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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Memory or future vision? Sweet and Spicy

So yesterday I shared with you a quick and easy, yet tasty and very healthy dish that will help you get back on track after all the Holiday feasts we’ve been having.

Dr. Tae Yun Kim has many such recipes.  Today, I am sharing another one of her gems.  This is more for hot summer days, but I am thinking, if you are in a cold weather area like I am right now, and look outside and see snow in big piles, maybe you would want to re-create summer in your heart and stomach, and try this delicious beef-noodle salad that is sure to delight your taste buds and make you think of balmy summer afternoons.

So how do you make this beautiful salad?  Very simple!  If you have some leftover beef roast, or chicken, tear it into bite sized pieces. If you want to use eggs, boil a couple, peel and quarter.  Cut your veggies and fruits into bite sized pieces, smaller is better – tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, kale, cabbage, cucumbers or any other combination you like.  Add some berries, we had home grown blackberries and strawberries.  But apples, oranges, or pears work well, especially now in the winter when you may not have fresh berries available.

The noodles in the picture are Korean acorn noodles, they are superb with this dish.  Since they are not gluten free, substitute any gluten free pasta, or you can leave it out altogether.  I just happen to think pasta adds nice texture and flavor, and Dr. Tae Yun Kim explains that noodles are a symbol of long life, and who wouldn’t want that?

Now that you have your ingredients ready, make the dressing.  This is pretty spicy, so use as little or as much red pepper and garlic as you need. You start with apple cider vinegar and lemon juice, about 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and a few Tbsp lemon juice, add a teaspoon toasted, crushed sesame seeds, about a Tbsp raw sugar, red pepper flakes, and a touch of (gluten free) soy sauce , and add a bit of water and some olive oil.  Mix the sauce with the veggies first, then add the meat and the noodles.  Toss well, and put on plates and decorate with the cut up eggs. Enjoy!

Doesn’t that make you feel like digging out your bathing suit and going for a swim?

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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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Lunar New Year!

Happy Year of the Monkey to you all!

We just celebrated Lunar New Year on February 8th.  Did you know that this is Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s Birthday?  Traditionally, her birthday is on a different calendar day each year, as the Lunar New Year date changes.

Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s story has a very sad start – back in those days, in a small rural village in Korea, girls were considered lower than cattle – at least cattle were useful, you could milk them and eat them and trade them for other goods. Girls, on the other hand, required a dowry to marry them off as quickly as possible.

Not only did she never get any birthday cake, but she also was never allowed to taste the traditional New Year rice cakes.  Only once was she able to catch a little crumb of a rice cake that contained sorghum flour instead of rice flour, and now she reminisces how much she loved it, and would love to have again.

What a challenge!  I browsed through some Korean cook books an blogs and tried to get an idea how to even start on such a thing.  The above picture is the result of that experiment, and it sure brought a big smile into Great Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim‘s face!  It was close to the traditional “rice” cake and very delicious!

Here is what I did:

Boil (or pressure cook) small red beans until soft and mushy, mash them up with enough honey to make it slightly sweet, and a dash of cinnamon, walnuts and/or boiled chestnuts.

This is the filling.

For the outside dough, I did something entirely non-traditional.  I did not want to use sweet and sticky rice flour – not good if you have to watch your carb intake and have diabetes.  So I ground up some yucca root total of perhaps 3/4-1 cup and boiled that until it was all gluey.  I added enough sorghum flour to form a soft but pliable dough.  Then formed small pieces of dough into balls the size of a walnut and flattened them out.  I boiled these for about 5 minutes and then fished them out – let them barely cool off and then flattened these pre-cooked disk until they formed a very thin dough.  Be careful though, the dough is very fragile.

I then put a good heaping teaspoon of filling onto these disks and closed them like you see in the picture, and steamed them for about 1/2 hour.

The result is certainly delicious and worth every moment that you spend making them.  They may not be traditional, but you will love the chewiness and sweetness and knowing it’s all good for you!

HE CAN DO, SHE CAN DO, WHY NOT ME!

 

 

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The Birthday cake!

Yesterday I showed you my Birthday Dinner.  You may have wondered, “But what about the cake!”

Well, of course.  There was cake.  Wanna see?

Dr. Tae Yun Kim, when she grew up, never had any birthday cakes.  In fact, her parents were so ashamed to have a girl as their firstborn child, that they never even celebrated her birthday – until she was 50 years old!

To Dr. Tae Yun Kim a birthday cake is not about indulging in sweets for the sake of it, but it is a symbol of all the sweetness in life for the coming year!  So of course we want a good cake!

Now, since we are all focused on healthy foods, we try to make healthy birthday cakes as well.  Especially diabetes friendly ones, since some Jung Suwon warriors have diabetes.  Did you know that there is no such thing as a “Diabetes Diet?”  One doctor pointed out that what diabetics should eat is what everyone should eat – it’s simply a healthy and balanced diet!

