Korean cucumber salad

I spend way too much time daydreaming about traveling. I love to make plans and to have something to look forward to. This year I've been to Thailand, Italy, China, Sweden, and Denmark. I wish I could go somewhere new next year, maybe South Korea, Argentina or Peru? But I will be skint for the next 2 years because I'm starting on a part-time MBA program in September and ALL my money will go to paying the tuition fees (please everyone, fingers crossed that I get a scholarship!).

In the meantime, I'm lucky to live in a metropolitan city like London where you can eat yourself around the world. As I've written about before, I go out quite frequently for Korean food. To me, one of the best things eating at Korean restaurants is the banchan - side dishes served with the meal, often different types of kimchi, fermented cabbage and vegetables, and namul, seasoned vegetable/salad dishes. One common namul is a lightly pickled cucumber salad seasoned with sesame.

Similar dishes are served also in Sichuan (often with an addition of Sichuan pepper and red chili), Japan and Thailand (with fish sauce instead of soy, and an addition of birdseye chili and coriander). In Sweden we also do a cucumber dish with lightly pickled cucumber, pressgurka, with cucumber slices marinated in salt, sugar, and white or pickling vinegar (ättika), this is traditionally served with meat stews, meatballs or roast meat.

Below is my take on a Korean cucumber salad. This is a tweaked version of recipe I found at a gret Swedish food blog, Lilla matderiven. This is of course great with Korean dishes like bulgogi, but also with any bbq meat or fish. I've had it as a side dish with tuna sashimi and miso soup.

Korean cucumber salad
1 cucumber, thinly sliced

Marinade
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1 garlic clove, minced
0.5 tbsp sugar
0.25 tsp salt
0.5 tsp chili flakes or korean red pepper

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying pan at high heat.

Combine all of the ingredients to the marinade.

Add the cucumber to the marinade and toss, make sure all the cucumber slices gets coated with the vinegar

Let marinate for at least 10 min before serving

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to five days

Pickled red onion

Here is another condiment that is great on a sandwich, in a salad or together with a grilled spicy sausage. I made a baguette with merguez sandwich, spinach, feta, tomato jam (recipe to come) and pickled red onion, and that was definetly one of the best sandwiches I ever had. Another more simple but still yummy sandwich is crisp bread with mature cheddar cheese and pickled onion.

The recipe is based on this one by Jonas Cramby, where he made a fabulous looking sandwich with pulled pork and pickled onion.

Pickled red onion
2 large red onions, finely sliced
1 red chili, finely chopped
2 dl apple cider vinegar
0.5 dl sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of mint

Heat up the vinegar with the sugar, salt and bay leaf

Stir in the onions and cook for 30 sec

Remove from the heat and add the red chili and sprig of mint

Let marinate for at least 2 h

Remove the mint, and store in an airtight container for up to 1 week 

Baconnaise

Sorry for the absence, but I've been busy travelling and working and generally feeling stressed and anxious over everything. I've actually cooked loads to try to relax, maybe some of these recipes will make it all the way to the blog.

Anyhow, I went to a friend's house for BBQ yesterday, first one for me this year after an abysmal summer here in the UK. I decided to make baconnaise, what could be a better condiment to grilled burgers? I've wanted to baconnaise for ages as I love anything with bacon in it. Bacon is one of the main reasons I can't be a vegetarian, that salty smokey flavour, mmmmm.

So I did a bit of research and read a couple of recipes on various sites, and this is the recipe I came up with. It includes actual bacon, not just bacon fat, as I really wanted a strong bacon flavour. It was yummy, but yes, you can kind of feel your arteries clog up while you eat it. I fried 12 rashers of bacon, and used 6 of the rashers in the baconnaise. Though if you're like me, you will have no problem finding use of the remaining 6 crispy rashers...

I used to hate making mayonnaise, that it was so difficult and took ages to get really thick. Then I learned how to make mayonnaise using a hand blender, and suddenly it took 2 min to make perfect mayonnaise, amazing! I describe the method below. If you don't have a stick blender, you can slowly add the bacon fat to your egg mix like you would for a normal mayonnaise.

