All posts tagged: cooking

Vegetable Fried Quinoa

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If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. – J.R.R. Tolkien. I recently bought a bag of quinoa. While, I have eaten it before, until last week, I’d yet to actually cook this fantastic little grain. I was trying to figure out what to make with it when I was flipping through Extending the Table and came across one of my favourite recipes from that cookbook called Vietnamese Fried Rice. A quick skim over the contents, a look around my kitchen and I came up with the below recipe. I liked the recipe so much that I made it again this week for my lunches. While this recipe does borrow heavily from the original recipe (coming soon), substituting quinoa for rice was not the only change that I made. I hope you like this recipe and that you find it an easy one to make when you are craving something a little different. Vegetable Fried Quinoa serves 2-3 Ingredients 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa,* 1 dried …

Kale Baked Beans

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Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart                                                              -Schoolyard chant So, I’ve mentioned before how I love baked beans on toast. Everytime I have them, whether they are jazzed up on some fantastic bread or just a tin of Batchelors on Brennans‘, they evoke memories of staying with my Granny during World Cup 1990 while my mom was away. At night when my dad got home, we’d drink really sweet, milky tea and feast on beans on toast. Maybe we didn’t have them everyday, but I was under 8 years old at the time, and that’s what my memory is telling me! While the bread is certainly important, for example, a nice Vienna Roll or Brennan’s Batch loaf would do the trick, getting such high quality bread in Korea sadly doesn’t equate to a quick and easy meal. I’d have to trek to Daejeon, which is 30 …

Chicken Rice Salad

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He that sups upon salad, goes not to bed fasting -Thomas Fuller While I love winter and winter eats like hearty soups to rich curries, there is something about spring and summer that makes my heart sing. Spring also tends to alter my desire for making Shepherd’s Pie into cravings of salads, avocados and black olives. Consequently, I made a Chicken Rice Salad this week which spanned those three criteria. Truth be told, years ago, when I was on holiday in Nebraska visiting my mother’s family, one of my aunts made a Chicken Orzo Salad. That salad had black olives and scallions and was dressed in garlic mayonnaise. I don’t have the recipe, nor do I know what cookbook it is from, but the below recipe is inspired by my memory of that tasty dish. Light and fresh, it pairs well with my Kale Baked Beans (coming soon). Chicken Rice Salad Serves 6-8 Ingredients 2 cups uncooked rice, washed and rinsed 4 pieces boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped into bite-size chunks 1 yellow pepper, washed and diced 15-20 scallions/spring onions, peeled, washed …

Courgette and Aubergine Stuffed Mushrooms

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Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom – Thomas Carlyle Growing up, everyone in my family always ate the exact same thing for dinner, whether it was shepherd’s pie or lasagna. The only exception to this was mushrooms. I’ve two sisters who absolutely detest them. As a result, my mother would end up making two pizzas or two stuffings. Over the years, I’d gotten used to having a few less mushrooms in my life than I would like; however, once I moved away from home and started cooking for myself, I’d find myself adding mushrooms to salads, sandwiches, scrambled eggs, etc. You name it, I probably added mushrooms to it. So it may surprise you to learn that I’ve never before made stuffed mushrooms. Well, I had a ton of mushrooms recently and I was trying to figure out what to make with them. A little bit of research later (here, and  here), and I knew the basics of making stuffed mushrooms. Since then, I’ve been experimenting and I’ve come up with some lovely choices. This recipe is the first …

Ssambap with Sesame Noodles

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One of my favourite things about living in Korea is the amazing food I’ve been exposed to on a very frequent basis from bibimbap to dakgalbi to Korean bbq. If you ever get the chance to eat Korean food, I hope you get to experience it the way I did, right here in good ol’ Korea. When I first arrived, I ate out a lot more often than I do now. I usually reserved cooking for the weekends when I was home or an odd midweek meal. One reason I ate out so much was that I could not get enough of the grilled meats. In many restaurants here, at each individual table, there is a gas or electric ring where you cook your own meat and vegetables. I can remember vividly placing each piece of mouth-watering pork, beef or chicken hot from the grill onto a piece of crunchy green lettuce. Using my chopsticks in my right hand, I top the meat with kimchi, raw or grilled garlic, ssamjang, onions, and whatever other vegetables I can find at my table. …