Prez was pleased to find cubed radish kimchi at the shop.
We quickly stir fried some chunks of broccoli stem, pre-made (commercial) fish balls, and some cooked freekeh all together.
Mix with radish kimchi and top with sesame seeds.
Delicious.
Recipes
Fun with leftovers
Prez buys kale, and then eats kale for a week.
This is because a bunch of kale is usually very large. But that was the only fresh vegetable in the fridge – what to do? Luckily the leftovers available were:
- Chilli kalamata olives
- Anchovy stuffed green olives
- Sunflower seeds
- Mussel jerky – amazing stuff by Advance Mussel Supply (Facebook link)
Chop olives, chop kale. Stir fry. Put in bowl, add seeds and jerky.
Prez says: you can’t go wrong with four good things in a bowl.
Eggplant and kale stew – not for vegans
Prez is a bit of a tight-arse and likes to reuse leftovers.
Look at the lovely vegetables, what can’t you see? Sorry vegans, the brown sauce is Prez’s leftover juices from a slow-cooker beef roast.
That recipe, by the way, was:
- 2kg oyster blade steak, dry rubbed for 8 hours with brown sugar, cumin, coriander seed, salt, pepper
- 1 chopped onion
- 1/2 can Coke
- 1 to 2 tablespoons of gochujang paste.
In the slow cooker for 10 hours, by the 8 hour mark there was way too much liquid, so we decanted some liquid.
And put it in this stew, thickened with a little potato starch.
Which otherwise contains, surprisingly, eggplant and kale.
Prez says: never throw out the goodness.
Zoodle snack
Prez was drooling over Second Helping’s chilli crab zoodle post, but sadly had no ingredients apart from the zucchini.
Also it was snack time, not meal time.
Zucchini-noodles, aka zoodles, lightly marinated in rice wine vinegar and sriracha, plus sesame and sunflower seeds, made a much less sexy but actually quite tasty snack.
It didn’t really work as bowl food, but if your vegan friends were coming over for dinner we think it could make a substitute san choy bow of sorts (while you ate the real thing).
Prez says: we neither know nor care if this is ‘raw food’ because we think that’s wanky.
Pumpkin soup
Prez can’t photograph soup, so you don’t get a photo. But you do get a recipe.
Because Prez can make soup, and does it quite a lot. One meatless evening (because we’d run out and the butchers were closed) this tasty version of pumpkin soup was born.
Chop these veggies and place in saucepan:
- 1kg pumpkin
- 2 medium potatoes
- 1 large onion.
Cover with water to about 10cm above the level of the veggies, or more if you like a thinner soup.
Bring to the boil, season to taste with:
- white pepper
- garlic powder
- galangal powder
- chicken stock powder.
(Prez doesn’t measure. About a teaspoon of the first three, and double whatever the stock packet says to use for the amount of water, because you’re making soup not stock.)
Cook until veggies are tender, blitz, then add 1/2 cup coconut cream, a good splodge of cooking wine and simmer gently. Don’t re-boil.
Need some spicy? Add sriracha to your bowl when you serve.
Prez says: we took seven photos and they were all out of focus so we gave up and ate it all.
Leftovers soup
Prez was hungry and hungover. So leftovers were the obvious choice.
We whipped up a quick vegetable stock from a freezer container of leftover veggie ends, on this occasion mostly asparagus stems and celery tops.
We found some sliced marinated tofu puffs in the fridge, which didn’t make it into the Vietnamese rolls that had been planned, and were grateful to see there was still some gochujang pot roast beef lurking in the fridge.
The tofu and meat went into the soup pot for five minutes, then we threw lettuce, coriander and kimchi cold in the bowl.
Fill with soup and win at lunch.
Prez says: shame there weren’t any caramelised onions around.
Yes it’s another Korean inspired lunch bowl
Prez was too lazy to go to the shop, so no soondubu jjigae today because there’s no tofu in the house.
But combine gochujang, beef stock and seaweed-and-fungus soak water (don’t waste the minerals); simmer with rice and onion for a while; chuck in some cooked chicken; it’s pretty good!
Add the seaweed and fungus in right at the end and top with chili and cucumber for crunch.
Prez says: it’s not pretty but it’s tasty, and surely it’s healthy.
Banana pancakes
We know Prez found this recipe online. Prez doesn’t remember where. So if you’re thinking it’s yours and you’re American and you had ‘soured milk’ in the original recipe then g’day, shout out, and thanks for improving our life.
We eat these pancakes in a tent, we eat these pancakes anywhere. We eat them all at once, no leftovers.
Favourite toppings are bacon, butter and maple for the savoury course, then jam and cream for sweets. We usually try to get 8 fat little pancakes from the batch, two courses each for two people. But when you’re just rummaging for toppings on the weekend because you didn’t do the shopping, maple-sugar with butter (above-right) or a can of pie apple (below) works well.
Ingredients
- 2 over ripe bananas, chopped into a bowl
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 125g / 1 cup (not hard-packed) plain flour
- 1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
- 2 separated eggs
- Pinch of salt
- 1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 125ml / half a cup milk
Instructions
1. Mash the bananas with a little lemon juice. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into a large bowl and add the sugar.
2. Mix together the mashed banana, egg yolks, and milk, add to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.
3. Whisk the whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks form. Fold into the batter lightly. Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and add some melted butter.
4. Use a heaped tablespoon of mixture for each pancake. Cook for 2 minutes on one side or until little bubbles show, and then flip the pancake and cook for a further 1 minute.
Original recipe says: If you don’t manage to eat all of them in one go, they freeze very well.
Prez says: No leftover pancakes.
Iced coffee, long black
If you’re someone who needs milk in their coffee, look away now.
If you’re like Prez and spent years not being able to have iced coffee because you only drink black coffee, here is the recipe for iced long black coffee.
If you don’t own a coffee machine… there’s no ending to that sentence, maybe ask your local cafe.
Or maybe get a coffee machine.
1 – you need about one teaspoon of sugar more than usual, it’s more bitter when it’s cold. Either dissolve the sugar in a little hot water first, or just stir it into the espresso shot – or use honey
2 – fill glass with sparkling water, leaving enough room for the coffee shot/s
3 – make your coffee as usual, double shot espresso etc
4 – admire the pretty patterns before stirring and drinking
You can also make this in the reverse order – sugars, coffee, then top it up with sparkly. That’s quite fun to watch too, haven’t taken an action photo of it yet but you get swirly coffee layers. Be gentle, though, it can fizz up and overflow.
(Maybe you milk coffee drinkers should come join the dark side.)
Prez says: use Kahlua instead of the added sugar for a basic espresso martini.
Healthy lunch bowl with noodles
Prez was craving noodle soup, preferably laksa, but the weather was unsuitable and the jeans were getting tight.
Recipe – soba noodles with wakame and salad
Soak dried wakame strips in boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.
In the mean time, add to the bowl:
- juice of one lemon
- teaspoon of sesame oil
- chopped salad to taste – cherry tomatoes, cucumber, shredded cooked chicken
Mix these, then add wakame and mix again.
Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, add one bundle* of soba noodles and cook to packet directions.
Drain, rinse well, mix back in pan with a splodge of good olive oil and a splash of rice vinegar.
Push vegetables to the side of the bowl, add noodles to the other side.
Prez says: this is a hungry-person serving, adjust your quantities if required.
*we use Hakubaku soba noodles, a bundle is 90g dry. Other noodles e.g. somen would work too.
Prez says 