Korean egg rolls with bacon

egg rolls

Egg-cellent egg rolls with bacon and chives.  Does it get any better? 🙂

When you have lots of chickens, you get lots of eggs.  Except of course when the weather changes and the chickens molt and they go on an egg strike in efforts to stay warm and grow new feathers.  Then they don’t bother laying you eggs, and you get grumpy because you are still buying them food and now you are buying eggs as well.  But I digress.  Besides eggs, when you have chickens, you also start to collect something else… chicken decor.

20151121_122128

I tell you it is true.  Go into any good chicken mama’s house and it won’t be long before you spot some sort of hen or rooster knickknack.  It is inevitable, I tell you, for two reasons.  When you get chickens (especially if you get them as chicks and you raise them from tiny little fluff balls), you start to think that cheesy chicken trinkets are cute.  They remind you of your little girls at home in the coop and you eventually end up with a few on your shelf or on your mantle.

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The second reason is that everyone who knows you have chickens and love them in the same weird way that cat people love their felines, picks up delightful chicken things for you.  For your birthday, you get cute canisters, for Christmas gifts, charming teapots and before you know it, you are getting sweet hen tea towels ‘just because’ they thought of you.  And don’t even get me started about the size of your collection if your yobo or children like to thrift store shop!

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my chicken gifts.  I think they are precious, but before I become permanently labelled the crazy chicken lady, I try to reign in my chicken collection.  I’m trying to limit the chickens inside my house to the amount of chickens in my coop.  I guess it is time to get some new girls in the roost! 🙂

Because as I always say, life is too short not to decorate with chickens!!

Egg rolls with bacon

Cook Time: 5 minutes

Egg rolls with bacon

Ingredients

  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 1 green onion (sliced length wise) and a few finely chopped for garnish
  • 1 strip of cooked bacon
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Crack the eggs and add water to a bowl
  2. Beat the eggs until a creamy colour
  3. Pour eggs into a pan and top with a long strip on onions and a slice of bacon
  4. Season with salt and pepper
  5. Allow to cook for 45 seconds until the sides start to cook
  6. Carefully fold the end of the egg with a small fold
  7. Wait 10-15 seconds and continue to roll the egg, pausing after each fold, until you reach the end of the egg
  8. Brown the roll for a few more seconds
  9. Transfer to a plate, cool for a split second, slice into bite size pieces
  10. Garnish with finely chopped onion
  11. Serve and enjoy! Repeat as often as necessary!
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=2052


Zucchini pancake – hobuk jeon

zucchini pancake

A simple savoury recipe that tastes like the summer garden!

It is that time of year again where the garden is overgrown and the zucchini are in abundance.   I mentioned that this year my garden has been unloved and is in desperate need of attention.  Normally I dote on my garden and faithfully water it and daily check in on all the treasures growing under the leaves and on the vines.  With life having gone sideways earlier this summer, the garden has been neglected.  So much to my delight and surprise, the other day when I was mumbling my apologies to my garden, I discovered several huge zucchinis growing.

We have a real love affair with zucchini in our house.  We eat it multiple times a week and I shred up the excess from the summer and I put in almost every soup or stew imaginable in the fall until my supply runs out. So discovering these beauties was a score.  We got right down to grating them and produced 6 loaves of zucchini bread, copious amounts for the freezer and these fabulous pancakes for dinner!

And I was happy to note that there were a few more zucchinis hiding amongst the overgrown weeds in the garden… 🙂

So however you get your zucchini, whether it is from your garden, from a friend’s garden or the fruit and veggie stand, do yourself a favour and make these!

girls and zucchini

My girls and their green babies…

boys and zucchini

and my boys and their green weapons!

Zucchini pancake – hobuk jeon

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Yield: 4 large or 16 small

Zucchini pancake – hobuk jeon

Ingredients

  • 1 zucchini
  • 3 green onions
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • oil for frying

Instructions

  1. Slice the zucchini finely (or grate coarsely... which ever works for you)
  2. Cut the green onions into 1 inch pieces
  3. Mix together the remaining ingredients and add the vegetables
  4. Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium heat
  5. Add desired amount of batter
  6. When browned, flip and squish down the pancake as flat as possible
  7. Flip again and squish
  8. When deliciously brown, serve hot with soy sauce
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=1993

Baked sesame spinach egg

Baked seame spinach egg

Go big or go home.  That is my yobo’s policy on most things.  Not for cars or boats or anything like that, just things that grow.  When we first decided to get chickens, he came home with thirty one of them!  I wanted to have some blueberry bushes, now we have over thirty of them.  Grapes; all the fences are covered in them. Raspberries; two and half long rows. So when I decided I wanted a garden, I should have know it would be big.  Now granted it isn’t huge, but considering it is in our front yard, it is a good size.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my garden.  In the spring I eagerly weed it and turn it.  I empty several of our compost bins on it.  I spread out all the new top soil and sow my seeds with great excitement.  But then June comes.  I am a teacher so June is just as crazy as it is for most people with report cards, field trips, and graduations.  So by the time June is over, so is my beautiful garden.  It is overrun with weeds again and things are growing all over the place.

