Bountiful Spring Soup

One of my favorite things to do is gather wild vegetables and herbs – and use them.  This time of year offers abundant wild vegetables, and what to me and so many other people looks like just another weed, to Dr. Tae Yun Kim they are very precious foods.  When I am lucky enough to get to accompany her on a wild herb picking adventure, she talks about how when she was little, those herbs saved her life.  If you follow my blog you might remember that when she grew up, she was rejected and abused and eventually abandoned just because she was a girl – and during the time of having to fend for herself she relied on those wild herbs.  Later on, when Dr. Kim was training under a Buddhist monk in the Martial Arts, he passed onto her an amazing treasure of knowledge, not just what you can eat, but how to use all manner of herbs for healing all kinds of conditions.

In the above basked you can see some herbs that are easily available in most places, such as young dandelion, shepherds purse, purslane and more.  This particular basket includes a few green onions that had gone astray and grown way outside the actual vegetable garden.

In addition to the great taste, wild herbs also help detox your body after winter.

To use them in soup, soak these herbs well in apple cider vinegar for about 10 minutes, change the water, and repeat.  Then chop them up into big pieces, including the roots if you can, and boil until barely tender.

For the soup base, you really can you use any broth you like.  Chicken soup is a great one as is beef.  The most traditional way to eat the herbs is boil them briefly in “bean paste soup” or Deng Jang chigae as it is called in Korean.

Let’s go outside and gather some herbs!  Just be sure you know which ones are edible.

 

 

 

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Healthy Korean Style Stew

The title purposely says “Korean Style”, because with Dr. Tae Yun Kim there is no restriction or limit on her creativity.  She bases many of her innovative dishes and creations on the Korean cuisine of the time she was growing up, when all food was by default organic, grown on healthy soil with no chemicals applied to either ground, plants or animals.

Nowadays she shops for organically grown fruit and produce and grows a lot of her own fruits and vegetables.  She makes sure any poultry and meat she purchases came from healthy, happy, organically raised animals.

She still cleanses the meat before using it by using this method (from a few blog posts back.)

In these pictures, Dr. Tae Yun Kim started with chicken pieces, and sautéed them in some water seasoned with salt and garlic.  She added tofu and vegetables, starting with the hard varieties like carrots, onions, Brussels Sprouts and Yucca root, and then follows with mushrooms, zucchini and cabbage.

As sauce, she added her very own brand of hot sauce.  I know, not fair!  To make a close approximation of that sauce, you take a couple of spoons of gochu jang, available in any Korean store.  For us gluten-free folks – there are gluten free varieties available online and they are every bit as good.

To this you add a spoon of garlic, a couple spoons of raw sugar, and some apple cider vinegar and lemon juice.  Heat up, stir vigorously and add a few spoons to the stew, enough to cover the meat and veggies but not so much it turns soupy.  Taste and adjust seasonings.  You can add some chopped up jalapeno’s of you love it really hot.

Lastly, add some cilantro, green onions, and parsley, according to your own taste.

This stew can be served over brown rice or acorn noodles, or use chap chae noodles.  Either way, it is amazingly delicious!

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Almost fried chicken, gluten free- or, possibly the best chicken I ever made!

Notice that I said, “I” ever made!

It actually started out with something I bought, and I didn’t like it.  I bought this: http://www.glutino.com/our-products/bakery/breads/premium-flax-seed-bread/ Now, I am not dissing Glutino or their bread at all.  I am just saying, this particular product wasn’t a success in my house – as it arrived, I need to add.  I mean, what do you do with something that tastes like glued together sawdust?  (Again, nothing against Glutino and their bread, perhaps the one loaf I bought was sitting too long in the store or something)

Whenever I have food in front of me that is perfectly ok, just really doesn’t taste good, I cannot get myself to throw it away.  A true story always comes to mind – the one about Dr. Tae Yun Kim’s childhood.  During the Korean war, when food was scarce, she was starving a lot – she was a girl!  A firstborn at that, and in that culture, at that time, girls were simply considered extra mouths to feed, and many, like her, were abandoned.  She was only five years old!

I looked at that bread and thought how this would have been such a treasure to her, a starving, abandoned 5-year old!  I realized I had to make something special.

Use your creativity!  Is something that little girl, who grew up to, against all odds, become a Great Grandmaster in Tae Kwon Do, always encourages me to do.  “Follow your heart!” she says.

So, with that in mind, I started out making breadcrumbs, leaving them a bit chunky, more like panko.  Rustic, perhaps is the right word.

Next, I pre-boiled assorted chicken parts.  I had legs and thighs in my fridge, but you can use whatever you like.  This pre-boiling is a trick that same little girl, now Dr. Tae Yun Kim, has taught me – bring water to boiling, add Kosher salt and crushed garlic and put in the chicken parts – bring it back to boiling and boil just a few minutes, then drain.  It should not be cooked through.  This boiling draws out “junk”, or additives in the meat, and at the same time, also seals the meat.

Since I have to watch cholesterol, I took the chicken skin off and then rolled the parts in gluten-free flour mix.  Next, I dunked them in eggs that I had mixed up, and then – then the magic happened!

I had put the bread crumbs on a big plate, and mixed them with salt, black pepper, and poultry seasoning.  I used this one:

I covered the chicken parts with the seasoned bread crumbs, and then arranged them neatly in a glass baking dish which I had prepared by putting some olive oil on the bottom, just a little bit only.  Once the chicken was in the pan, I drizzled a little more olive oil on top, and put the whole thing into a pre-heated to 350 degree oven.

After 30 minutes the fragrance wafting through the house was amazing!  I am not entirely sure what cooking/baking time to tell you – I would do between 30 and 45 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken pieces.

Then, get ready to be blown away by some seriously good chicken!

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Pumpkin chicken bowl

It’s that time of year again, where in most food blogs and magazines you start seeing lots of pumpkin recipes.  And that’s wonderful!  What’s not to like about pumpkin!  It’s full of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, and it’s naturally gluten free, and on top of that, it tastes great as it is, and in many other foods.

It also so happens that since there is an abundance of pumpkin in the Korean cuisine,  Dr. Tae Yun Kim has encouraged her Jung suwon students to eat it frequently.

While thinking about how I could come up with an original recipe – as Dr. Tae Yun Kim also trains us to bring out our own creativity in all we do – I saw this great idea from one of my friends on facebook.  He had posted a beautiful picture of his creation, but no recipe.

Here is my picture, and I can tell you how I did mine.

I had some small pumpkins at home, and I roasted them at 350 until done, about half hour.  While they were roasting, I deboned the chicken I had cooked yesterday (slowly roasted in the oven, with garlic and herbs and red wine) and sauteed the cut up chicken with sliced onions, chopped garlic, broccoli, carrots and mushrooms, just like I prepare filling for chicken pot pie.

When the pumpkins were soft, I cut off a nice “hat” and spooned out the seeds and stringy parts, and filled them with the chicken mixture, and heated it up in the oven, and put on the little hat just before serving.

While putting together these little beauties, I had so chuckle to myself.  “Be a responsible creator,”  Dr. Tae Yun Kim often says.  This of course, applies to recipe creations as well!  Know what you are doing!  Be aware of tastes and how it all interacts in your tummy!

So, when you go about making your own version of this, as I am sure you will, just make sure the different components work well together, and the end result will make you feel great, just like the above version made me feel wonderful!

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