Category Archives: Cuisines - Page 2

Bi Bim Bap

Posted by on October 16, 2011 52 comments

Our usual lunch is Bi Bim Bap – which is Korean for “leftovers.” (Literally, it means “mixed with rice.”)

Bi Bim Bap is a versatile dish which can be assembled out of almost any combination of ingredients. Like Cambridge Fried Rice, it is a classic Asian method for combining leftovers to create a meal in a bowl.

The Bi Bim Bap Recipe

The best place to look for a formula for Bi Bim Bap may be the Perfect Health Diet Food Plate:

The body of the apple contains our formula for a meal. Great meals combine four kinds of ingredients:

  1. A safe starch.
  2. Meat, fish, and eggs.
  3. Vegetables, herbs, and spices.
  4. A sauce made from fats and acids.

Our Version of Korean Bi Bim Bap

The classic Korean Bibimbap recipe uses barbecued beef and eggs as the meat, rice as the starch, mixed vegetables, and a Korean spicy sauce with sweet and sour flavors.

We assembled the following ingredients as an example. For meat we used meatballs and slices of leftover ribeye:

We also included eggs as a second kind of meat. As a base for the sauce we used Korean spicy sauce; here is a possible brand: Sunchang Gochujang 500g. Which is not perfect, as it contains soybean powderwheat, but as it’s quite spicy a little goes a long way. Chili flakes can substitute for the Korean sauce.

Koreans usually favor a mix of spicy, sweet, and sour flavors in the sauce. The sweet and sour can be provided by equal parts rice syrup and rice vinegar, plus a splash of sesame oil and salt and pepper:

The spicy sauce paste is mixed with this sweet and sour mixture to make the sauce. One tablespoon spicy sauce, 1 tablespoon rice syrup, and 1 tablespoon rice vinegar or lemon juice will make a good sauce. For children, increase the sweet and sour flavors and decrease the spicy/chili flavors.

For acids, lemon juice or lime juice, or some other flavor of vinegar, can be substituted for the rice vinegar.

For more spiciness, bits of jalapeno can be added. Egg yolk can provide an additional source of fat.

Include vegetables of your choice. These are onions, peppers, green bean, and watercress:

Kimchi (fermented vegetables) can be substituted for the vegetables.

Everyone can make his own bowl. Since we’ve just been debating how much of the “safe starches” one should eat, here’s what we consider a full meal’s worth of rice:

This is 150 g of cooked white rice which works out to about 200 calories of carbs. We eat two meals a day so this works out to about 400 carb calories per day.

On top of the rice Paul has added meat, vegetables, egg, egg yolk, spicy sauce, and lemon juice:

A bit of rice syrup and a little more meat got the proportions to Paul’s liking.

Here was Shou-Ching’s bowl:

Just mix all the ingredients together and eat!

Bi Bim Bap at Lunch

We didn’t take pictures, but Paul’s typical lunch is assembled like this:

  1. Whatever leftover safe starch is available is put at the bottom of the bowl. If this is potato or taro, Paul dices it up into small pieces; if it is rice it looks rather like the picture above.
  2. Paul adds 3 egg yolks and the juice of half or quarter lemon.
  3. Paul adds leftover meat and vegetables.
  4. Paul adds spices to taste. These may include spices with medicinal value, such as turmeric, and then curry or other spicy flavors. Or they may include salt and pepper, or rice syrup for a sweet flavor.
  5. The Bi Bim Bap is microwaved for a minute, then mixed and microwaved again until it is uniformly warm.

At dinner we usually cook at least twice as much as we intend to eat that night, so there are plenty of leftovers. The leftovers provide lunch and usually a Bi Bim Bap, Cambridge Fried Rice, or Japanese sushi buffet dinner of leftovers once during the week.

Sarah Atshan’s Lovely Food

Posted by on September 11, 2011 42 comments

On Facebook, Sarah Atshan has put up photos of meals that helped her lose 120 lbs.