So my garden is lacking love this year (again).  But in the midst of it all, it grows.  And this spinach plant provided me what I needed for this great dish. (ignore the weeds!) Actually, aside from the sesame oil and seeds, the rest of this dish is all from our homestead.  Look at us… urban farmers! 🙂

Baked sesame spinach egg

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Serving Size: 6

Baked sesame spinach egg

Ingredients

  • 6 eggs
  • 1 green onion chopped finely
  • spinach chopped into pieces
  • sesame oil
  • sesame seeds
  • salt
  • pepper

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven at 350F
  2. Spray muffin tins with cooking spray or coat with oil
  3. Lay spinach in each cup
  4. Sprinkle with green onions
  5. Crack on egg into each cup
  6. Sprinkle salt and pepper on each
  7. Bake for 15 mins
  8. Remove from the oven and let sit for a few minutes
  9. Carefully slide the eggs out of the oven tin
  10. Drizzle sesame oil on top and garnish with sesame seeds
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=1982

Enjoy!

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!

Kimchi bokumbap with bacon

kimchi bokumbap

My yobo loves thrift stores.  When we first moved back to Canada, garage sales, freecycle (remember that?) and second hand stores were his weakness.  He would take almost anything if it was free.  Most of our house was furnished in second hand furniture and he did find lots of treasures.  But for all the treasures, there was lots of … how do I say this nicely, … interesting items.  After I while, I made a little rule.  In order for an item to enter the house, it needed my permission.  Otherwise, it was banished to the shed.  I must say, I have some great items for thrift stores, and they have made good money on us as lots of it has returned back to their shelves. Charity.  It makes the world go round.

My yobo has gotten much better at spotting a good find these days, except perhaps his weakness for chicken things, but that is another post.  The other day he came home with this fabulous bowl which I just love.  It is great for holding soups and stews and this great recipe.

A left over bowl is the perfect fit for this left over meal.  We had some kimchi that had fermented too long and some left over rice.  Couple that with bacon and you have this treasure of a dish!

Kimchi bokumbap with bacon

Ingredients

  • 2 cups kimchi
  • 5 cups cooked rice
  • 1 pkg bacon (375 g)
  • 1/2 onion
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 zucchini
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • sesame oil
  • 6 eggs

Instructions

  1. Cut up the bacon into bite sized pieces and fry it. Drain the fat and put in a bowl. Save the fat. (I didn't say this was healthy!)
  2. Chop the kimchi into bite sized pieces as well (sense a theme?).
  3. Fry in the bacon fat. Add the sugar. Set aside.
  4. Cut up the onions, carrots and zucchini into small pieces.
  5. Fry the veggies in sesame oil.
  6. Add the cooked rice to the veggies and combine with the bacon and kimchi.
  7. Fry eggs (in leftover fat if there is any) and put on top of the fried rice.
  8. Enjoy!
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=1891

My kids like kimchi bokumbap but they can’t handle too much spice.  We are slowly increasing the spicy-ness of our food to make them into good fire eating Koreans! 🙂

Nyles

Here is our Ny-guy with a tone down version! The recipe includes kimchi for the whole patch.  The kids had less kimchi so the adults had more! Ours was hot! hot! hot!

Pork sausage zucchini pancakes – dwaeji gogi jeon

pork zucchini pancakes

Love these pancakes!  All the yummy-ness of sausage and zucchini fried up in a pancake.  Who could ask for more?

#vintage corelle dishes

I don’t hashtag. I’m not on twitter.  And I don’t normally even think in social media lingo. I never LOL or TTFN.  Call me old. So old in fact that these vintage 70s dishes are still used at my moms everyday.  I grew up eating cereal out of the matching bowl and toast from the salad plates. I happen to have one in my cupboard that brought something delicious home from her place.  I thought it would be the perfect plate for these crispy pancakes! Everything tastes better on mom’s dishes!

Do you have this set or something similar?  Does your mom?  Or (gasp) Grandma?

Pork sausage zuchinni pancakes

Ingredients

  • 250 g pork sausage
  • 1 zucchini
  • 2 green onions
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • pepper
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes

Instructions

  1. Remove the pork from the casings
  2. Slice the zucchini thinly
  3. Cut up the green onions
  4. Mix all the ingredients together
  5. Oil the pan generously (I didn't say these were healthy!)
  6. Fry on medium high heat until browned squashing them thin
  7. Flip and squash until browned nicely and the sausage is cooked
  8. Enjoy!
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=1381

Steamed eggs with spinach

spinach eggs

Deliciously steamed eggs with spinach make a easy side dish, or breakfast, or whole meal if that is the way you roll with eggs! 🙂

Have I mentioned we eat a lot of eggs in our house?  We have a lot of chickens in our coop and they normally produce a lot of eggs, except for right now since they are molting and losing so many feathers that the run looks like they have a constant pillow fight! When they lose their feathers, they lose the energy to lay eggs, and we lose our abundant breakfast supply! Luckily this yummy recipe only needs 4.

