Vegan Kimchi with Ginger & Chiles

New Jersey is one state where you find large Indian population. In some towns it almost feels like Americans are in minority there. Most of the apartment complexes are filled with Indians and streets are filled with Indian stores, restaurants, beauty parlors, these towns look like mini Indias. 

But the town we live in has a majority of Koreans. Most of the stores are run by Koreans and stores have a lot of Korean vegetables and ingredients. Being around so many Koreans, I have always wanted to try Kimchi. It is a tradional fermented side dish made of vegetables and variety of seasoning. It tastes spicy and sour. Kimchi is Korea's national dish and is used to make other dishes like kimchi fried rice, kimchi pancakes, kimchi stew etc.

Our local Korean store has a whole Kimchi section. It's around the corner where fresh seafood is sold, so I never actually saw this side of the store in detail. When I decided to make kimchi and went to the store to get the ingredients, I took a few pictures to share with you guys.

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Scallion Fried Rice

Time for another edition of Blogging Marathon. Today we start the 20th edition of Blogging Marathon and my theme for this week is "Cooking with Onions". Onions happen to be the most used veggie in my kitchen, not unusual for Indian cooking. But I don't usually make dishes ONLY with onions, they are generally part of the dish but not the entire dish itself (if that makes any sense). 

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Dill & Spring Onion Roti

For Day 2 under "Cooking with Greens" theme, I made these Dill and Spring onion rotis. To be honest, dill is not one of my favorite greens, I feel that it have a overwhelming flavor. But knowing that this fern looking green is packed with anti-oxidants and a ton of health benefits, I wanted to give it another try. 

I used about ¼ cup of the chopped dill along with spring onions to make the rotis. I was pleasantly surprised that I actually liked the mild dill flavor and even more surprised when my son asked for seconds.

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Oriental Curd Rice (rice with yogurt)

This is a special post for our blogging buddy PJ who is expecting her second child in a couple of weeks. Our ever enthusiastic blogging marathon group thought of having a virtual baby shower for PJ and all of us have cooked up a dish from her blog to celebrate this event. 

PJ's space has a ton of awesome recipes and I had a lot of them bookmarked. I also chose a couple of dishes that I wanted to make for this celebration, but as usual time just flew out of my hands and I finally decided to make this very interesting and unique Oriental curd rice. I changed the recipe a little bit to suit our tastes.

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Scallions & Cheese Scones

It has been a long time since I took part in Nicole’s Taste & Create event and decided to sign up when Min @ Bad Girl's Kitchen asked for participants. For this month I got paired with Corina @ Searching for Spice.

Corina has a ton of great dishes from all over the world, but I narrowed down to these spicy and yummy looking Cheese scones with chili kick. I added some finely chopped green onions and used jack cheese with veggies. Also to make them a little healthy, I added some whole wheat pastry flour as well.

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Chinese (My) Style Green Rice

Vegan MoFo DAY 2:

This is an extremely easy and versatile dish that is quick to prepare and makes for a great weeknight meal and the leftovers are awesome for lunch. I add all available green vegetables and the variations are endless. I used green pepper, cabbage, green onions, edamame & avocado, but broccoli and any green leafy veggies will work just as well. I love to add buttery avocado just before serving so it doesn’t change color on me (in more scientific terms oxidize).

Ingredients (Serves 2):

Green pepper – 1 small or ½ of large, diced
Cabbage – ¼ of a head, finely chopped
Green onions – 1 bunch (5-6 stems)
Edamame – ¼ cup (thawed if frozen)
Avocado – 1 Brown
Rice – 2cups, cooked
Garlic – 2 cloves
Red Pepper flakes – a pinch (or more to taste)
Soy sauce – 1-2 tsp
Sriracha (or any other hot sauce) – to taste
Salt & Pepper – to taste

Method:

• Heat 2tsp oil (preferably peanut oil) in a medium sauté pan; add crushed garlic cloves and red pepper flakes; once garlic starts to turn light brown, add all the veggies.
• Sauté on medium flame until the veggies are tender (I like them lightly browned around the edges so I cook them on medium-high flame), season with soy sauce, hot sauce, salt and pepper.
• Next stir in the cooked rice, mix well; check the seasoning.
• Just before serving peel, slice and dice the avocado and mix into the rice and Enjoy!!

I packed this up for lunch and added avocado before eating, so picture has none of the buttery goodness.