Her food is Perfect Health Diet compatible and awesomely healthy!

I was going to link to her photos yesterday, but Sarah deserves a post to herself. All photos are © Sarah Atshan 2011.

Keftah (middle Eastern meatballs) with raw onion in hummus and veggies.

Beef and broccoli over rice, with some kimchi.

“So simple yet so yummy”: Hainanese chicken rice. Poached stewing hen from Polyface farm (stuffed and cooked with aromatics), plus rice cooked in chicken fat and chicken broth from the poaching, plus caramelized onion and chicken skin. Mix and serve with a chili, garlic, ginger, and lime sauce.

Korean bibimbap is a great way to dispose of leftovers. This began with leftover vegetables: Daikon radish, broccoli, carrot, button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, green onion, and cilantro. Standard ingredients: onion, garlic, ginger, and Serrano peppers added to beef, rice, and a raw egg yolk.

Korean seafood stew: Fish and shrimp cooked in homemade seafood broth, with rice, green onion, garlic, jalapeno, cilantro, onion, carrot, bok choy, shiitake mushroom, ginger and Chinese broccoli (gai lan).

Korean style Shepherd’s Pie:

Mash made with Japanese sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, and egg yolks.

Mince made with grass fed beef, mushrooms, onions, garlic, ginger, kimchi, and Korean seasonings.

Vegetables: wilted pea shoot, carrot, and daikon radish salad.

“Mex-a-bap”: Korean bibimbap with Mexican ingredients. Grassfed Mexican seasoned beef with onions and mushrooms, rice, garlicky guacamole, and green mango salsa (tomato was not in season yet).

Steamed shellfish with grass fed butter, lemon, crystal hot sauce, old bay seasoning, homemade cocktail sauce (tomato paste, fish sauce, and horseradish), served with oven roasted potatoes.

Middle Eastern cabbage stuffed with grass fed beef and beef heart, garlic, green pepper, onion, rice, and spices. Cooked in chicken stock.

Salad: tomato, bell pepper, and dandelion greens with lemon juice.

Yogurt sauce: raw milk yogurt, hot pepper, lemon and garlic.

Beef with lots of garlic, onion, Serrano pepper, mushrooms, green onion, and Sarah’s special sauce, served with carrot and kale, and rice cooked in homemade chicken stock.

Thai coconut milk soup with fish, veggies, and eggs. Serve with rice.

Thai green coconut milk curry with beef. Potato, kale, yellow squash, carrot, green onion, basil, Thai basil, cilantro, and garlic scapes; grass-fed beef, and homemade stock.

The green curry paste was home made: jalapeno, poblano chili, Serrano chili, New Mexico green chili, Thai green chili, lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves, cilantro root, basil, red onion, garlic, ginger, fermented shrimp paste, white pepper, coriander, cardamom, and cumin.

Thai green papaya salad.

Salmon cakes made with basil, mint, carrot, cucumber, onion, lime, garlic, lettuce, ginger, jalapeno, pepper, and tomato. Salad is dressed in a homemade spicy coconut lime dressing and topped with nuts.

Beef pho with beef tendon and rice noodles, garnished after cooking with Thai basil, carrots, cilantro, Thai chilies, lime, daikon radish, and vinegar-ed onions.


Vietnamese garlic and ginger beef stew with beef tendon, daikon radish and carrot salad, rice, and homemade turnip kimchi, topped with raw yolk. Mix and eat.

Vietnamese steak salad made with grass fed sirloin, baby chard, romaine lettuce, carrots, daikon radish, vinegared red onions, cilantro, and pickled jalapenos. With coconut milk rice and a hard-boiled duck egg.

Conclusion

Sarah’s food is super-healthy, super-appetizing – and perfect for those who want to lose weight.

Sarah, it’s great being Facebook friends and all, but how do we wrangle an invitation to dinner?

