Good Mood Food #6 | Bettina’s Kitchen
Bettina Campolucci Bordi of Bettina's Kitchen shares her love of plant-based, gluten-free, simple eating with her recipe for kimchi fried wild rice.
Bettina Campolucci Bordi comes from a foodie family, having been born to a Norwegian father and Bulgarian-Danish mother in Denmark before spending much of her childhood in East Africa, Tanzania and Sweden. She describes her holiday memories as being centered around “dishes, markets and food experiences”—a part of life that ignited Bettina’s passion for travel.
When she encountered struggles with various health issues including PCOS and endometriosis, Bettina discovered that what she ate made a significant impact on her physical health, helping to manage symptoms and improving her mental wellbeing. With a quest to inspire others with the power of cooking, she began running health retreats in Spain and worked as the retreat cook, finding that her hobby for plant-based cooking was turning into a career.
After studying at Matthew Kenney Culinary Academy in Los Angeles and travelling to gain knowledge on how other cultures utilize plants in food, Bettina’s Kitchen was born, encompassing culinary, yoga and mindfulness retreats, plant-based cooking workshops, recipe development, food writing, and cookbooks. The founding principles remain at the core: the no-waste revolution; plant-based, gluten-free, simple eating where the dish does the talking; eating seasonally and locally and supporting small businesses; and the need for food to be free from labels, judgement, and guilt—if that’s not cause for ‘good mood food’, we don’t know what is.
Bettina shares a recipe from her latest book 7 Day Vegan Challenge, for which you can incorporate home-made kimchi from one of the previous recipes in our Good Mood Food series if you fancy making your own.
Kimchi Fried Wild Rice (serves 2)
Image by Nassima Rothacker
Ingredients
120g (4 oz) kimchi, chopped
250g (9 oz) precooked wild rice mix
100g (3½ oz) baby spinach
Olive oil, for frying
Sriracha and chopping spring onion (scallion) to serve
2 tbsp tamari (optional) to serve
Instructions
- Precook wild rice mix per packet instructions and set aside.
- Heat up a little olive oil in a large pan and add the kimchi. Fry for 5 minutes.
- Add the cooked wild rice mix, give it a stir until warmed through.
- Add a bag of baby spinach and wilt.
- Mix well and serve straight away with spring onions and extra sriracha for strength.