kickarse kimchi

I blame Yong Green.

Thanks to their Dragon Bowl (brown rice, homemade kimchi and other vegan goodies), I became hooked on the stuff. Not satisfied with eating it only at Yong, I’d buy tubs of the Korean staple and throw it into vegan dishes, even gyoza .It was the summer of kimchi.

So, of course, once cabbage season hit it was time to make my own.

Another summer find was the Hot Knives cookbook, Salad Daze. It’s like a kid that forgot to take his Ritalin - loud, in your face but with a certain charm. A vego cookbook with attitude.

And Salad Daze has a kickarse kimchi recipe.

Making kimchi is simple but requires patience. And clean implements. You want the good bacteria, not the kind that makes you sick.

Day one: sterilise your pickling vessel. Make a batch of brine. Chop tons of cabbage, carrots, daikon, pak choi and spring onions. Blend garlic, fresh chillies, ginger and Korean pepper powder to make the spice paste. Keep the spice paste in it’s own jar. Cover the chopped vegetables with brine and place a heavy weight on top. The pressure and the salt help push the moisture out of the vegetables so they’ll absorb the flavours from the herbs when you add them.

Having no ceramic crock, I improvised with a massive antique glass jar and used a brine filled plastic bag as a weight and makeshift lid. It worked surprisingly well.

Day two: drain the brine soaked vegetables and taste for saltiness (mine also needed a quick rinse). Mix veg with the spice paste (that’s also been brewing nicely in it’s jar for the past day) and shove the spicy vegetable mixture back in the jar. Really jam it into the crock. Cover with the brine bag again. Let it brew in the jar for at least 7 days before bottling. After a week the spices were still very hot and gingery. I left it another two days before bottling and in that time the flavour had mellowed. Still a hit of chilli but the overall heat was more rounded.

I made two huge jars of kickarse kimchi. One went back to Sydney with the Significant Eater. Mine is going down nicely. I use it as a lazy extra serve of vegetables – in almost everything. Other than in a homemade dragon bowl, I like it in a wrap with some fried tofu, to give a stir-fry an extra kick and even in an omelette.

Do you like Kimchi? Have you made it? What are your tips?

Check out the crazy Hot Knives guys.

hold the sprouts

I have a thing with sprouts. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just some unknown health guru put it into my head years ago that over three days old, sprouts encourage the wrong kind of oestrogen production in the body. Now this could be total hogwash. Yes it probably is. But the idea that they go from “good”, wonderfully beneficial food, to “bad” still lurks in the recesses of my brain.

But then I saw Ottolenghi’s sprout salad and it was a case of either sprout my own (um, maybe, I last sprouted radish seeds in the ‘80’s) or adapt.

Instead I simplified the salad into something else. But just like my “thing” with sprouts, I’m equally obsessed with the evolution of recipes.



Just picked


Carrot and daikon salad

1 daikon, peeled and finely sliced in rounds
2 large carrots, peeled or scrubbed and finely sliced in rounds
A large handful leafy greens (watercress works well if you can find it)

Dressing

3 tabs walnut or olive oil
1 tab sherry vinegar
1 tsp grain mustard
Pinch of sea salt
(It doesn’t need pepper because daikon is spicy enough)

Whisk dressing ingredients together and toss through salad. Serve immediately.

Toasted pumpkin seeds or crispy tempeh would go nicely in this, and if you must, add a handful or two of your favourite sprouts.

another quickie

I’ve been a bit glass-half-empty of late, as we sprint towards the winter solstice.

On the upside I am embracing the food of the season. Currently on high rotation:

We’ve having a cavolo nero love for the last few week. My favourite so far is a long slow cook with onion, garlic and white wine, as part of a pasta sauce.

Carrots are particularly sweet and vibrant right now. I rediscovered my tin of zataar and added it to onion/garlic and grated carrots. The combo worked really well, especially when mixed with some canned tuna for a speedy meal on rice. (This may qualify as weird food confessions #1).

Rhubarb is in season once more. This was the winter fruit of my childhood, while everything else in the garden died with neglect or just gave up on the hard, clay soil – the rhubarb still thrives. Pity Wellington is a little too far away to pick a bunch whenever I want some. The last market batch was stewed up with sultanas, raw sugar and a splash of rosewater.

Porridge (oatmeal) is back on the breakfast menu. The past week I have soaked the oats then cooked them with some stewed rhubarb. Weird confession #2 is any leftover porridge – all pink and mushy - gets a quick warm through in a fry pan with a knob of butter then eaten as a dessert with a drizzle of maple syrup. I doubt you’ll find that one on Masterchef!

Though talking of unorthodox ways of eating oats, this recipe for skirlie over at Mostly Eating has me fascinated.