Hamburgers

Posted by on September 4, 2011 34 comments

Our round-up of classic American foods continues with a Labor Day classic: the hamburger.

Although it’s possible to buy Perfect Health Diet compatible buns, we’ve gotten out of the habit of eating hamburgers on the bun. Often, we eat dinners buffet style, in which everyone assembles a plate from a choice of ingredients. Hamburgers are a great buffet option.

The classic low-carb Paleo hamburger uses lettuce in place of the bun. This style seems to be making inroads. When we were in California for the Ancestral Health Symposium, we found that the fast food chains there will serve burgers wrapped in lettuce if you ask for it (this is “protein” style at In’n’Out Burger).

Ingredients

Essential patty ingredients include ground beef (1 lb), egg (1, not shown), onion (1 medium), potato starch (1/4 cup, not shown), salt and pepper; we also included shrimp (1 cup), shiitake mushrooms (1 cup), and herbs to taste. A sampling of ingredients:

We made about 8 patties of this size:

Cooking

We fried them in beef tallow, about 3 minutes per side:

Serving

We ate them two ways. First, like meatloaf:

Second, wrapped in lettuce with onion, tomato, egg, cheese, and cucumber or pickle:

We like putting potato starch in the patty because it helps retain moisture in the patties, so they don’t shrink much during cooking. They tasted great, especially with mustard.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted by on July 24, 2011 28 comments

We have little baking experience, so we’re just beginning to learn how to make Perfect Health Diet compliant doughs and baked goods. This recipe turned out very well — unexpectedly well considering it was our first try. And it’s so easy; it takes less than half an hour.

Ingredients

Dry ingredients:

  • Rice flour 1 cup (optional: sticky rice flour)
  • Tapioca flour 1/3 cup
  • Baking soda 1/2 tsp
  • (optional) Beef gelatin 1 tablespoon

Wet ingredients:

  • Butter ½ cup (1 stick)
  • Egg yolks 3
  • Rice syrup 1/4 to 1/3 cup
  • Vanilla ¼ tsp

Flavorings

  • Chocolate chips
  • (optional) pistachios
  • (optional) raisins
  • (optional) pomegranate seeds

Preparation

Melt the butter (we used the microwave, about 20 seconds) in a mixing bowl. Add the other wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Mix in the dry ingredients until the dough has an even consistency. It will look like this:

Then fold in some flavorings. We broke up some bulk dark chocolate and included pistachios:

In another batch we tried chocolate covered raisins:

Place cookie-sized batches on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet:

The aluminum foil prevents the bottom of the cookies from burning.

Bake at 375 F for 10-12 minutes. Remove the cookies and let them cool for at least half an hour; after they are cooled, refrigerate them.

This was the chocolate and pistachio batch:

The chocolate covered raisins melted and produced brown cookies:

Post-eatem

The cookies were good – we were surprised how well they came out on our first attempt.

Shou-Ching really loved them, and so did our guests, but I thought the texture was drier and more crumbly than I would like. (Of course, I used to prefer uncooked dough to cookies, so I like things chewy.) This is a general issue with rice flour – it doesn’t hold together as well as gluten-containing flours. We tried both sticky rice flour and regular rice flour; I think the sticky rice flour might be very slightly better but it was difficult to detect a difference.

Here are some tweaks we’ll try next time:

  • Add more egg yolks. A little more fat might give a moister texture.
  • Try potato starch in place of tapioca flour.
  • Experiment with the protein. Most recipes either have no protein or use egg whites. We like the idea of a balanced mix of macronutrients, so we wanted to include a bit of protein. We tried the beef gelatin, partly because we have some around, and partly because gelatin mixed with water makes a good glue. We wondered if this might help the rice dough cohere. As yet we haven’t tested enough variations to know whether this was a good or bad idea.

We’d love to hear tips from more experienced cookie chefs – and reviews from the most honest critics, young children!