Category: Main Dish

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TLT – Tempeh, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich


This is how I fell in love with tempeh.

A few years ago, I decided to eat healthier and start exercising. It wasn’t a weight issue. In fact, I’ve always been on the very scrawny side – much to my mom’s chagrin. And because of this, I ate whatever I wanted. My biggest weakness was fried foods. But you know what? If it doesn’t show up as excess weight on your body, it will show up in some other form. Mine took on the form of CONSTANT fatigue – oh, and the moodiness, probably because I felt so run down all the time.

This is when I started cooking regularly. It’s so much easier to eat healthy when you have control over your environment and your ingredients. But it wasn’t easy in the beginning, because cooking can require some time and patience.

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Korean-Style Grilled Skirt Steak

My beef cut of choice is the tenderloin. If it were up to me, I would only get the tenderloin – not a lot of fat AND tender. But as a benevolent wife and partner, I let my husband pick the cut sometimes. 🙂 I love the buttery texture of tenderloin. But My husband goes more for flavor than texture. And he thinks cuts other than the tenderloin are more flavorful. One of his favorite cuts of meat is the skirt steak. He loves the “fatty” flavor of it. So I get it once in a while.

As you may have guessed or already know, skirt steak is not the most tender of cuts. But it’s not a lost cause. You can do a few things to make the meat more tender to the bite.

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Miyeok Juk – Korean Sea Vegetable Porridge

Why not serve something unconventional for Mother’s Day? Something with significance and meaning, albeit from another culture?

Miyeok (sea vegetables or seaweed) is a food/ingredient that evokes mothers or motherhood in Korea. In Korea, most postpartum women – maybe almost all – eat miyeok guk (seaweed soup). In fact, hospitals serve miyeok guk to postpartum women to replenish nutrients that may have been depleted during childbirth; and they continue to consume the soup during lactation due to its properties that are believed to stimulate lactation. So it’s apropos that it is traditionally served on birthdays as symbolism for the first food consumed after birth. Thus, it is also a food that connects the mother and child.

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Korean Soy Sauce Braised Brisket


Generally speaking, Koreans love brisket. I know I do. Whether we slice it paper thin and grill it on an iron skillet (chadolbaegi), braise it in soy sauce broth (jangjorim), or use it as a base for a rich broth for soups, brisket is a beloved part of the Korean cuisine.

Although the brisket can be tough because it’s a pretty well-worked cut of meat, it lends itself well to slow, long braises because of it’s relatively high fat content and marbling. This is precisely the reason why I decided to braise it in place of short ribs in a galbi jjim(Korean braised short ribs)-like dish.

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