Hey everyone!  I have to go back to my roots when it comes to the winter time.  I get to be home with my family, make great food, and well, Asian cuisine has to be at the top of my favorites list!  I am Chinese and growing up, I always had rice or noodles with family style dishes to eat with them and honestly, there are times when all I crave is rice paired with delicious meats and vegetables.  Though I am not Korean (but I love their cuisine), I’ve always wanted to try making Korean BBQ at home and I did!  If you’ve ever been to Honey Pig or Shin Chon (both are on Rt. 40- Baltimore National Pike), it’s that style of cooking in your very own kitchen!  It’s very simple and a great way to satisfy that rice craving.  No more dialing for take out, try this recipe at home or in your apartment!

Bulgogi- Korean marinated beef with onions

Makes 4-6 servings                              Prep time: 10 minutes

Marinade time: at least 30 minutes

Cook time: 10-15 minutes

Be sure to look out for my tips along the way!  They will be starred (*)

Ingredients:

• ½ – ¾ lb of beef tenderloin or beef rib eye (sliced thin)

*You can find this at H-MART or LOTTE (both on Rt. 40- right off of exit 15B on 695) or if you find a great cut of meat in your local market, ask your butcher to slice it thin for you! If you don’t like red meat, you can substitute this dish with chicken.

• 1 medium sized yellow onion or half a jumbo yellow onion, sliced (see picture below)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• Half of a Fuji apple, diced

*You may substitute the apple with Asian pear, a whole kiwi, ¼ of a mango, or a small chunk of pineapple.  The fruit helps tenderize and break down the meat while adding sweetness to it- trust me, it’s a must!

• 5 Tbsp of soy sauce (see picture below)

*Available at all local grocery markets- specialty/international foods aisle

• 2 Tbsp of rice vinegar (see picture below)

*Available at all local grocery markets- specialty/international foods aisle

• 3 Tbsp of sesame oil (see picture below)

*Available at all local grocery markets- specialty/international foods aisle

• 2 Tbsp of Chinese cooking wine (see picture below)

*Available at H-MART, LOTTE or any Asian specialty foods market

• 1 Tbsp of salt
• 3 Tbsp of sugar
• 4 pieces of ginger root, sliced (optional)

*If you enjoy the flavor of ginger, go ahead and mince it and incorporate it with the marinade!

• ¼ cup of scallions, diced (optional)
• ¼ cup of chopped cilantro (optional)

All the sauces used for the bulgogi marinade!

Directions:

1.     In a large mixing bowl, combine all above ingredients together.  Reserve half the scallions and all of the cilantro for the very end.

2.     Using your hands, mix the ingredients together, making sure that all of the marinade is coating all of the meat and onions.

3.     Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it stand in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

*The longer the marinade sits, the better it gets.  I recommend preparing the marinade and combining it well in advance.  For example, prepare it the night before and letting it stand in the refrigerator overnight imparts a lot of flavor into the meat.  I chose to make it in the morning and letting it marinade all day (about 5-7 hours).

The meat after 5-7 hours of marinating in the fridge!

4.     Take the bowl out of the refrigerator and let it stand for about 10-15 minutes prior to cooking.

*This allows the meat to come to room temperature— super cold meat on super hot skillet shocks the meat and ends up in tough bulgogi!

5.     While letting the meat rest at room temperature, heat a large, non-stick skillet to medium-high heat.  Coat the skillet with a light colored oil (such as canola, vegetable, or sunflower oil).

Coating the skillet with canola oil

6.     Sear the meat and onion mixture for about 10 minutes until all pieces are cooked through—brown and slightly charred on all sides.  The onions should still have a bit of a bite to them!

* I recommend using tongs to cook the meat and onions.

Dropping the meat and onion mixture into the hot pan

I can’t wait!

Almost DONE! =)

7.     Serve with rice, green leaf lettuce (to wrap your bulgogi in!), and your favorite vegetables.  Enjoy!

The changing events in Egypt will likely have historic implications both for the country itself and the Middle East in general.

For decades, this tense and very combustible region of the world has been grappling with a dangerous standoff between Israel and Arab states. Egypt has been central solving the problems between the two warring sides for 3 reasons:

• It is the most populous Arab state
• It borders on Israel
• Though it fought wars with Israel in the past, it has a peace treaty with the country today.

