My Food Heroes – Manny’s Need Lotsa Bread for dipping Spicy Chicken Soup

Coming home from Uni was always wonderful. I got to lie on the couch sipping Milo and watching the food channel all day long. It was absolute bliss. More importantly than the relaxation was getting home and seeing my family and friends. It was sometimes difficult coming back and missing so many things that happened, the birthdays, the parties, the memories but even so was the new friends that had inadvertently become my new friends. I’ll always remember the story Amy told me about this girl she met at her Uni up in Joburg and all the shenanigans they would get up to. They had become instant friends but I never really got much of a chance to meet her or even hang out. When I was home for Amy’s 21st birthday I finally got to meet Tammy. She had planned this beautiful slide show of stunning pics of Amy throughout her childhood and older years. It was a really special thing to see and I realised then and there that Tammy was such a great and caring friend and was excited to get to know her more. We hung out a few times at the ever famous O’hagans and drank way too much but never enough haha. I got to meet and visit her amazing family on a few occasions and finally adopted them as my own lol. Sharing so many similarities and dreams it felt like I had known Tammy my entire life.

It was awesome coming home every 3 or 4 months to such a great friendship group where it felt like no time had passed at all. There was always a glass of wine to be had and a story to be told and one such night embodied all of the above and one delicious bowl of soup. It was probably the months leading up to before I left for Korea that Tammy invited me over for dinner. YAY! I love when people cook for me. I brought enough wine to keep us entertained for the night knowing that her fridge was most probably full of wine already and probably a few bottles of beer too. There is NO such thing as too much wine.

We sat on her couch sipping glass after glass chatting about all of life’s ups and downs. We had really connected as friends over those last few months when I was still in South Africa and it was such an emotional and spiritually important time for the both of us. It’s a time I will always remember and cherish and all around a steaming bowl of delicious spicy soup lapped up with so much bread it could fill a bakery. It was so comforting and hit you like a ton of bricks but represented so much of what our friendship was; an instant kick you in the teeth kinda love with a dash of respect and understanding.

And here is the recipe straight from my wonderful friend herself. It made me chuckle for a good few minutes as I was reading the whole recipe in her voice. haha lol.

Ingredients

You need:
2 x wine glasses (1 for me and 1 for you)
1 x red wine (1/2 for you, 1/2 for me:) )

6 x chicken breasts chopped into cubes or heart shapes, what ever
1 x chicken stock
250ml cream
200ml boiling water
1 x fresh red chili finely chopped (more if your enemy is coming to dinner)
1 x chopped onion, finely chopped
1 x garlic clove crushed
1 x chopped green pepper
– take a sip of wine…
1 x table spoon of marmite or bovril
1 x table spoon curry powder
1 x bowl of crispy bacon (I say bowl as you can never have too much bacon)
– take a sip of wine and cheers your friend to good times
2 x whole tinted tomatoes blended
2 x cups of cooked lentils
3 x baguettes

Now here is the hard part….

Put it all in a big pot and stir on a medium heat until the chicken is cooked and everything smells yummy!
– sip wine every 5 mins

Toast your bread in the oven

Pour soup in bowl, pour more wine and serve!

Love u too much my Manny ❤

My Korean Kitchen SPECIAL – Korean Chicken Cajun Quinoa

Being on a diet (story of my life) is never easy. Especially in Korea when bowls of rice are served at every meal and by every meal I mean EVERY meal, even breakfast. My poor blood sugar was in shock after the first few months here; I just couldn’t face eating my school lunch without it but I persevered. The death stares and questions I was asked when I had no scoop of rice on my tray caused an absolute riot in the cafeteria. Is Che sick? We should make her Kimbap (made with rice!!) Does Che not like the lunch? Let’s make her rice cake soup (moooorree rice). Eventually I made the rational decision to walk away from school lunches all together. This was a good thing (my health) and a bad thing. Going to lunch is the only time I ever really got a chance to spend with my other teachers and when I stopped going to the cafeteria they thought I had left the country!

So now that I had to start prepping my own lunches everyday I finally had a chance to hit the healthy train. I had heard about Quinoa many years ago but didn’t really know much about it. About 5 months ago I decided to look into it a bit more (after hours of Pinterest searching). Turns out Quinoa is not infact pronounced Kee-No-Wa (lol) and is as healthy as ever. It’s a healthy grain, high in protein and gluten free! Wahoo! I’m all about no gluten these days. I immediately tried to get my hands on the stuff but as is always with Korea, the ingredients we miss and crave are veeery hard to find. I resorted to buying myself a bag on iHerb. The greatest website ever for healthy supplements and foods. Finally I could start experimenting with it.