Baconnaise
12 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

neutral oil

3 egg yolks

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp smoked paprika

0.5 tsp chili flakes

black pepper

Fry the bacon rashers in a pan until crispy, remove rashers to plate to cool

Pour the bacon fat into a bowl to cool

Finely chop 6 of the bacon rashers to a grainy powder

In a tall beaker, add egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, garlic and spices

Pour the bacon fat through a sieve into the beaker. Add more neutral oil if necessary to make up a total volume of fat/oil to 1.5 dl

Take a stick blender and push it to the bottom of the beaker. Turn the blender on, it will now create a vortex where the oil is pulled into the eggs. After 1-2 min, slowly pull the blender up. Voila, you should now have perfect mayonnaise! 

Add the bacon powder to the beaker and give it all a quick mix

Taste and add more vinegar, spice, black pepper and salt to taste

Enjoy this piece of bacon heaven as a condiment for BBQs or on sandwiches

Artichoke and feta dip

I don't know how you feel when you leave work, but I'm usually starving. In fact, I would say that I'm pretty ready at that stage to do almost anything for something to eat. And I hate anyone who gets on the train with food (I'm talking to you, blonde girl who gets on in Harrow with a hamburger every night!), because I so envy them.

This is the worst time for me when it comes to trying to eat healthily, as I have absolutely no will power when I'm hungry and it is so easy to buy some nuts, a muffin or crisps on my way home. I've tried taking fruit with me to eat on the train home, but find that it doesn't really satisfy me, and for awhile I've instead brought mini houmus pots and some vegetables.

I really like houmus, I do, but recently I find it quite boring, and the full fat one is quite heavy on the calories anyway. The broccoli dip I posted about quite recently is an attempt at getting away from houmus, but it's really best when freshly made, so not ideal for me as I like to be able to do a batch and use it for a week.

So I needed to come up with something new. A dip that would be salty, savoury, easy to make, and could be done as a batch. The solution was this artichoke and feta cheese dip. It is not pretty, to cite my friend Sigrid - the winner of Swedish Masterchef, 'I do ugly food that tastes good'. So no, it won't win any beauty contests, but wow, does it taste good! This is definitely my new favourite dip. Great as a dip for vegetables, and also as a spread on bread. You could also have it on crostini and serve as canapes.

Artichoke and feta dip
180 g of grilled artichokes
100 g feta cheese
2 tbsps quark (or you could use cream cheese, sour cream or creme fraiche)
1 small garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp lemon juice
0.5 tsp honey
1 pinch salt
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch chili flakes

Mix all the ingredients, I used a stick blender

Taste, and add more lemon or spices if needed

Serve as a dip for vegetables or as a spread on bread

Stored in an airtight container in the fridge, it will last up to one week (well, it can be stored that long, but if you're like me, it really won't last that long...)

Broccoli garlic dip

Reading a recent post on Picki picki about broccoli side dishes reminded me of a broccoli dip/spread/sauce I used to do quite frequently last year, and I made it again last weekend. I use it as a spread on fresh bread, or as a dip for carrots when I'm trying to be healthy (while conveniently forgetting the fact there is quite a bit of cheese in the dip), or I stir it into pasta for a quick dinner.

The dip can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container for a couple of days but loose some of its vibrant green colour.

Broccoli garlic dip
1 medium-sized heads of broccoli
1 lemon, juice
2 garlic cloves, minced
3-4 tbsp olive oil
100 g parmesan, grated
a pinch of chili flakes
salt and pepper

Cook the broccoli florets in lightly salted water for 2-3 min.

Drain the water and mix the broccoli with the other ingredients. I use a stick blender to do this.

Add salt and pepper to taste

Enjoy!

And since that was such a quick recipe, you now have time to see Peacock, a lovely film with a fanatastic performance by Cillian Murphy :)