An attention catching casserole

Isn’t this a beauty?  It didn’t only look good – it tasted fabulous!  It’s one of those simple dishes that you might overlook because of its simplicity but trust me, it’s worth checking out.  And no matter how many casserole recipes you have, and have made – I suggest give this one a try anyway.  I promise you won’t be disappointed!  And don’t be deterred by my beautiful aluminum foil pan – this was for a friend that had surgery and needed to be transportable and disposable.

While I was putting this together,  thought about some things Dr. Tae Yun Kim has said that keeps sticking in my mind (and I love that it does.)

“Just as you put energy into your food when you grow it or prepare it, you also fill your environment with your energy.  A room full of people creates an energy field that can be positive or negative, depending on everyone’s intent.”  (The Silent Master, page 76)

Well, I certainly put a lot of love into this dish and to everyone around me!

To recreate it, start with either a nice steak, or if you need to watch your budget, you can use stew beef.

First, in a little oil of your choice, saute your meat of choice briefly, and add ground garlic and cut up onions.  Stir fry until just barely starting to get tender, then add other veggies of your choice.  Here is what I used:

Add a couple of jars good quality tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce, and let it heat up.  Add some hot red pepper, I used some very spicy Korean red pepper powder, and it took this dish over the top!

While you are sauteing the meat, start boiling water for your pasta.  I love small shells, so that is what I used, but you can use maccaroni or whatever pasta you prefer.  If you are gluten-free, like me, make sure you get gluten free pasta and cook according to the directions on the package.

Cook pasta until it still has a good “bite” in the middle, drain and rinse briefly.  Preheat oven to 350.

In an oven proof casserole dish, put a layer of the meat-veggie sauce, then add a layer of pasta.  Put some grated cheese on top, or if you prefer, dot with spoonfuls of cream cheese with herbs.  Add the rest of the sauce, and put in the oven for about 20 minutes or completely heated through.  Just before done, you can sprinkle more grated cheese on top – serve right after the cheese has melted.  Good luck and Guten Appetit!  Or, with Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s immortal encouraging words, “Dig it in!  Enjoy!”

 

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No such thing as leftovers

Dr. Tae Yun Kim has been very strong about treating food right and to not abuse it – this means not letting it sit in the refrigerator until it goes bad.  It means you only cook as much as you and those eating with you can eat.  It’s ok to have enough for next day’s lunch, but no out and out leftovers.  It means keeping the kitchen very clean too!

Dr. Kim also wants us to develop and use our creativity.  Sometimes that’s not as easy as it seems.  I mean, what do you do with too much yeast dough?  There is only so much bread I want to make and freeze, because if I make it, I will eat it, right?

First I want to acknowledge the source of my gluten-free yeast doughs.  Shirley of gluten-free Easily has these fantastic roundups, and one of my very favorite ones are her bread roundups.  Click here for one of them.

Since I usually make at least a double batch, sometimes I need another creative use for what might be too much.

All the veggies and herbs came from Dr. Kim’s garden

Pizza is of course always a good choice and I cannot tell you how often I have used “Pizza dough” that started out as something entirely different.

I have also made peach or apple cinnamon buns and they are wonderful even made out of bread dough!

Lastly, if you don’t mind carefully rolling out whatever dough you have, go ahead and improvise an apple strudel, where the filling is peeled and chopped apples, with a generous dose of chopped walnuts, 1/2 cup sugar and a lot of cinnamon, also a couple of tablespoons of starch for every couple of cups of apples.  Let rise for 45 minutes to an hour and bake at 350 for about the same time – check frequently!

Not the most beautiful, but certainly one of the best ones!

And there you have it!  Of course, bread sticks, bread sticks with cheese….and a lot more can be made as well!  Have fun, get creative and know there is no such thing as a failure!

 

 

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Korean Style Pancakes

I am pretty sure that there are as many different Korean Pancake recipes as there are kinds of kimchi!  And they are all very delicious.

As usual, Dr. Tae Yun Kim takes it to another level altogether.  She starts out with the basic concept, and then goes on to “healthify” it as we like to call it.  She mixed up a basic pancake batter, where she combined a “home-grown” egg,  “a little water” and whisked until was all well combined, with some salt and garlic powder added.

Then she added flour, enough to get the consistency of regular pancake batter.  If you are gluten-free, be sure to use xanthan gum or physllium powder with your gluten free flour to make the batter hold together.

Dr. Tae Yun Kim likes to kick the heat notch up a bit and adds some grated jalapeno to the batter, or finely chopped parsley.