I’ve always been a sucker for a nice spicy yet creamy pasta and taking a hint from a fellow chef in Korea I decided to take a traditional Cajun Cream Chicken recipe and adjust it with a few delish Korean ingredients, make it as high protein as possible and rest it on a bed of delicious Quinoa.

I first made my own version of  Cajun spice from scratch. 2T Paprika, 2T Salt, 2T Garlic Powder, 2T Onion Powder, 3T Hot Pepper Flakes. I popped this into a nice big Ziploc bag.

I used a whole chicken diced up Korean style (hacked to bits! Gordon Ramsay would invent new swear words for this) and put this into the bag of spices and shook it up till all the pieces were coated.

I fried 1 chopped onion in some olive oil till translucent then added the chicken and fried till brown on all sides. I then added 1 yellow pepper, 4 green chilies (seeds omitted – tooooo spicy!!) and 1 large zucchini (baby marrow). Added 1 cup of water and 100ml  cream. This boiled away for about 20 mins.

At this stage the sauce was juuust about there but I had only added a small amount of cream and needed to thicken and creamify it more. Enter tofu. Yes that’s Tofu not more cream in the picture.

I’ve fallen in love with Soft Tofu since the first time I made a Korean Tofu Stew. It adds a wonderful texture and flavour to a dish. I let this cook through for another 10 mins.

Also because I’m Koreanising this recipe what goes in next? Yup good old Kimchi! YUM!! I put this in near the end of the cooking time because I still wanted the fresh crunch and because rice is my devil I had cooked a few cups of Quinoa a bit earlier and added my chicken to it. It smelt AMAZING!! It was spicy as all hell just how I like it and had this wonderful creamy sauce packed with delicious veg and chicken. So full of protein deliciousness for my lunches for the week. Dr Atkins eat your heart out 😀

My Korean Kitchen SPECIAL – Kimchi Roast Chicken

Yes you did read that right, Kimchi roasted in Chicken. It might seem like a rather odd combination but oh me oh my does it knock your socks off.

I got the idea one night while watching Masterchef Australia. Literally thee best show ever. They have this challenge called an Invention Challenge where a bunch of amateur cooks get given a box full of ingredients that they need to use to invent some new kind of dish. This particular episode was about Korean food. I was so excited. I recognized almost every ingredient and just pictured myself standing there rocking the hell outta that challenge and winning the Title! haha. Big dreams!  Most of the people in the challenge had no idea what anything was, unlucky for them the ingredients were in their original packaging covered in Korean writing so they couldn’t even read what it was. Which is funny because when I first went to a Korean store I was absolutely petrified to buy anything that didn’t have english writing on it. They just had to go by taste and smell. It was really amusing watching them dash around figuring out what to make with all this weird stuff. But then I stood back and thought to myself wow. It must be so tough to invent something with ingredients you can’t even pronounce.

I decided to take upon my own personal invention test with my delicious homemade Kimchi fermenting away in the fridge and a whole chicken in the freezer. This was either going to turn out to be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten or one of the best.

Once the chicken was defrosted all the way through I trimmed away all the nasty extra bits of fat. I cut the chicken down the middle between the breast bones and split it open. I then flipped it breast side down and started to lift the skin up over the thighs and all the way down to the neck to make a little pocket that I could stuff my Kimchi into.

I took about 1 cup of Kimchi and chopped it up. I added 2Tbs of Fish Sauce and 1 Tbs of Kimchi juice from the container. I then took this mixture and started stuffing my chicken under its skin. I pushed the Kimchi in between the skin and meat of the thighs, legs, breast and even wings. It was completely stuffed lol. I then drizzled over some more kimchi juice as well as 1Tbs of Hot Pepper Flakes, covered it with foil and cooked at 200 degrees for 1 hour.

After the hour was up I removed the foil and cooked for a further 30 mins so the skin could crisp up and the juices intensify.

Well it turned out amazingly. It was such an interesting flavor, surprising yet delicious. After I carved the chicken I made a small gravy with it and served it up with some roasted veggies. For lunch that week I added the Kimchi Roast Chicken to a Caesar Salad and for my cooking business Cheke&Bake I even made a Kimchi Roast Chicken Pie. This style of chicken is great and so refreshing after eating a usual roast every week. You know what they say. A hundred ways with a dead chicken and I think I just discovered a really amazing one! So go ahead and give it a try!  Kimchi Roast on Sunday? Why not!

Cheke&Bake’s Kimchi Roast Chicken Pie