What would an egg recipe be with out a picture of my cutie pie helping to collect the eggs?

fresh eggs

Steamed eggs with spinach

Ingredients

  • 1 cup of chicken broth
  • 1/2 c frozen spinach thawed (fresh would work too of course!)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 green onion chopped
  • Dash salt
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 1 tsp sesame seeds

Instructions

  1. Bring the chicken broth to a boil
  2. Drain the spinach. If not totally drained, adjust chicken broth accordingly.
  3. Whisk eggs in a separate bowl then add spinach and onions and combine well
  4. Reduce the heat of the chicken broth to medium- low
  5. Add the egg mixture to the pot
  6. Stir until fully mixed
  7. Cover for 10-12 mins until most of the liquid has been absorbed
  8. Occasionally move the egg away from the edges of the pot to allow the broth to drain down
  9. Do not stir or else you will have scrambled eggs 🙂
  10. Remove cover for a minute or so. The texture should be like medium firm tofu
  11. Add sesame oil to the top (It adds a great flavour)
  12. Garnish with sesame seeds and green onions
https://koreainmykitchen.com/?p=1243

Enjoy!

Bacon

Bacon comic

I had to explain to Taron that this is not how we get bacon from pigs.  He couldn’t believe that farmers killed their pigs to get the bacon.  “Then how will they get more bacon?” he asked.

He still doesn’t totally get it.  The other day he was explaining to a friend that “pigs lay bacon two times then the farmer has to kill them.” 🙂

Tuna kimbap

tuna kimbap

A wonderful combination of veggies and protein wrapped up in sesame flavoured rice and roasted seaweed.  A well balanced bite with all the food groups represented! Think of it as a mini little food pyramid …. in a circle! 🙂

My yobo was really wanting kimbap and has been asking me to make it for weeks now (read: begging!)  So one Sunday night he decides to make rice (waaaay) to much of it and I have to figure out what to make with all this rice.  Kimbap, he suggests.  He even produces all the necessary ingredients. Not so subtle! So kimbap it was!

This rendition has a yummy flavoured tuna in it. When a lady was offering samples of it at the grocery store, my yobo and all the kids went back twice.  I had no choice but to buy it, more because I felt bad for the sample lady than the fact they all enjoyed it! It also has spinach, a favourite of my yobos; “just like my mom makes it!”

The things you need:

  • A package of roasted seaweed 10 pieces
  • 8 cups cooked white sticky rice (don’t know how? here!)
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt (to taste)
  • A package of spinach
  • 2 carrots
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cans tuna (sun-dried tomato flavoured)
  • Korean pickled radish

The prep:

  • Add sesame oil and salt to slightly cooled cooked rice.
  • Beat the egg and fry like a crepe. Cut into 10 long pieces.
  • Slice the Korean pickled radish into 10 long pieces.
  • Slice the carrot into 10 long pieces.  Lightly fry.
  • Slice the cucumber into 10 long pieces using the outside of the cucumber and discarding the column of seeds in the middle.
  • Blanche the spinach in boiling water for 1 min.  Drain and squeeze. Lightly season with salt or soy sauce.

Assembly

  • Lay the seaweed on a bamboo roller
  • Place 3/4c + a little bit of rice on the seaweed
  • Spread the rice out evenly over 2/3 of the seaweed
  • Place the ingredients at the bottom end of the rice
  • Carefully roll the seaweed over the ingredients and pinch it tightly
  • Roll the rest of seaweed up nice and tight
  • Glue the end to the roll with a few pieces of rice
  • Cut with a sharp knife
  • Enjoy!

For a step-by-step picture tutorial on how to roll kimbap, see here! 🙂

Sundubu jigae – Soft tofu stew

sundubu jigae

A spicy red stew thick with veggies, seafood and silky tofu. The depth of flavour from the fish stock is enhanced by the red pepper paste, gojuchang, and the smooth tofu is complimented by the crunch of the vegetables.  Add in any kind of seafood you desire and this is one fabulous stew!

My yobo really enjoys this stew.  He isn’t a big meat eater and he likes tofu and egg in just about anything. Serve with a bowl of steaming white rice and he is one happy man.

The time you need: 25 mins

Yield: 2 servings

The things you need:

  • 1.5 cups of fish stock (to make fish stock, I boil 6 little fishys with 2 cups of water and reduce.  Then I feed the little fish to the chickens for a taste snack and omega 3 eggs!)
  • 3 cloves of garlic minced
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 2 tsp sesame oil
  • 1.5 tbsp red pepper flakes, goju garu (add more for a spicier soup)
  • 1 green onion
  • 1/4 c onion chopped
  • 1/2 c zucchini chopped
  • 1/4 c mushrooms chopped
  • 1/2 c shrimp or other seafood
  • 1 tube of soft tofu
  • 2 eggs

The how to:

  •  mix together the garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil and red pepper flakes in a pot (I used a stone one)
  • saute the mixture for a few minutes
  • add the chopped veggies and continue to saute for a few more minutes
  • add the fish stock and bring to a boil
  • add the soft tofu in chunks and allow to boil until the veggies are soft
  • with a few minutes left, add the shrimp (so as not not overcook it)
  • crack an egg on top
  • serve!

close your eyesa big surprise

“Open your mouth and close your eyes and you will have a big surprise!”