Kimchi!
Making more fermented foods is one of my culinary goals for the year, and I recently got around to making my first batch of kimchi. Kimchi is a Korean side dish or relish, sort of similar to sauerkraut, with a refreshingly spicy-sour flavor. Eat this yummy stuff and do your GI system (not to mention your sinuses, heh) a huge favor.
Zoe Keller of One Beet Wellness gave a demonstration at Herbstalk this past June, and her handout was really helpful. Zoe pointed out that, despite our fears about disease and contamination, most bacteria are beneficial! My sort-of-recipe below is based on hers.
Here's what I used:
one half a head of white cabbage
one head of fennel (including stalks)
three large carrots
one half a daikon radish
one large apple, peeled
stalks from four onions (you could just use an onion)
cloves from half a head of garlic, minced
two-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
4 tsp. of sea salt (no iodized salt! this is very important)
one skimpy squirt of sriracha (because I don't do super-spicy)
The method is simple: chop and mix everything up, sprinkle salt, and massage the veg until the salt has drawn the water out. Spoon the mixture into a glass jar or crock, pressing very firmly, pouring the water on top and weighting down the veg with a smaller glass jar. It's important that the veg not rise above the water line, or you might end up with mold on top.
I put a tea towel over the jar to keep the dust out, but the water kept bubbling up and soaking the towel, so I wound up overturning my iced-tea pitcher and placing that over the jar instead. (The pitcher is plastic, so it totally retained the yummy-bacterial odor. Oops. Hadn't thought of that! Soaked it in hot water and lemon juice and that did the trick.)
In this summer heat, the mixture got tangy within a few hours. You can leave it to ferment for weeks, but in this case, after four days my jar smelled quite fragrant enough! Once refrigerated, it'll keep for months.
Next time I'll use red cabbage to stain the whole thing purple. I also need to buy a mandolin to expedite the chopping.
It may be an acquired taste for some—hard to believe kimchi is not made with vinegar—but it really is so good for you!