Now, how can you have a healthy cake?  Isn’t that a contradiction right there?  Not necessarily.  There are a few requirements of course to make it healthy.  For this blog, it has to be gluten free.  It also needs to be low in carbs and reasonable in fat content.

My go-to cake, ever since I went gluten free 4 years ago, has been “Shirley cake.”  You can find this genious recipe here, right on Shirley’s Blog “Gluten free easily.” It’s pure genious because no matter what I have ever added to this cake recipe, it always, and I mean always, has come out perfect!

It’s of course gluten free, so that’s covered. But what about carbohydrate content?  On first look I was worried.  I mean, after all, it’s a pound cake.  But after I found this nifty little tool on the internet, a recipe calculator, I found out that one slice only has 12 grams of carbohydrates per slice, and only 134 calories.  (Now to be honest, who can ever stick to that serving size….. that wouldn’t be me….)  Also, I have very successfully substituted half of the gluten free flour with almond flour, and that would lower the carb load considerably.

Still, you get the point.  So, yes, Shirley cake is practically a health food!  🙂

Since Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s birthday was February 2nd, and since she was out of town for this, we’ll celebrate upon her return, and guess what cake I’ll be making!

 

 

 

 

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My Birthday Dinner

Today was my 58th Birthday, and this is what I had for dinner.  Looks delicious and I can vouch for it that it sure was!

Dr. Tae Yun Kim has encouraged all of us Jung Suwon warriors to focus on our health this year, and that of course starts with a healthy diet.

This above warrior feast has all the good stuff in it – a mixture of veggies: brussels sprouts, broccoli, onions, garlic, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers and mushrooms.  Of course you can use a medley of whatever you have on hand, or whatever you like.

I started by sauteing the tofu with the onions and garlic first, added some gluten-free soy sauce, and added the rest of the veggies.  I added a little water too, and covered and let it simmer for about 5 minutes, then topped it with 2 very fresh eggs and covered until the eggs were done – in this case done meant still a little runny inside.

If you either can’t have tofu or simply don’t like it, you could easily substitute boneless chicken for it, just make sure you cook it all the way through.  Or, to change it all up, you could use any meat you have left over from another meal.

Dr.  Tae Yun Kim has been encouraging my self-imposed weight loss – I set a new Year goal to get back down to 130 lbs, my ideal weight – and I enjoyed this meal without rice – although it would have been superb with some brown rice, or even noodles, for sure.

Go ahead and try it out – let me know if you like it!

 

 

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Healthy and Great Tasting Food

The beauty of this great tasting dish is that it takes only a few minutes to prepare, and is very healthy!  It is low calorie and low carbohydrates, and happens to be gluten free.

Dr. Tae Yun Kim has been focusing on healthy meals, especially those that can be prepared with minimal efforts, because who has time for a lot of cooking?

To prevent us from falling back on just stopping by a fast food place or grab other ready prepared foods (that are often full of unhealthy fats, have too many carbs and are otherwise not optimal choices) Dr. Tae Yun Kim is constantly coming up with wonderful dishes that not only taste good but also please the eyes!

For this particular dish, start with a medium sized frying pan, and cover about 1/2 inch high with chicken or beef broth; or water seasoned with garlic and ginger if you don’t have broth on hand.  Add some gluten free soy sauce – how much depends on how strong a taste you like, and sliced tofu and/or sliced chicken – and let simmer and soak in.  Add some red pepper flakes, amount will depend on how spicy you can handle.  Add a small handful of sliced onion, small handful of broccoli, mushrooms and spinach.  Add an egg or two and let is set – and you are done and ready to enjoy!  You can eat this with brown rice, or plain.

For the year 2016,  Dr. Tae Yun Kim has asked her students, and all her friends to please focus on good health, and to this end, she has been creating many new recipes!  Stay in tune!

HE CAN DO, SHE CAN DO, WHY NOT ME!

 

 

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New Beginnings

It’s been a couple of years since I have come to this spot and shared some great food creations with you.  It’s not that there hasn’t been any new food in my life, but that wonderful life things have kept happening and there simply wasn’t any time to do any  writing to do these special meals justice.

But Dr. Tae Yun Kim has been coming up with a myriad of healthy and very tasty breakfast, lunch and dinner meals that just blow the mind. Maybe we can even talk her into putting it all together into a cook book!

Dr. Tae Yun Kim has a very unique cooking style as you might remember. She goes by Ki energy, and will put together whatever works best for the people she cooks.  The above dinner was a spur of the moment kind of dinner, naturally gluten free, and some of the most delicious and healthy creation ever.

Not only did it taste heavenly, it was also very healthy, full of protein, vitamins, fiber and all the good stuff.  There was lots of ginger and garlic in the sauce, and it was made creamy by the addition of ground yucca, another of Dr. Tae Yun Kim‘s additions.

Because this dish is naturally low in carbohydrates it is great for diabetics and those that want to reduce their carb intake.

I will get you the basic recipe tomorrow.  For now I just wanted to let you all know – this blog is alive and well and will supply you with great new recipes!

Thanks for sticking with me, I look forward to more happy bloggings!

 

 

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