Sweet Potato

Japchae 잡채 (Sweet Potato Noodles with Beef & Vegetables)

One of Korea’s most loved dishes, japchae seems to be one of those dishes that can be found almost everywhere and at any time. Be it at breakfast, dinner or at a party, japchae is almost sure to be a feature. Like so many national dishes in Asia, food can represent so much more than just a tasty meal; in the case of japchae it is all about colour and harmony. Translating as “many kinds of various vegetables” japchae is made with the five colours that the Koreans believe reflect obang saek or world harmony to you and me. Each colour symbolises one of the five universal directions – North (black: beef/mushrooms), East (green: courgette/cucumber), South: (red: carrot), West (white: onion) and, most profoundly, the Middle (yellow: egg).

World harmony aside, the best news about japchae is that it is banting and LCHF friendly! Okay, so there is a bit of sugar in the recipe, but at its core japchae’s sweet potato starch noodles are a great low carb alternative to the regular wheat variety and taste infinitely better than courgette noodles.

Noodles without the carb-induced guilt; now what could possibly be better than that?

To be honest I was a bit hesitant about trying japchae when I first encountered it at a breakfast buffet in Seoul. I had tried cooking with Korean sweet potato noodles previously and it was a bit of a disaster, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it another go. I’m so pleased that I did! Chewy, beefy and incredibly satisfying; from the first bite I knew japchae was going to be one of the first Korean dishes I would attempt to recreate when I got back to my kitchen in Cape Town.

As it turned out, making japchae at home is relatively easy and aside from the sweet potato noodles themselves, all the ingredients are Asian store-cupboard staples. The only real difficulty is that the numerous components of the dish need to be individually prepared and cooked before being assembled, but other than that it is actually pretty straight-forward. Just don’t be tempted to soak the sweet potato noodles for longer than 30 minutes or overcook them as this will affect their texture.

Most of the japchae I had whilst in Korea actually didn’t contain any meat so if you would like to make a vegetarian version of the dish simply omit the beef. If you do, however, want to make a meat version then you can also substitute the beef steak with some mince instead.

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Skinny Sweet Potato “Fries”

Undoubtedly the best thing to come out of my recent flirtations with the Banting lifestyle is a renewed love affair with sweet potatoes.

I’ve always been fond of sweet potatoes, but they have never really been a major part of my diet. These days, however, I can’t seem to live without them. Whilst still a carbohydrate, luckily sweet potato finds itself on the Banting Orange List, making it the “occasional carb” of choice for many of us on LCHF diets. Provided they are eaten in moderation, this tuberous gem is nutritious, tasty and most importantly, relatively guilt-free. Chock full of goodness, sweet potatoes are high in Vitamins A, B6 and C, beta-carotene, potassium, antioxidants and contain enough dietary fibre to account for 16% of your RDA. That’s a lot of ‘goodness’ packed into a humble root vegetable!

The nutritional value of sweet potatoes aside, what ultimately makes them so popular is their versatility; they can be used to make soup, mashed, microwaved, oven-roasted, gratinéed or glazed, although the latter is most definitely not for those of us avoiding sugar! Currently, however, my favourite way of preparing sweet potatoes is to use them to make skinny fries.

Cooked in a hot oven, skinny sweet potato fries are just the absolute bomb. Easy to make, healthy and incredibly tasty, these skinny fries are downright irresistible, making them almost TOO good! Personally, I prefer skinny fries over making sweet potato wedges as their ‘skinniness’ encourages a light singeing of the edges, resulting in a ‘burnt’ bitterness that perfectly plays against the inherent sweetness and earthy tones of the vegetable.

Trust me, wholesome has never tasted this good.

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Tuna & Courgette Sweet Potato Pocket

Tuna & Courgette Sweet Potato Pocket

I have never been much of a lunch person, preferring to rather invest my finite enthusiasm for cooking towards crafting a decent dinner.

I suspect that my mid-day apathy is rooted in my years growing up in Malaysia, where lunch was pretty much a no-brainer as it invariably meant one thing: noodles! Beef Hor Fun, wonton mee or Char Kway Teow – a noodle obsession is easy to feed when you live in what is arguably the noodle capital of the world! Alas such lunchtime bliss is now 9000km away and my choices are somewhat less appealing these days. Here in South Africa a ‘sarmie’, pie or a plate of chips are typical lunchtime fare and needless to say, I would rather do without. Nevertheless, a man has still gotta eat so I found myself falling back on old Malaysian habits and having noodles for lunch, albeit nowadays I’ve been reduced to a bowl of a jazzed-up noodles of the 2-minute variety. More recently, however, I have been trying to cut down on complex carbs so even my trusty instant noodle-lunches have been a rarity of late, which is all well and fine, but this has led me back to my initial lunchtime conundrum: what the hell’s for lunch?

For the most part this has meant soup and these days my bowl of choice is minestrone. Since my carb-cutting I’ve eaten a lot of minestrone but as delicious as it is, there is only so much soup a man can sup! Desperate to move back to solid foods I searched high and low looking for a meal that was fast, tasty, filling and, above all, didn’t sabotage my diet. I had almost given up and was about to resign myself to my soupy fate until culinary salvation arrived in the form of a Men’s Health magazine (of all things).

Okay so the featured recipe was pretty basic, but it was ripe with potential. It was exactly what I had been looking for, it was just a tad dull (after all, it was inspired by a Men’s Health recipe), but with a just a few tweaks I knew I was on to a winner! Firstly, I added some coarsely grated baby marrow (courgettes) into the mix, then some finely diced fresh red chilli and red onion and everything was topped with a dollop of plain fat-free yogurt and a crack of pepper: the perfect low carb/high protein lunch in under 5 minutes! With my preferred noodle-lunch still 9000kms away, this sounds like a near-perfect lunch to me.

Click here for the recipe