If you like variety, you might be a little weary of the onslaught of all these barbecue-get-togethers. If that's the case (or even if you're totally fine with lots of invariable barbecues), you might try different marinades for the meat you slap onto the grill. America has lots of amazing barbecue sauces, but so does East Asia, where I came from. I recently made a Korean-style barbecue marinade at home, and it was soooo good I'm going to share it.

To make about a cup of Korean BBQ Marinade, you'll need the following:

• 1 onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 100 cc soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 50 cc sake
• 50cc mirin
• 2 teaspoons toban djan (Chinese chili bean paste)
• 2 tablespoons miso
• 4 dried prunes

The key to a well-rounded marinade is to sautée the onion and garlic thoroughly, until their stinging raw smell dissipates. First, purée the chopped onion and garlic cloves in a food processor, and fry them in heated sesame oil, slowly on low heat. Meanwhile, mix all the other ingredients in a separate bowl, and add chopped prunes in the mix. Purée this mixture as well. When the raw smell is gone and replaced by that nice, sweet-ish aroma of cooked onions, add the mixture into the saucepan. Mix well and cook for about 15 minutes, on low heat. Stir occasionally to prevent burning.

I marinated strips of beef rib meat in this sauce for a few hours, fried them in a pan, and added some more of the sauce at the end of the cooking. Using shredded daikon, shredded carrots, mizuna and boiled spinach, I made this Korean barbecue into a slightly healthier fare, but I could have accompanied the meat with grilled veggies as well. The sauce had that spicy, sweet and complex flavor of the pre-made Korean BBQ sauces that I sometimes crave, so I was very happy.

To be specific, the Korean BBQ sauce I'm talking about is the Korean BBQ sauces made and sold in Japan. Korean BBQ is called “yakiniku” in Japanese, meaning, simply, “grilled meats.” Yakiniku shows a heavy influence from the Korean-style BBQ; its origin is considered to be the grilled meats that the Korean people, who had been brought over to Japan for forced labor during the WWII, cooked for themselves after the war. (Discriminated and massively underpaid, they used cheap or unwanted organs.) This grilling method and marinade soon spread, and developed into something uniquely Japanese over the years. The boundary is decidedly blurry; Some considers yakiniku to be Korean, others see it as a part of the Japanese everyday food. One thing for sure is that the yakiniku marinade in Japan deviates a little bit from the "real" Korean BBQ sauces used in Korea; nevertheless, it is the less authentic Japanese ones that I thirst for.

Since all the ingredients have been cooked with lots of salt and sugar, the sauce should keep in the fridge for at least a week. I know this marinade requires a lot of "exotic" condiments (like toban djan and mirin), so if you have any question about where to get them, what the hell they are, and what to substitute them with, feel free to leave a comment! (Or, you can be totally lazy and get the pre-made ones in Asian grocery stores, too. Pre-made ones are pretty tasty, and I used to use them exclusively, although I might not go back to the habit now that I've discovered the joy of making it myself.)

Now...what I want is a charcoal grill and an apartment with a porch to cook the meat marinated in this sauce. And a beer. Then my life would be sooooo peachy.

I've been locked up in the apartment, writing my last term papers for a few days now. Yesterday, I skipped lunch. I was completely papered out and didn't feel like cooking anything. That was a bad idea--by the time Patrick came home, I was pretty grumpy. Even worse, I forgot that it was Patrick's birthday. (Low blood sugar can do a multitude of harm to you...it's not that I stopped loving my lovely boyfriend...you're reading this, Patrick, right?) At any rate, no lunch is a bad idea particularly for me.

So, today, not to repeat the same mistake within 24 hours, I decided to make something quick for lunch. I remembered that we had a large bag of frozen Kimchi (or Kimchee--spicy Korean pickled cabbage) dumplings in the freezer. The dumplings came from our friend H Mart in Niles, a gigantic Korean supermarket with rows after rows of frozen Korean and Chinese dumplings we have yet to try. I also had half a daikon radish and a handful of wakame (Japanese seaweed you most likely find in your miso soup), so I went for a quick dumpling soup.

Because I'm a lazy chef (especially when I'm cooking for only myself), I didn't bother making my own broth. I simply boiled some water and threw in a teaspoon of Chinese chicken soup mix (the red can in the photo). This brand isn't my favorite--this soup has an unpleasant odor of (probably) chicken, and the artificial flavoring in it tastes like, well, artificial flavoring. So I added a bit of minced ginger to tame those unwelcome flavor elements.

Then I cut up the daikon into thin, fan-shaped bits, threw them in, and while they danced in the hot water, I chopped up some green onions. I also washed the preserving salt off the fresh wakame and cut them into small pieces. When the daikon bits were close to being done, I took out a few frozen dumplings and slid them into the boiling soup. (It takes about 6-7 minutes for the dumplings to cook from the frozen state.)

Toward the end, I added the green onions and wakame bits, ground some black pepper into the pot, and drizzled a bit of sesame oil (a must for any Korean dish!). All in all, it took me about twenty minutes from the start to the end, and that includes the time-consuming photographing part, so you can safely bet on cooking this delicious soup within fifteen minutes.

The dumplings could have been a bit spicier, but otherwise, it was a very satisfying meal. My brain is up and running again, and I won't forget Patrick's birthday--only that it'll be a year from today! I'll have to keep my brain well-fed for quite a long time now...

The salmon pink of the kimchi showed beautifully through the half-translucent skin of the dumplings. Yum!