Perilla Recipe Experiment

For my 3'x3.5' plot (in a previous post I might have said it's less than 3 sq feet but I measured it today - I'm not so good with eyeballing measurements) I have an abundance of perilla.  When I started planting my mother brought over the cutest little seedlings and we kind of ignored the fact they'd grow to be about 4' tall and they really should be given 8" to 10" from each other.  I later gave some to a friend in Brooklyn with ample garden space, and some more to another friend in Jersey City also with a garden that gets plenty of sun.

Perilla leaves, depending on the variety, can get to be about the size of a medium sized hand.  Mine aren't there yet but I've been getting a lot of recipe ideas from creative food blogs and I came up with something I thought would be easy to make using ingredients I already have.

Here's the filling:

Stuffing each leaf:

Break two large eggs into bowl and season with salt and pepper:

Heat up a little oil in a skillet and dip each stuffed leaf into the egg before laying out in pan.  Here they are sizzling away, my kitchen smelling delicious:

Finished:

The result was golden half moons of deliciousness.  Use more soy sauce than you think to get perfectly seasoned meat.  Try to resist eating them right out of the pan, otherwise you might get squirted.

There are variations of this recipe I want to try next week when more leaves will be ready for picking.  Try replacing the beef for pork or chicken, and adding Thai curry spices and nam pla to the meat.  I'm also experimenting with home-infused perilla soju.