Okay.
The Korean theme continues.
My husband recently picked up soy meat from an Indian grocery store.
He wanted me to cook it, and I thought this dish would be a good one for the occasion.
Doesn’t it look great or what?!
The sweet and spicy glaze was just so beautiful and delicious.
It coated the “chicken” very well.
The meat was supposed to be deep-fried, but instead I pan-fried it.
It still achieved the nice crunchiness outside, and I was happy with the result.
Today I knew I wanted a Korean-themed lunch.
This is actually one of the three-part post.
I hope you come back to see the other two so that you’ll be able to see why.
I like Okonomiyaki, Japanese-style pancake, but I have to say I equally like the Korean-style one, Jeon.
This time I added vegan scallops (king mushroom!), red onion, scallion, and basil.
I know basil is not a typical ingredient for Jeon, but at the farmers market today I was not able to find garlic chive, which is a popular ingredient.
I actually really liked the basil in it.
Unexpected, subtle, but added a great flavor.
I prepared sauce for dipping, and my husband really liked it.
I actually liked the pancake itself and enjoyed it without the sauce.
I still need to work on my rolling skills, but this turned out so pretty!
I had some leftover vegan smoked salmon from last weekend, and I wanted to make lunch using it.
I’ve made so many different dishes with it in the past.
(You can search and find them with “smoked salmon”.)
They were all good, but you know me, I wanted to make something new, something I haven’t made.
I happened to have beautiful ripe mango, and I thought it would be great to put together a sushi roll.
Fresh and delicious!
Along with the mango, you’ll find cucumber, red pepper, and Shiso leaves.
I planned and prepared this for girls brunch.
But then I found out the other girl was not able to make it.
So my husband instead joined me.
I was grateful because I would have been sad if I had to eat all this by myself.
On the middle “main dish” plate you’ll find smoked V-salmon, Shiso V-omelet, and V-bacon.
On the bottom plate were V-cheddar cheese, V-cream cheese, sourdough biscuits, and dark rye bread.
Everything on the middle and the bottom was made homemade.
I was so proud of myself (lol)!
The top “dessert” plate was filled with yogurt and fresh nectarines.
Nectarine is one of my favorite fruits.
These were the first I got for this season, and they were perfectly ripe juicy, and sweet!
This afternoon tea style brunch may look hard to make, but if you plan well and do as much as you can in advance, it’s really not that bad.
And I enjoy this kind of planning and plating anyway.
The smoked V-salmon went so well with the dark rye bread.
Ooops, I almost forgot to show this condiment platter.
The fun part of this afternoon tea style meal is that you can eat a small amount of many different things.
In this case you can mix and match to make your own sandwich anyway you like, which we did.
I showed my husband the “model” sandwiches first, and he did copy me, but after the first round he was definitely going “free-style” (lol).
I was disappointed because my friend could not join me for this brunch, but hey we can always do it another time.
And I was happy because my husband really enjoyed it.
(As always I took so many pictures, and I’m just so appreciative that he always waits patiently (and encourages me to take as many as I want!) until I’m done. ❤)
I decided to bake some more rye bread today.
This time I tried a different recipe.
I really liked the dark one I made last weekend, but my husband is not sure if it is for everyone because it has unique and strong flavors with molasses and caraway.
So this time I looked for a recipe that does not call for those ingredients but a much simpler one.
I used Dutch oven pots, and that definitely helped create the beautiful look.
This is a much more straight-forward bread with basic ingredients.
You can definitely taste the “earthy” flavor in it.
And of course, I had to bake this version again too.
I cut the recipe into half this time because each loaf was quite big last time I made it.
I made some extra this time so that I could share them with family.
Yes, it takes time to grind it into flour.
Yes, the kitchen gets messy and dusty.
But when you put more effort into the process, you definitely have greater appreciation for the resulting food.
Since we got so much rye from last weekend, I’ve been busy “cleaning” it.
Basically I go through by a very small handful and remove what shouldn’t belong there.
It’s a tedious job, but I don’t mind it.
I still have many baking ideas using rye flour, but today I decided to eat them without grinding it into flour.
I cooked the cleaned rye berries in salted water.
And made salad!
Loved the chewy texture of the rye berries.
I also just found out that Rye is a great source of fiber!
The salad was served with vegan sausage, sauteed turmeric cauliflower, and tomato basil soup.
All the colors on the plate made this meal a perfect lunch!
This is my second time to make this chocolate pudding.
It’s super easy to make yet so tasty.
This time I served it with coconut cream and fresh strawberries and currants.
I baked these beautiful loaves of rye bread today.
These are a bit special because the rye used for the bread came directly from my brother-in-law’s farm.
Many members of the family came and participated in the harvesting process yesterday.
It was a hot, but beautiful day.
I used my food processor to grind it to make flour.
It was a long tedious job, but it worked.
I made two loaves.
This one was baked in a pan.
This one, without a pan.
They turned out absolutely delicious!!
This was the best rye bread I’ve ever had!
It’s so soft and flavorful.
And you can certainly taste the rye.
Good when warm just out of the oven.
And good when toasted.
I’m so excited about continuing to experiment with the rye.
Back to basics.
Simple vanilla pancakes.
But I still wanted to make them look pretty.
And I had just what I needed to dress my pancakes.
Pretty already.
Prettier with powdered sugar!
Tomorrow we are going to our family’s farm to harvest something.
I’m so excited.
Come back to find out what we’ve waited for the past several months!
These rustic rolls are made of interesting ingredients.
The main ones are tofu and oatmeal!
This bread is popular as a “diet” food in Japan, but I liked them simply because they were tasty.
I added dried Italian herbs, which made the kitchen smell so good while baking.
I loved eating them with vegan butter when they were still hot out of the oven!
