Kimchi Potato Pancakes and Chilled Cucumber Soup

The recipe for kimchi potato pancakes from "Eating Korean" did not work out very well for me. The pancakes ended up crispy and good looking all right but there was just way to much salt in them. It might have worked if you weren't supposed to add lots of kimchi to the pancakes, but with both salt and kimchi  - no. 

But, if the food is to salty, add something sour - an old Thai cooking trick. The next day, in order to give the pancake leftovers a last chance (not to mention I didn't have anything else to eat for lunch) I decided to make a tart veggie side dish to go with them. I settled on "Chilled Cucumber Soup" (Oi Naengook), consisting of shredded cucumbers in a vinegar marinade.  

If you ask me how come that dish is called cucumber soup I really can't answer. It's not very soupy to me. Maybe I was supposed to shred the cucumbers finer. Or use smaller cucumbers to the amount of liquid. Or maybe the definition of soup is broader in Korea than here, I don't know. But the cucumbers and the pancakes hit it off just great, so in the end I did get a decent meal.

Thoughts on Korean Cuisine

The Flavour Bible (by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg) lists the following foodstuffs as typical for Korean cuisine:

• chili
• fish
• garlic
• noodles (esp. buckwheat)
• rice
• sesame seeds
• shellfish
• soy sauce
• sugar
• pickled vegetables (e.g. kimchi)

Compared to other cuisines in that book, this list has a short and rustic feel to it. The ingredients are cheap and easy to some by (even in Sweden). So far, I really like cooking and eating Korean food. The food makes sense somehow. Maybe it's because it's a cold weather cuisine and now we're having a very cold winter here in Sweden. The chilli warms one up and the multitude of flavours in the pickles makes the meals feel interesting and alive. Then, of course, a part of Korean cuisine is eating animals alive, as seen in one of my favourite movies ever "Oldboy" by Park Chan-Wook, but, don't worry, I'm not there yet.

Remixing: Bibimbap and Kimchi Fried Rice

Can't say I know many Korean dishes, but Bibimbap I've heard of. A bowl of rice topped with whatever good stuff you've got on hand.

My version had a fried egg, some bulgogi (meat marinated with soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil), garlic fried spinach, stir fried carrot and kimchi. The bowl itself was kinda small so the rice isn't visible, but it's down there, trust me.

Bibimbap

A hearty dish with a home cooked feel to it, containing a little bit of everything.

The next day I made another go at using up my kimchi. I decided on trying Kimchi Fried Rice. Funny thing was, when I read the recipe I realised it called for exactely the same ingredients as for the Bibimbap. Luckily I had some leftovers, so I just chopped up the meat and the kimchi and fried everything together, and voilá - a new dish.

Kimchi Fried Rice

Dak Jjim - Korean Chicken Stew

A great winter dish, easy to make, containing cheap ingredients that most people (ok, at least me) tend to have on hand.

Fry up some chicken (it was supposed to be smaller pieces, but I had an idea that the chicken breasts would be juicier if I cooked them whole and cut them up at serving time. I'm not sure if I was right about this.) Throw in chopped onions, ginger and garlic. Then some cubed carrots and potatoes. A few shiitakes. Add some water, soy sauce and sesame oil. Let boil until chicken and veggies are all done. Serve with rice. That's it.

Note how Asians tend to treat potatoes as any type of vegetable, not as a sacred source of starch that must hog the whole meal. In most cases I prefer the Asian way.

Korean food

Apart from the beef, that I wrote about in my last post, there is some kim chi still sitting around in my fridge. I've been eating it ever since I made it, about a month ago, using it as some sort of multi-purpose spice. One thing I discovered is that it goes very well with hommous. Also, it tastes good with baked salmon or in stews. But now the fermentation has been going on for a while and it's VERY pungent, so I'm going to reach for its roots in order to finish off the last of it. And that means Korea.

