My Healthy Kitchen – Vegetarian Quinoa Chilli

On the healthy lunch train for the next couple weeks and I’ve been battling to come up with some delicious one week meals that I’m not going to get bored of too quickly. Eating the same thing everyday can get a bit tedious but with my work schedule it’s such a mission to be making fresh lunches everyday. I’ve made everything from curries to soups and needed a fresh challenge. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of posts on friends walls about Chilli. Now when I first heard about chilli I imagined those little green or red peppers that can cause a hell of a lot of pain if u eat too many. I didn’t realize that “Chilli con carne” or other versions of chilli contain a healthy mix of ground beef, beans, veggies and tomatoes in a spicy/Mexican inspired sauce.

My first bowl of Chilli with Ronnie 😀

I had my first bowl of Chilli on top of Mount Lemon in Tucson Arizona with my uncle Deon’s very good friend Ron Osland. I had no idea what to expect but Ron explained it all for me. It was just a nice big Moorish bowl of delicious meat and sauce topped with cheese and onions. The smell was amazing and the setting of the restaurant was too stunning for words and to compliment the meal I also had my first Root beer. It was the perfect meal for the perfect day. Thanks Ronnie 😀

I chose to recreate this recipe/moment after looking through some old pics. The original recipe calls for ground beef (insanely expensive in Korea) and lots of cheddar (Damn u diet!!) But I wanted to give it a healthy twist. Vegetarian style Chilli with Quinoa is quite a popular winter meal so I decided to make my own.

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa, rinsed

2 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, minced

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced (I love everything garlicky)

1 tin corn kernels

2 green bell peppers, chopped

1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

4 Tomatoes, chopped

1/2 cup tomato sauce

1/2 cup veggie stock

1-2 tablespoons hot pepper flakes

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Wash quinoa and set aside.

In a large pot, heat the olive oil. Add the onion and garlic and cook until translucent, about 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, corn and peppers and cook about 3-4 minutes.

Add the quinoa, kidney beans, tomato sauce and veggie stock. Season with hot pepper flakes. Simmer for about 10 minutes and add 1 cup of water if it gets dry. Serve warm.

Garnish with avocado slices and cheese if you’re feeling naughty. I had this bowl of chilli for dinner but the rest of the lunches for the week will have no fun toppings.

CHEFS NOTES:

One problem I had with adding the quinoa straight into the sauce was that it didn’t really cook/sprout as fast as I wanted it to. I kept adding water and boiling and simmering a couple times before I got it right. What I would do next time is cook the Quinoa separately and then add it to the sauce once both components were semi-cooked.

I wanted to add some different beans such as black beans or even lima beans (butter beans) but due to the sad fact that down in Daegu we can’t find any of those ingredients easily. I just stuck to the usual kidney beans. I guess you could also add lentils to this recipe for something different. Try it your own way and post any recipes here 😀

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

My Korean Kitchen – Kimchi Jjigae – Kimchi Stew (김치 찌개)

Kimchi Jjigae was one of the first soups/stews I was ever introduced to. Even before I arrived in Korea. I organised two of my best friends to join me on a little Korean adventure to a Korean restaurant in Johannesburg to sample the cuisine. My friends were just as intrigued as I was so we ended up ordering some Bibimbap, Kimchi Jjigae and Chicken Fried Rice.

The Kimchi Jjigae arrived in this gorgeous bubbling black pot bursting with aroma. I could feel my nose hairs singe as the chilli wafted across the table. I didn’t expect it at all. My friend Nick did his best to finish it and he even likes spicy food. I took one spoonful and my head almost exploded. It was such an intense sour spicy fishy combination. I couldn’t handle it so I continued ravaging through my Bibimbap.

Nick and his Kimchi Jjigae

After I had arrived in Korea I was introduced once again to the spicy pot of hell. This time however I managed to handle the heat and after a few months my taste buds started changing and I could handle the spiciness like never before. Add more Hot pepper Flakes please!!

Once I started teaching myself how to make Korean food I just knew that this Jjigae had to be on the menu. So here it is. It was also made with my fresh homemade kimchi.

Ingredients

100g Sliced Pork (Pork Belly)

1 cup Homemade Kimchi

1/4 cup Kimchi juice (from same container)

2 Tbs Hot Pepper Flakes (depending on how spicy u want it)

1 Tbs Gochujang (Korea Red Pepper Paste)

1/2 Onion (chopped)

2 Spring Onions

1/2 Square of Tofu

1 Tbs Sesame Oil

2 Cups Water

1. Fry Kimchi, Onions and Pork in a pot with some oil. Add Kimchi Juice and cook for 2 minutes.

2. Add Hot Pepper Paste and Hot Pepper Flakes and mix together then add water.

3. Boil covered for 10 minutes and then turn down to a light simmer for 20 minutes.

4. Chop the Tofu into small squares, add to the soup and boil it for 5 minutes.

5. Add a drizzle of Sesame Oil and serve.

It’s traditional in Korea to have your Jjigae with a steaming bowl of rice and I definitely recommend it. It also helps cut through the sting of the chilli. You can also omit the pork for a vegetarian option and some people even add tuna.

Homemade Kimchi Jjigae with Homemade Kimchi

My Korean Kitchen – Kimchi Pancake (김치 천)

There is nothing better than having a good old swig of Makkeoli on a cold evening accompanied with Kimchi Jeon or a Kimchi Pancake. A Kimchi Pancake is exactly what it says it is. It’s a type of pancake batter mixed with cut up Kimchi fried and then sliced into pieces which are then dipped into Soy Sauce.

I used my fresh tasty amazing Kimchi alongside Maangchi’s Kimchi Jeon Recipe to develop this creation.

Ingredients

4 Tbs of cut up Kimchi

3 Tbs of Kimchi juice (from the same container)

1/2 minced Onion

1/2 Cup Flour

1/4 Cup Water

Oil for frying

1. Mix all the ingredients above together in a large bowl. I added a touch more Fish Sauce and another Tablespoon of Hot Pepper Flakes for a bit more of a kick.

2. Heat a pan with some oil and when ready add a 5mm layer of your batter and fry on both sides till its brown.

Be careful as the pancake can be very flimsy when u flip it over. Your layer of batter should be thick enough so that it won’t break and thin enough so it will cook through.

Kimchi Jeon made with my fresh homemade Kimchi