Then, this time, she added some carrots that had been pre-cooked just enough to be very firm but not crunchy any more.  She added sliced tofu, onions, and other veggies, along with sliced up kosher hot dogs.

Then, after the batter started to barely turn solid, here comes another surprise:

Dr. Tae Yun Kim added another thin layer of batter over the top.  After a quick and swift flipping over, the newly created art form looked like this:

Doesn’t that make you want to run in the kitchen and make on of these RIGHT NOW???

And even though there are no set amounts of ingredients for this savory pancake here on this blog yet, do go ahead and try – you really can’t go wrong!  And you will thank yourself you did!

 

 

 

 

 

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Korean style yummy spicy ribs

Dr. Tae Yun Kim is, among all the countless other things she does, a most amazing cook.  Of course we know that by now.

But tonight was a different level of yummy.  Wouldn’t you agree by looking at the picture? First, Dr. Tae Yun Kim started out by, as usual, boiling out the long, meaty beef ribs. Naturally they were from locally raised pastured cattle, all organically fed.

The sauce!  Did I mention that heavenly sauce?  It has all sorts of goodies in it, and starts with a mixture of Korean hot pepper sauce, Gochu Jang (available in gluten-free nowadays), garlic, a little water, raw sugar, crushed garlic, apple cider vinegar, and – tada!  Tonight a new special ingredient made an appearance – cinnamon!  As far as proportions go – it’s meant to be spicy with just a hint of cinnamon, and fairly sweet.  How good was it?  See for yourself!  🙂

Yes, that’s right there is sauce all over my face and hands….so so good!

Dr. Tae Yun Kim always encourages people to be bold and go ahead and try new things – so give it a try and enjoy the results!

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Food that’s good for you any day

 

A dinner that starts out with ingredients like the ones above – how can it be anything but healthy and delicious? Especially when it is prepared by Dr. Tae Yun Kim?

She is not only one of the highest ranked Martial Artists in the World, motivational speaker, best-selling author, CEO of a high-tech company, TV show host, founder of the TYK fashion clothing line and so so much more, she is “in tune with the food.”  As Ki energy Master she knows what’s good and what isn’t.

Here you can see what those raw veggies turned into – lovingly combined with Korean sweet potato noodles, baby squid, brown rice cakes, and Korean red hot sauce.

To switch it up a bit, Dr. Tae Yun Kim also introduced this tummy pleaser:

This one started out with potatoes and kosher hot dogs.  Did I mention before that Dr. Tae Yun Kim uses a lot of Kosher food because it has to be handled in a very clean environment, with prayer?

After they were sautéed briefly, just enough to be barely tender, green onions joined in the fun, as well as tofu, sweet potatoes, yellow onions, and another version of Korean hot sauce. There are as many versions of Korean hot sauce as there are kinds of kimchi, as there are kinds of bread.  Each cook pretty much has her own tweak.  Many of them have gluten in it, and MSG. Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s version doesn’t have either, and tastes clean and pure.  For an exact recipe – sorry folks but that’s gonna be in her cookbook!  As a hint, it has gluten-free “gochu jang” (hot red pepper sauce), apple cider vinegar, sugar, crushed garlic, sesame oil in it.

Go ahead, be bold and try it out and see what version you can come up with!

 

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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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Happy New Year Food by Dr. Tae Yun Kim

Dr. Tae Yun Kim always celebrates New Year in a very special way.  First, several days before, she starts by fasting and praying and purifying.  She takes this very seriously and encourages others to do the same.  It is a time of taking your own internal inventory and review the past year.  Did you reach your goals last year?  How about goals for the New Year?  She reminds us, “The power is in us, it is our personal choice what we do in our lives!”

Then, to celebrate on New Years Eve, Dr. Tae Yun Kim makes very special foods.  This year, for the first time ever, she invented a new recipe.

The actual recipe will be in her cook book, to be released in the near future.  For now, enjoy the pictures and the story!

First, you need Korean sweet potatoes, easily found in Korean and general Asian stores.  They are a nutritional powerhouse, with large amounts of vitamins, minerals, fiber and even protein.  And although the name says “sweet” potato, they are actually helping maintain even blood sugar levels and are a very good food choice for diabetics.

By adding adzuki beans, the protein and fiber levels receive a major boost, and now you have an almost perfect food to break a fast, and to proved long-lasting energy.

The end result isn’t this brown color though – the actual jook, or gruel/thick soup, is a cheery yellow color speckled with dark maroon jewels, that make your taste buds jump with joy!

What did you have for New Years Eve dinner?  Did you have something nutritious and delicious, or did you just overload on junk food?