I own one Korean cookbook. It's "Eating Korean" by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee. This might very well be the least foodporny cookbook ever. Everything is in black and white and the pics are so grainy, it's hard to see what they actually present. The recipes are mostly uncomplicated and down to earth (which to me means kind of boring). But I have tried a few of them and they have all worked out fine, so I'll be giving the book another chance now.

Meatfest

Ok, now I'm all done dieting for now and I'm switching back to my regular type of food. We decided that we shouldn't be doing any half measured dieting. Either we do it all the way or we don't do it at all. In that way, we won't be fed up on the food by the time we might might want to take another stint.

So, what will I be eating any time soon? Well, since yesterday there is no shortage of meat in the house. I had another go at ordering from Gröna Gårdar, this time I went for the 10 kg box of mixed beef cuts.

Meatfest

Food and Life Experiment - Carbs and Ketosis

I'm intrigued by the results of the dieting I've been doing for the last few weeks. Eating nearly just fat and proteins made me feel much better, less tired and more energetic, but I couldn't keep up with it. After 2 and a half week hit headache, bad mood, severe fatigue, I basically just felt really lousy. I have no idea why that happened, there could have been several reasons, some suspects are:

• Iron deficiency (lots of meat but no vitamin C to facilitate iron uptake). Unlikely when I ate so much meat, but I've had it before and it felt very much like it.
• PMS, for some reason getting worse than normal
• Being in ketosis for too long my brain suddenly needed some carbs to work properly. This makes sense because as soon as I had a big plate of pasta with lamb meatballs and an orange afterwards the headache went away.

So what I'm aiming for now is to stick to fats and proteins for breakfast and lunch to get that extra energy during day and then have some carbs with my dinner. I tend to get much more tired eating carbs so why not use them as a little something to help me fall asleep easier at night. Safest sleeping aid I've heard of!

Tim Ferriss Diet - Pointers for Success

• Always keep a pot of lentil soup/stew in the fridge. In that way you always have something on hand when you get suddenly hungry.
• Plan ahead when to start the diet. If you have lots of sugary food cravings around pms time, maybe it's not a good idea to start then. Or maybe it is, if you tend to be the most motivated in the beginning of a diet, better kill the demons right away. Anyway, it's worth taking into consideration.
• Think ahead what to eat during the week. You can't rely on making a sandwich whenever you feel like it. It's a good thing to have a plan what to do when your blood sugar levels are zero and you're desperate for chocolate ice cream.

Diet thoughts, pros and cons so far

A little summary of my dieting experiences so far:


Pros:
I feel a lot better, no lunch comas, more energy (as long as I don't forget to eat...) and a general lighter stomach feel. This is only true though when I eat a lot of veggies and beans and not just proteins. With only proteins there is a weird "thick" kind of bodyfeel. It's survivable but not that nice.

I do loose weight and muscle percent (vs. fat) is going up without much suffering.

Cons:
Unsocial. It might work to order a meal in a restaurant (i.e. meat/fish with a greenish salad) but the great Swedish tradition of fika is downright impossible. Ok, I can sit there with a cup of black coffee or plain tea, and ok, mabye stretch it to having a dark bitter little chocolate truffle, but that's just no fun.

Not PMS compatible. I never have had an issue with cravings, it doesn't happen a lot and when it does I normally just eat whatever I want thinking I must be needing this or that - no problem. But now, things are getting nasty. I'm not sure I'm above doing lots of bad things in order to get my hands on some dark chocolate cake with whipped cream. Or chocolate ice cream. Or just lots of oranges (I have given in to that one).

Iron levels seems to go down if I don't get meat every day, preferable with citrus fruits on the side. I've been very tired the last few days and I think it's iron deficiency (I had it while I was pregnant and it's just the same symptoms). I've upped my meat intake though and given in to my citrus fruit craving to facilitate the iron uptake. We'll see if it does any good.

Acetone breath. Shows up when there are no carbs to burn, but still not very pleasant.

Cooking takes more time and planning ahead than usual. You can't rely on sandwiches and pasta with parmesan whenever you feel hungry.