in my weird culinary concoctions.  Hope you guys enjoyed this guest entry and I hope that you all try this dish out.  Feel free to send me feedback.  I've got thick skin.  Like pork skin.  

Love, peace and pork grease.

I totally love working out.

Confession: I was supposed to go to the gym after work today, but I didn't.  I even changed into my "workout clothes" (my raggedy law school tshirt and non-Lululemon pants) before I left the office so that I would have no excuses.  No excuses!  But I totally found an excuse.  So now I'm sitting here with a glass of Shiraz and updating my blog.  A much nobler objective, no?

This post is dedicated to my cousin, Paul.

That's him - in his '88 Seoul Olympics t-shirt.  If you can't tell, he's from the Republic of Korea.  And that's me next to him, with a wonky left eye, swollen from a bee sting.  The rest of this picture is actually pretty awesome.  And by the rest of this picture, I mean our other cousin (strategically cropped out to maintain his dignity) who is wearing his ultra cool overalls with an ultra huge pee stain.  Our cousin Boo who stands like Mama Bear behind us is the only normal person in the picture. This picture pretty much sums it up: We. Are. Awesome.

Paul and I live on opposite ends of the West coast but we make an effort to talk to each other regularly and keep each other posted on our culinary adventures.  His most recent culinary adventure involved ramen powder and a big slab of pork belly.  Intrigued, yes?  The deal was that he would try this recipe out and make his grand appearance on this blog as a guest blogger.  Oh so where can you find this amazing ramen powder and pork belly recipe?  Right here as soon as he sends it!  Yea that's right - I'm calling you out!  WHERE'S MY GUEST BLOGGER ENTRY, PAUL??

But in the meantime, here's what I've been cooking/ eating.

I love cookbooks.  Especially if the book has an equal ratio of photos to recipes.  David Chang's Momofuku cookbook falls into this category.  It goes without saying that both Chang and his recipes are amazing.  In fact, for Paul's birthday this year, after much pondering and consultation with his better half, I decided to get Paul the Momofuku cookbook and 4 lbs. of Benton's bacon.  He and his better half read Chang's beautiful prose on torching pig head hair before they go to bed at night.  Take notes, kids.  This is the key to an everlasting marriage.

Anyways, one weekend, I decided that I was going to try out a couple of his recipes.  I would start with a couple of the tamer recipes.  There would be no removing of animal hair or shaving of foie gras.  I decided on "Roasted Rice Cakes", made with his "Korean Red Dragon Sauce" and "Pan-roasted Bouchot Mussels with OS".  To my fellow Koreans and dduk-bok-gi (Korean rice cakes boiled in a bath of red pepper sauce) eaters in general, you will never be able to eat regular dduk-bok-gi again.

It was delicious and for the most part, I think it came out the way it was supposed to.  I definitely reduced the amount of sugar used for the Korean Red Dragon Sauce.  No disrespect, Mr. Chang, but no one needs to be eating that much sugar.

I know I said this was a dedication, but really, it was more of my unapologetic campaign to shame my cousin into sending his blog entry.  I hope it works.  But let me be sincere for a moment and say how thankful I am to have a cousin who shares my love for everything delicious and has a guest room for me in Seattle.  There is not enough Benton's bacon in this world to express how lucky I am to call you my cousin.  And as you guys begin this new chapter of your life, I know that you'll be fine.  And any time you feel like you're not, I want you to look at that picture and know that you're a bad ass mf.