Korean Zucchini Khe Salad

  If you are familiar with Soviet Korean cuisine, this salad is similar to Korean Carrots salad. Humble ingredients and spices are balanced very well in this recipe creating very delicious healthy salad. 

I have used summer squash in place of zucchini this time. I have found out that zucchini or summer squash are equally great for this recipe. Otherwise, for the best result, stick to the recipe precisely. 

Traditionally this dish calls for quite a large amount of oil. I use a little sesame oil instead and don't think it compromises taste in any way.

Keep in mind, that this salad will keep in a fridge for a few days nicely.

Korean Zucchini Khe Salad

• 2 zucchini (or yellow summer squash)
• 1 large onion
• 3 carrots
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1/2 tsp red hot pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 3 garlic cloves, grated or minced
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 2 tsp raw cane sugar
• fresh cilantro, chopped

- Slice zucchini into long thin pieces (see pictures). Place in a bowl, add all salt, mix, set aside for at least 15 minutes.

- Meanwhile, prep onion and carrots - cut carrots into thin matchsticks and slice the onion (see pictures below)

- Heat non-stick skillet, add sesame oil and cook your onion, stirring, until it softens slightly, for about 3 minutes. Do not overcook it - it shouldn't change color at all. Add carrots, cook, stirring for another couple minutes until carrots wilts a little but still keeps its bite. Take a skillet from a heat and let it cool down.

- Transfer wilted salted zucchini into colander and rinse thoroughly under cold water. Get rid of extra moisture by wrapping zucchini into clean cotton towel.

- Place all ingredients, zucchini, cooked onion with carrots, spices and all remaining ingredients into large bowl and mix it well.

- Enjoy!



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IN PICTURES

No-Guilt Rugelach

Popular rugelach is not guilty pleasure anymore! This recipe for no-dairy, no-butter, no-oil, no-egg rugelach will make you and your loved ones happy. Did I mention it's gluten-free for those who care?

- Regular recipe for rugelach calls for butter, cream-cheese, eggs and other stuff I don't eat now. If you are vegan or whole-food plant based (as yours truly) then you will love this recipe.

- Rugelach is great as a Christmas cookie option, looks festive and usually disappears first.  

- You won't miss real butter flavor of regular butter-based cookie dough because this recipe uses mostly almond flour which gives our rugelach maybe even better flavor than that buttery one ;)

- If you want even healthier version of rugelach, replace sugar with date paste and consider nut/dates mixture for filling.

- As egg replacement I use ground flax seeds, which is a really healthy ingredient as it is the main source of Omega-3 among plants.

- If you don't have tapioca flour (it's actually readily available in a most groceries these days), you can replace it with corn of potato flour. I didn't try it yet but it should work.

Healthy Rugelach

For about 24 rugelach :

• 4 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 cups almond flour
• 1 + cup tapioca flour (or corn or potato flour)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• apricot and black current preserves (or other your favorite preserves for filling)

- Preheat oven to 350F.

- Make replacement for eggs by mixing ground flax seeds with water and vanilla. Set aside.

- Mix remaining dry ingredients, add flax mix and make a dough. Transfer dough onto mixing surface sprinkled generously with tapioca flour. Continue to knead dough incorporating some tapioca flour until dough is pliable and no longer sticky.

- Roll the dough in 4mm circle. Use pizza cutter to cut it into 3"x3" squares.

- Spoon a little bit preserves in a center of each square. Use thin metal spatula to transfer dough square on your palm. Fold opposite corners, lightly pressing in a center for corners to stick together. If corners are unfolding, use a drop of water to moisten them to stick together. It was not necessary for me to do this, they were staying in place just fine.

- With a spatula transfer rugelach on a baking sheet, covered with parchment paper. Bake in a preheated to 350F oven for about 15 minutes until lightly gold-beige in color. 

- Enjoy!



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IN PICTURES

Ground flax mixed with water. Here I'm adding vanilla to it. My choice of vanilla is liquid vanilla mix from Mexican grocery, it gives really great flavor, better than any other vanilla, including crazy expensive real vanilla bean.

