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I recently experienced Korean Barbecue for the first time, and I'm not sure I'll ever be quite the same. For days afterwards, I could taste the spicy, sweet, marinated short ribs between my teeth. The heady scent of kimchi haunted me; I'd walk around corners and swear I could smell it. Korean barbecue is soul food. It's comforting, the flavors are deep, and it's all based around communal eating.

The concept of Korean barbecue is a large cooking vessel in the center of the table, sort of like a grill, which is covered in different meats and vegetables that have been marinating in various things. As the meat finishing cooking, it is fished from the grill with greedy chopsticks and consumed, sometimes wrapped in crunchy lettuce, sometimes in thin sheets of pressed rice.

After my meal with an old friend who spent a year living in Korea -- he took us to a spot in LA that had "the best marinade" in his knowledgeable opinion -- I've been scheming with Nick about how we could recreate some of the experience in our home kitchens.

Nick's a little more experienced when it comes to Korean barbecue, having already explored the marinated short ribs (also known as Galbi), and tended to a fierce kimchi obsession for a couple years now. But we're both newly and equally fascinated with the rest of what makes Korean barbecue special, besides the meat: the side dishes.

Known as Banchan (or Panchan), these are sundry little tastes and bites that complement the meat in Korean barbecue. The banchan are as important as the meat itself: they cut the richness and round out the meal so you don't finish feeling full of meat and sick, but rather satisfied and suprisingly light.

The most well-known banchan is simple cabbage kimchi, which inevitably comes out at every restaurant (most restaurants will simply serve the banchan they're best at making). But there are many other things, dishes based on egg, other kinds of fermented vegetables, thinly sliced radishes to clean the palate, crunchy lettuces, sticky-sweet potatoes. The options are endless.

Pajeon is a common panchan, a simple egg-and-flour pancake served with a wonderful dipping sauce. The traditional ingredient is scallion, though lots of other vegetables will make their way into recipes such as zucchini or even seafood.

The simple solution was our goal. We didn't want to load our first pajeon down with lots of extraneous stuff. We wanted the texture and flavor to be just right: crisp on the outside especially along the edges, soft and slightly gummy in the center.

Even without the barbecue part, this thing is filling all on its own, a satisfying, simple meal unto itself.

Once we had blanched and peeled the tomatoes we chopped them, strained the seeds, and simmered it for twenty minutes into a simple sauce. Then I made my gastrique, which involved no measuring -- maybe 1/4 cup of vinegar and 3 tablespoons of sugar -- and a quick boil into something thick and syrupy.

I have been thinking about bratwurst for days.  What started as an idea for a simple cookout on my little Webber Grill has now completely consumed me because I simply can't find the right recipe.  The question eventually led me to walk into Hot Dougs on a recent Wednesday and ask Mr. Doug himself what was in the sausage. 

But first, do you know?  What is it, exactly, that makes a bratwurst a bratwurst?  I know this sounds like an obvious question, but really...think about it.   I've been eating them since I was a little kid and they've always been huge off-white sausage stuffed into a bun and slathered with mustard.  I know what to expect when I eat one.  And they certainly don't look like a hot dog.  But I don't honestly know what it is that makes them unique.  Is it the combination of spices, certain kind of meat, or the cooking method? 

I thought the answer would be simple when I began this search.  I started in the natural place, with Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie.  His bratwurst recipe is a mixture of pork and veal with the "traditional sweet-spice bratwurst flavors of nutmeg and ginger".  But as I read on I realized that there was something awfully different about the resulting sausage.

The ultimate fresh bratwurst, this is one of the richest sausages here, given it's generous use of cream and eggs.

Say what?  I wanted the sausage that is stuffed into a casings, poached in beer, and then grilled until crispy on the outside.  The more I looked into it, the more I realized he was probably describing the original German version of the sausage, which I'm absolutely sure is delicious.  But it's not what I wanted. 

I realized that what I wanted was a Wisconsin bratwurst, the kind that is stuffed in a big bun, and topped with sauerkraut and grainy mustard.  You eat these fresh off a grill with a beer in your hand.  Unfortunately, though there is loads of praise for the Wisconsin specialty, there isn't much talk about what goes into them.  In fact, most recipes out there are for how to cook pre-made sausages, not how to make them from scratch.  That's when my search really began. 

Is store bought tahini best?

The goal is to make hummus at home with no shortcuts. I’m an apprehensive hummus fan at best, having dipped one carrot stick too many into something chalky and pasty, which claimed to be hummus but was purchased quickly from the grocery store. You could say that I’ve been ruined by the silky smooth texture of real hummus, the kind the comes with a sheen of rich olive oil on top, which is spiked by lemon and maybe a sprinkling of paprika. That's hummus.

It shouldn’t be that hard, and I wondered if I could beat store-bought hummus in both price and taste. Hummus is nothing more than a mixture of chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon, garlic, and salt. To make this homemade version I figured I'd pick up a cheap bag of dried chickpeas and I'd be halfway there. Besides the olive oil, lemons and garlic (which I’d buy at the store), all that stood between me and perfectly homemade hummus was tahini. Surely I could find some way to make this at home.

According to various sources, tahini is just ground sesame seeds. What could be simpler? But recipes are especially elusive. When you Google "tahini recipe" what mostly pops up are posts for tahini sauce, which is regular tahini mixed with lemon and garlic. That’s fine, but how about a recipe for regular tahini paste? Can this actually be made at home?

Sesame seeds toasting for a failed experiment.

I found this random recipe, which quickly toasted sesame seeds, and then ground them in a food processor with olive oil. It sounded fantastic, but I was unfortunately left with a horribly chunky mess that tasted and looked much like sand. No pictures are necessary. I also stumbled onto this recipe from the Kitchn, which actually managed to look worse.

Whom could I turn to for help?