While uncertainty rocks the region, the hope of long term peace is on hold, as the cartoon above points out (cartoon by KAL).

Hopefully, the tense situation will resolve for the benefit of Egyptian citizens…and in time for all the citizens of the Middle East.

Believe it or not, there are some people who actually watch C-SPAN.

A few of us at USDemocrazy are included, so there were mixed emotions when we heard they missed an opportunity to make their coverage just a little bit more exciting.

Since the mid 1990s, the network has been trying to gain approval to use their own cameras in a new place on Capitol Hill. The House of Representatives does not allow C-SPAN to record its gatherings.  Last week, Rep. John Boehner became the latest Speaker of the House to deny C-SPAN’s request:

I believe the American people — and the dignity and decorum of the United States House of Representatives — are best served by the current system of televised proceedings provided by the House Recording Studio

The video broadcast currently shown by C-SPAN comes from cameras operated by Congress itself.  This setup only allows certain angles and avoids showing the reactions of Representatives when their colleagues are speaking.  In the past, members of Congress have disagreed over the use of the cameras.

Every Speaker since Newt Gingrich has banned C-SPAN from using their own equipment in the chamber.  There was a clear sense of frustration in the network’s statement on the most recent rejection:

We’re disappointed to learn that despite 32 years of experience with televising its sessions and in an age of ubiquitous cameras in political life, the House of Representatives has chosen not to allow C-SPAN’s cameras into its chamber to cover its sessions

Where do you stand on cameras in Congress?

BONUS: Chad Pergram of Fox News writes nose picking is among the real reasons C-SPAN’s cameras aren’t allowed.

The UMBC Linux Users’ Group (LUG) will hold it's Spring Installfest on Friday February 18th from 10:30am to 5:00pm on the Commons Main Street. If you've ever wanted to try Linux but didn't know where to start, bring your computer and LUG members can help you install Linus and ensure that your hardware, including wireless, fingerprint reader, and webcam, is working.

At the Spring 2011 installfest, they will be installing Ubuntu version 10.10. If you would like assistance installing a different release or distribution, bring install media.

The installfest is open to anyone ans people with all skill levels, from complete novice to expert, are welcome. It's a great opportunity to meet people in the local Linux community.

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Solitons, Self-Induced Transparency,
and Modelocking in Quantum Cascade Lasers

href="http://www.cs.umbc.edu/people/faculty/sergei-nirenburg/">Professor Curtis Menyuk
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

1:00-2:15pm Friday, 18 March 2011, ITE 227, UMBC

Standard semiconductor lasers operate in a limited wavelength range, below about 4 microns. Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) that operate in the mid-IR and far-IR have important applications to medicine, environmental sensing, and national security. While short pulse lasers (~100 fs) are available for standard semiconductor lasers, that is not the case for QCLs. Standard passive modelocking is hard to do in QCLs because of their long coherence times and short gain recovery times. We propose a fundamentally different approach, based on the self-induced-transparency (SIT) effect, that turns these weaknesses into strengths. Solitons, modelocking, and SIT are all reviewed at the beginning of the talk.

Curtis R. Menyuk was born March 26, 1954. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in 1976 and the Ph.D. from UCLA in 1981. He has worked as a research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, VA. In 1986 he became an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and he was the founding member of this department. In 1993, he was promoted to Professor. He was on partial leave from UMBC from Fall, 1996 until Fall, 2002. From 1996 – 2001, he worked part-time for the Department of Defense, co-directing the Optical Networking program at the DoD Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences in Adelphi, MD from 1999 – 2001. In 2001 – 2002, he was Chief Scientist at PhotonEx Corporation. For the last 20 years, his primary research area has been theoretical and computational studies of lasers, nonlinear optics, and fiber optic communications. He has authored or co-authored more than 220 archival journal publications as well as numerous other publications and presentations. He has also edited three books. The equations and algorithms that he and his research group at UMBC have developed to model optical fiber systems are used extensively in the telecommunications and photonics industry. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the IEEE. He is a former UMBC Presidential Research Professor.