Dry mix. This recipe takes a fare amount almond flour, which is not cheap. I buy my almond flour in a big bag in Costco.

Mix wet and dry ingredients together.

It seems too dry, just continue to mix.

It's pretty sticky dough at first impossible to roll out, so keep kneading and mixing in tapioca flour.

Now dough looks good to roll it out.

Pizza cutter is great for this type of work.

I perhaps overfilled it a bit ;)

If you don't like tapioca flour on a dough, just brush it lightly with damp brush. It's not necessary though.

I new I put a little much filling. Also some preserves tend to become too runny in an oven. Anyway, cookie looked great on a plate and disappeared before I took a picture of them on a plate ;)

Grechaniki

Grechaniki - authentic Ukrainian dish which resembles a patty made of cooked buckwheat mixed with other ingredients. Here is a vegan version of it, popular in Ukraine during a lent period. 

Authentic version of this dish often includes some kind of meat mixed with buckwheat, but for the period of lent, meat is replaced with vegetables - cooked carrots, onion, mushrooms, potato. Called in Ukraine grechaniki, I have translated them as patties, but perhaps more appropriate would be to call them veggie-buckwheat burgers. 

Notes

- Recipe calls for small amount of oil for frying, but you can easily avoid oil altogether and fry grechaniki on a dry skillet. If you stick to whole-food-plant-based-no-oil way of eating, it is just what you need - delicious food without additional oil! 

- I like to use buckwheat from Eastern European groceries - it is raw, toasted and, after you cook it, has great texture and flavor. You will never get that delicious buckwheat kasha using buckwheat from our regular American supermarket. Those who tried, knows what I'm talking about. Although for the purpose of this recipe, regular supermarket buckwheat may work as, when cooked, it has wet and mushy consistency somewhat helpful when you make patties.

- Traditionally they served hot, with sour cream. As I'm dairy-free now, I love to eat them with tahini sauce or hummus.

- As an option replace half of potato amount with mashed sweet potato.

- Mushrooms are optional. When I don't have mushrooms I just omit then and add a little granulated garlic and onion, a teaspoon of each, to add more flavor.

Grechaniki - Ukrainian Buckwheat Patties

• 3 cups cooked buckwheat
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, coarsely grated
• 16 oz pack of white or other mushrooms (optional)
• 3 potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1/3 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp oil for frying (avocado oil)

- On a dry skillet (or lightly oiled), cook onion until soft, add carrot and continue to cook until soft. If needed add a splash of water.

- In a small pot, bring water to a boil, then put whole mushrooms and cook 5-7 minutes. Drain.

- In a kitchen processor, pulse onion, carrot and mushrooms until finely chopped.

- In a large bowl, place all ingredients - buckwheat, mashed potato, processed cooked onion, carrot, mushrooms, salt and black pepper and mix it all together nicely until you will get sticky mixture that you can make patties out of it.

- Make patties and cook them on slightly oiled heated skillet on both sides. They also can be baked in an oven at 400F until golden-brown. In this case you don't need oil at all, just place patties on a parchment paper and bake until crispy on outside.

- Enjoy!



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IN PICTURES

 I like to use my electric grinder as it allows to keep nice texture. Here is I'm running carrots and onion right into a large bowl where I transferred already my mashed potato in. Boiled mushrooms are waiting their turn..

 All ingredients are here.

 You can see that mixture holds together thanks to a mashed potato. If your mixture is still dry and falls apart, I would recommend to run half of mixture in a processor.

 I like to use my handy scooping tool.

 Here I fry patties on a dry skillet for myself. For others I cooked them on a little splash of avocado oil. I can tell you, there was no noticeable difference between them. So why extra calories :)

 Great texture but still holds together.

 Here grechaniki served with hummus. See my previous post how to make healthy, quick and delicious hummus.

 This (and next two pictures) are grechaniki made without mushrooms, with sweet and regular potatoes. These were baked in an oven. Delicious and healthy! I also didn't use processor - just mashed cooked potatoes with potato masher and then added all remaining ingredients continuing mashing. Turns out really nice chunky/creamy texture.