Letter of Recommendation: Snack-Dinner

A snack-dinner is something you shouldn’t be eating for dinner but is nonetheless exactly what you need for dinner. Snack-dinners I have loved include Cheez-its and wine, popcorn, chips and salsa, any form of breakfast-for-dinner, and anything in the Korean yasik category (translates roughly “midnight snack”). Buldak (“fire chicken”) is my favorite yasik: it’s rice cake slices toasted until crispy-gooey and then stir-fried with chunks of chicken that have been marinated in an unctuous, spicy gochujang sauce; the whole mess is covered in mozzarella and broiled to bubbly brown-spottedness. There are lots of recipes out there, including an intriguing one involving Sprite, but as I never seem to have that on hand, I use Maangchi’s recipe. Pictured here with the tail end of my latest batch of makgeolli, which turned out great and involved rose petals from my garden and a drop of rosewater. Snack-dinner heaven, folks.