Kimchi and sausage bibimbap

kimchi bi bim bop

A delicious rice bowl topped with kimchi, sausage, seasoned vegetables and a fried egg.  A dollop of spicy Korean paste tops it off and you mix it all up in your bowl for a tasty twist on a traditional Korean recipe. Translated to mean
“mixed-up rice”, this traditional Korean dish has been moving mainstream.  It has been spotted on the menu of a popular chain restaurant and now you can make it at home!

But this fabulous kimchi and sausage bibimbap has a little story.  This summer one of my comics was published an I was paid a small honorarium.  How exciting!! I can now call myself a published cartoonist.  🙂  So how does one spend the Amazon gift card that was given as a token of appreciation from the magazine?  A book of course; a cute kids book by the same name, Bee-bim-Bop! by Linda Sue Park. I have been eying this book for a while, it is written about Korean food by a great Korean-American author. (Kyah did a book review on one of her books here.)

Take a look!

Bee-bim Bop!

It’s an adorable tale of a little girl helping her mom shop and prep the food making bibimbap for dinner.  My kids love bibimbap and love to help me cook; it feels like the book could be written about us!

So after reading this book, who wouldn’t be inspired to make bibimbap?

Kimchi and sausage bibimbap

Ingredients

  • 5 cups hot rice (we did a mix of white and brown)
  • sausage cooked and cut into bite size pieces
  • 6 eggs fried
  • 1 zucchini sliced into thin pieces and quickly fried and seasoned with salt and pepper
  • 1 red pepper sliced into thin pieces and quickly fried and seasoned with salt and pepper
  • 1 cup kimchi cut into bite size pieces
  • Sesame spinach - mix together these ingredients:
  • 150 g blanched and drained spinach
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1/4 tbsp sesame oil
  • Korean red pepper sauce, gojuchang (from mykoreankitchen.com) Mix together:
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 2 Tbsp gochujang
  • 1 Tbsp sesame oil
  • 1 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 Tbsp water
  • 1 Tbsp roasted sesame seeds
  • 1 tsp vinegar
  • 1 tsp minced ginger

Instructions

  1. Assemble the bibimbap by first putting rice in each individual bowl
  2. Add zucchini, red pepper, kimchi and sausage
  3. Top with a fried egg
  4. Spoon a scoop of gojuchang sauce as desired by spice level
  5. Mix it all up in the bowl - this is the part the kids especially love! "Mix like crazy"
  6. Enjoy!
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=2015

We usually make dolsot bibimbap, which is cooked in a hot pot with a raw egg, just because I think it is fun.  But when I served this to my yobo, he said it tasted like normal Korean bibimbap because it wasn’t so fancy! 🙂


Pulled pork bibimbap

pulled pork bibimbapWhat’s the best part of slow cooker Sunday? Besides a hot yummy meal cooking while you are out working or drinking coffee in the sunshine?  Slow cooker leftovers!   If you are going to have your slow cooker working for you, you might as well have it do a double shift and you have two meals done for you as you go to the zoo and watch the lion feeding- which I might add is very interesting!  Not the feeding per se but the side show! Did you know that the male lion sprays urine on the bystanders to mark his territory?  It makes for great entertainment! Well, if you are not sitting in the ‘splash zone’! 🙂

Slow cooker Sunday included a big pork roast with this fabulous recipe from Six Sisters stuff.  I have tried lots of different pulled pork recipes, but this one is something special!  The sandwiches we had with them were a.ma.z.ing but they played second fiddle to the leftovers the next day… pulled pork bibimbap.  Need I say more?  A fabulous fusion recipe that is fun to cook up and eat!  The pulled pork is so deliciously saucy, you don’t need to add any spicy gojuchang (red pepper) sauce, but of course, everything is better with a little spice!

So scour your flyers for a pork something-something on sale and get slow-cooking!  You won’t be sorry!  And maybe you can catch the lion feeding at the zoo with all your free time! 

Pulled pork bibimbap

Yield: 6 servings

Serving Size: 6 individual bowls

Ingredients

  • 5 cups cooked medium grain rice (hot)
  • 2 carrots sliced up thinly
  • 1/2 zucchini sliced up thinly
  • 2 cups left over pulled pork
  • 6 eggs
  • toasted sesame seeds
  • sesame oil
  • Sesame spinach - mix together these ingredients
  • 150 g blanched and drained spinach
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1/4 tbsp sesame oil

Instructions

  1. Heat sesame oil on the bottom of the pan
  2. Add 3/4c cooked rice
  3. Top with 2-3 tbsp each of sliced carrots, sliced zucchini, sesame spinach
  4. Top also with 1/3 cup pulled pork
  5. Crack an egg on top
  6. Sprinkle with sesame seeds
  7. Mix it up until the egg is fully cooked.

Notes

Bibimbap translates 'mixed rice'. So once served, the heat from the pot and the rice will cook the egg as you mix. So mix well and ensure that the pot is good and hot! Another option is to fry the carrots, zucchini and the egg separately and serve in a normal bowl.

https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=1889

all bibimbaped

All mixed up and ready to devour!

Koko Head Cafe – Honolulu

koko head cafe

This place is fabulous!!!

On my amazing trip to Hawaii this summer, I was spoiled to eat so much delicious food.  I told my yobo we definitely had to move to Hawaii.  The beaches are beautiful and the weather is gorgeous, but I would move there just for the food.  It is unbelievable!!!

Waikiki

Because Hawaii’s history has many immigrants that came to work the sugar and pineapple plantations, the cuisine includes a wonderful fusion of many different cultural foods.  Hawaiian food includes a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipino, South East Asian as well as Korean foods.  Kimchi is considered a traditional Hawaiian food.  The Koko Head Cafe embraces this and serves a Hawaiian brunch menu that includes elements from all different backgrounds.

koko headI was so spoiled to go to the Koko Head Cafe with Travis, one of the cooks that work there.  He is my friend’s sister’s boyfriend.  He is very passionate about food and excited about his job working with Chef Lee Ann Wong. So much so, that I begged him come to the restaurant with us after he finished a shift to give me a running commentary on all the menu items.  It was so fun to have him explain everything to us.

The menu included so many things that sounded so delicious.  I could keep going back just to try everything! It took me a long time to decide, but I ordered the Korean sounding things: the kimchi bacon cheddar scone

kimci bacon sconeand breakfast bibimbap (mixed rice) – bacon, Portuguese sausage, heritage ham, kimchi, soy-mirin shiitake mushrooms, ong choy, sesame carrots & bean sprouts, sunny up egg, served over crispy garlic rice in a hot skillet.

breakfast bibimbap

here is my bibimbap, all bibim-ed!

bibimbap

Travis also treated us to all day dumplings. I may or may not have licked the plate of these!

dumplings

Oh my! It was all so fabulous.  And after I had a bite of everyone else’s food, they had to roll me out of the restaurant.

So if you, by great fortune, find yourself in Honolulu, do yourself a favour, grab a coffee and wait in the ridiculously long line up outside of Koko head cafe.  It is well worth it! Thanks Travis, I’ll be back! 🙂

Koko Head Cafe on Urbanspoon