Soup to Nuts 08/06/2011 11:20pm

First, a heads up. Tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon, the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul will be releasing 500 bulls onto the streets of the Twin Cities. Plan your travel accordingly. So! All the shows I saw on Saturday afternoon made me cry. I started with Knit One/Purl the Other. Just before the show started, I looked around the house and saw a woman who appeared to be on her own, in the second row at TRP, knitting. She was knitting at the show about knitting. And when the show ended I checked back in with her and she was beaming and clapping madly. That made me happy. What made me cry were little moments between the characters that sort of took me by surprise. I would be sitting there thinking well this is fine and that's fine and those two are charming and I hope that yarn doesn't get tangled, and then I'd be crying. Just because two people liked each other or something. Then I saw Tempests. I'd seen Bard Fiction two years ago, so I was expecting it to be fun - clever, funny and maybe some cool moments - and it was fun. But then parts of the story snuck up on me. The little girl, the redemption of an old villain, the gruff soldier who tries to do the right thing. And it made me cry. Reykjavik, I learned, is impossible to pronounce. Remember when Iceland went bankrupt? I should have bought it. Anyway, Christopher Kehoe does a beautiful job circling around one man's crumbling life, each time swooping in a little closer. And again, I was surprised by little moments that choked me up. Maybe I need a nap. But what does any of this have to do with food? These three plays made me think of seafood. Tempests takes place on an island. Reykjavik is on an island. So seafood. And knitting, I've always thought, must have originated among fishing folk who made nets. I should look that up. No, I won't, because the truth might wreck my theory and we don't want that, do we, Tea Party? Now, in Knit One, a story told by one of the characters involves bulgogi. Bulgogi is a Korean dish of beef, marinated and grilled. I've made something like that. It was delicious. And then I've made several variations using chicken, pork, fish and...seafood! So find yourself a good bulgogi recipe and try it with shrimp or scallops. (I'd link to one that was recently in the New York Times, but I'm doing this from my home computer and I only have dial-up so there's no linking. I'll add links later. Check back.) The marinade is strong, so you might pull back a little so as not to overwhelm your seafood. And only let it sit in there for half an hour or so as the grill gets ready. Then grill your seafood over very hot coals for just a minute or two on each side. Serve wrapped in a lettuce leaf with a little rice, some grilled green onions, cilantro if you like cilantro, a little sweet garlic chili sauce, kimchi or an Asiany cole slaw, and some ripe mango. Sweet Garlic Chili Sauce: In a sauce pan, dissolve a quarter cup of sugar in half a cup of rice wine vinegar over medium high heat. Let it come to a good boil, then turn of the heat and throw in as much minced garlic and hot chili peppers as you think you can stand. Let cool and serve. Asiany Cole Slaw: Chop up some cabbage. Salt it way too much and let it sit in a colander to drain for a few hours. Then rinse it and squeeze it out. Or salt it just enough and move on. Add lots of chopped scallions, cilantro, and sliced hot and/or sweet peppers. Whisk together some rice wine vinegar and soy sauce with a blob of mustard. Add minced garlic and ginger and a good big pinch of sugar, then toss that with the cabbage.