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Our first menu item this week is ostensibly the "entree" dish, though since this menu is designed to be served all together it's more like an important part to the even more important whole. SOY-GINGER PORK SHOULDER would stand very well all on its own, but for our Korean spread this week it locks down that rich, savory, comforting portion of our home cooking. I'll be doing this "roast pork" style... tender, but not shreddable like pulled pork. This keeps things distinct and hearty, and I take my roast pork seriously. I'll be cooking this with some onions and peppers too for a touch of contrast, and reducing the cooking liquid to a nice rich glaze that's punchy and flavorful. Take this and serve it over rice and it's great... but when served with our other menu items too, it's a real treat.

BUTTERED SALT-AND-PEPPER SHRIMP sounds a little boring, I know. We put salt and pepper on everything, so what makes this special? Well, first off, butter-poached shrimp are great anyway. But the real secret is my house-made, jazzed up salt-and-pepper seasoning, which lets the vibrancy of the shrimp shine through and accentuates that with black pepper and a few other warm spices, with butter to tie everything together. This will have a good amount of black pepper... not too much, but enough to realize that black pepper is a complex spice in its own right. This week's menu is all about varied flavors and how they work together, and preparing the shrimp in this way lets it take on the role of "simple and flavorful" while still being rich enough to play nicely with our first menu item. I'll be serving this with a little spicy ssam sauce on the side as well in case you like it hot, but even without the spicy sauce this is a great way to enjoy shrimp.

What the heck is a BANCHAN? This one word encompasses an impressively vast array of dishes. At its most basic, banchan is a collective name for small side dishes served along with cooked rice (if you've been to a Korean BBQ joint, it's those little dishes filled with random tasty things.) What those dishes are is up to the chef, and this week we are going for a variety of vegetable preparations. I'm not going to give you a flowery description of all 5 banchan because we all have things to do, so here's the rundown of what I'm planning*: english cucumber with a slightly spicy marinade, bean sprouts with a garlic dressing, blanched spinach seasoned with sesame oil and sesame seeds, golden potatoes cooked low and slow with soy sauce, and my personal favorite... a very non-traditional kimchi slaw that my friend's grandmother used to make for us kids. The variety of textures and flavors here is really exciting, and all of these individual dishes are designed to be served alongside the next menu item, creating a very festive tapas-like table of tasty things to share.

These are the banchan dishes as I plan to make them. But if I'm at the market and a certain vegetable looks just fantastic or another one doesn't seem great or isn't available, I may make some minor changes. For instance, if the watercress looks way better than the spinach, I might switch it out. You've been warned.

Dessert is always a tough one with Asian menus, but not this week. COCONUT & BLACK SESAME MARBLE CAKE is a rice flour based "pound cake", and while I can't say that I've specifically seen this exact cake at a Korean bakery, I would be unsurprised and delighted if I did. Rice flour keeps this cake super tender, and coconut milk along with coconut oil keeps things super moist too. This cake would be fine just like that, but swirling in some sweet black sesame paste takes it to a whole other level. If you like your desserts straightforward but interesting, this is just the thing.