It’s a New Year!  Let’s start fresh and new!  And if you are as looking forward to this new cookbook as I am, a cook book that won’t be like any other you have ever seen, please leave a response and we’ll add you to the list!

 

 

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In case of emergency…

We have had a few power outages recently, and before we got a backup generator, there were times life was a bit unusual and required thinking out of the box, something that Dr.  Tae Yun Kim has been encouraging her students to be and do all along.  “If you expect life to be without difficulties, without challenges, you are on the wrong planet” Dr. Tae Yun Kim bluntly says.

So, when you are just not able to go and pick up take out food, because it’s too late and too far, other than peanut butter jelly sandwich, what are you gonna do?

This is what I did:

I put three candles into a cup, and set that into the kitchen sink.  I put the oven grate on top, put a pan on and made a most delicious vegetable omelette.

“You have the ability to do, the capacity to act, and the capability to perform and produce,” Dr. Tae Yun Kim says, “don’t let anything get in your way.  Where there is a will, there is a way!”

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Bread baking creativity

Lately, Dr. Tae Yun Kim has not only been emphasizing health and healthy foods, but also to use creativity in cooking and creating new dishes with healthy ingredients.

Dr. Tae Yun Kim has been busy in the kitchen, coming up with some incredible (and incredibly delicious) new dishes that will delight body, mind, and spirit! Here are some pictures, but alas, for the recipes, you’ll have to wait until the cookbook comes out.

Meanwhile, here is something for you to try out, if you like.

For St. Patrick’s day, I wanted to do something other than the usual cabbage and corned beef.  Not that there is anything wrong with it, but there had to be something more exciting than that.

Allow me to digress here a bit.  So often I think of something to cook, bake, saute, broil, etc and then think, nah, that’s just a bit too far out and I let the thought go.

However, Dr. Tae Yun Kim says this in her book, “Seven Steps to Inner Power:”

‘Mistakes are essential to your progress.  How did we humans get the idea that to be perfect we couldn’t make mistakes?  Never making a mistake does not make us perfect.  Never repeating a mistake – after we learn from it – is as perfect as we need to be.”

So, armed with new confidence, I went to do what I had in mind.

See?

I had read a lot about cauliflower pizza dough.  So I thought why not make cauliflower bread?  But I didn’t have any cauliflower, only cabbage.  They are in the same family, right?  Why not cabbage?

Since I had already tried Megan’s awesome bread (recipe here) and knew it is absolutely divine, and I had received comments that it was the best bread they ever had (not even knowing it was gluten-free!) I was going to start with that basic recipe.  By the way, credit where credit is due – originally I was tipped off to this recipe by Shirley of Gluten free easily on one of her awesome roundups here.

I started out with the original recipe, except I only used 1/2 cup of water to proof the yeast (it worked just fine).  I sautéed half a small head of green cabbage, with onions, garlic and salt, and pureed it in the blender with a little bit of water.  I tried to end up with one cup of liquid but it was a little more.

I followed the remainder of the recipe but ended up adding a little more of each flour to make it the consistency in the recipe.  I added a handful of chopped up kalamata olives and a smattering of grated cheese.

And after it was done baking, I received the biggest complement I have received for any bread I ever made.

This is not wet or underbaked – I just am not an expert at taking food picture yet 🙂

Dr. Tae Yun Kim herself said it was THE best bread she ever had.

What more could I have asked for?

PS: After the meal, not a crumb remained, so I can’t tell you how long it would last……

 

 

 

 

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Creativity in the Kitchen

The kitchen is an amazing place.  It can be a warm place for family gatherings, it can be a lab, or simply the best room in the house.  In Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s home it’s all of the above!  Not only does she eat the healthiest of foods, but she also makes incredible new food creations that blow the mind!

Dr. Tae Yun Kim shares that good healthy food shouldn’t just taste good, it should also look good, and it shouldn’t be the same old thing every day, no matter how healthy.

That is why she has been creating some pretty amazing things!  Right now, Dr. Tae Yun Kim is working on a cook book, where she will explain about all aspects of food, even down to the detail of how your attitude while cooking will affect the quality of the food!  She mentions the example of how when you fix dinner as a newly wed or to impress a boy friend – how you will so happily cook and set a delightful dinner table.  On the other hand, if you are unhappy about someone or something and you have to cook for them, you will probably make something that does’n’t taste near as good as it could be or should be!

So challenge yourself – no matter what kind of mood you are in, no matter how your day has been – when you cook, focus on your love for your family (or whomever you are cooking for)!

 

 

 

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