Homemade Kimchi

Korean-styled Pickled Cabbage ("kimchi")

Napa cabbage is a pretty versatile vegetable. It's heart (innermost leaves and core) are slightly sweeter than the outer leaves and is often used in Asian vegetable soups. It can be fried with a bit of oil and dried shrimp as a traditional vegetable dish. And, it can be made into one of Korea's national dishes, kimchi. The price of commercially bought kimchi often reflects the current market price on napa cabbage, and can be pretty expensive for a large jar of it. Doing it from scratch means that a few notable ingredients are left out are sugar and preservatives.

The sweetness comes from other ingredients, mainly the inner heart of the cabbage, a vidalia onion, an apple, and a pear. The longer it ferments, the more sour the kimchi will become. It's still edible, but most sites that have a similar recipe recommend that you eat it within the week or at most a few weeks.

The Foodening Blog - kimchi ready for fermenting

The original recipe walk-through comes from here. I didn't deviate from the original directions much. Large tongs can be used instead of gloves to mix the cabbage with the chili paste. I used a Fuji apple, a D'anjou pear, and a Vidalia onion.

When napa cabbage is in season, it should be about $0.99/lb. A healthy head will be about 2-3 pounds. Be sure to have a large cleaned glass jar with a lid on hand that is pint or quart sized. You can certainly have a large jar than that if you really enjoy kimchi. You'll know that it is fermenting when the liquid starts to bubble inside the jar.

The actual prep time for this recipe is about an hour. The additional time needed is for the ingredients to brine (4 hours) and/or ferment (24 hours).

Ingredients

One napa cabbage
1/4 c. sea salt + 1 c. water
1/4 c. ground red chili peppers + 1/4 c. warm water
1 tbsp garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
2 tbsp fish sauce
4 stalks green onions, thinly sliced
1 c. water + 1/2 apple + 1/2 pear + 1/2 yellow onion

Directions

1. In a measuring cup, dissolve 1/4 c. sea salt in water.

2. In a small bowl, mix red chili peppers with 1/4 c. warm water to form a paste.

3. In a large metal (non-plastic) bowl, combine chopped napa cabbage and salt water. Let this sit for 4 hours. Turn the cabbage every couple hours so that the white part of the leaves brine evenly.

4. After the cabbage has finished brining in the salt water, rinse it under cold water three or four times to remove all the salt water. The cabbage will still taste salty and there is no need to add additional salt.

5. In a food prep, blend into a slurry: half an onion, half a pear, half an apple with one cup of water.

6. Transfer the rinsed cabbage to a large bowl and add the red chili paste, garlic, ginger, green onions, fish sauce, and onion slurry. Mix thoroughly using tongs.

7. Fill jars with cabbage and leftover liquid. Be sure to not fill the jars to the top since the ingredients will expand slightly during fermentation. Cap jars and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours before storing in the refrigerator.

The Foodening Blog: Kimchi in Jars

Ginger Sugar, Candied Ginger, and Ginger Syrup

At different stages of this recipe, you can make everything in the title of this post. I got the idea from reading Alton Brown's candied ginger recipe. Today was just a test batch, so I used a pretty small amount of fresh ginger. I don't have a digital food scale, so the amount of ginger used is just an approximation. You can save the peeled ginger skin to flavor broths and steam shellfish and/or seafood, like fish and crab.

Ingredients

1/4 pounds of fresh ginger, peeled
1/2 c. organic granulated sugar
1/2 c. filtered water

Directions

I recommend this order of operations because you can see how much water is really needed to make the syrup. Alton's method would have you use equal portions of ginger, water, and sugar. But I'm not comfortable with boiling such a small quantity of ginger for so long in so little water.

1. Slice the peeled ginger slightly larger than 1/8" and less than 1/4" thick. I found that 1/8" thick slices come out really small after the cooking process.

2. In a small pot, add ginger slices and sugar. Then add the water.

3. Bring to a boil and stir frequently. Let simmer for 20 minutes or until the water has nearly evaporated and the ginger is tender.

When the liquid has reduced by half, the ginger syrup is ready to be put into other sauces, on top of breads, or on ice cream.

4. Carefully remove the ginger to a drying rack that has been placed over a pie dish or parchment paper-lined baking tray. This will catch the residual ginger syrup which will eventually crystallize into sugar.

5. Let the ginger cool, then store in an airtight container for a couple weeks.

6. The scrape out the leftover syrup/sugar from the pot and let it dry on the same rack. As the water evaporates, what you'll have left is ginger-flavored sugar. This can be mixed in with more sugar, if you like. Store the ginger sugar in a separate airtight container. This, like vanilla sugar, keeps for quite a while in the pantry.

Pear Cobbler

Pears are probably my favorite winter time fruit after the apple. My favorite pear is the Bartlett because it is firm, crisp and very sweet; though they are too firm to be used in desserts or other cooked recipes. Pears can be eaten right off the core, baked into pies and cobblers, made into a chutney, soup, or turned into jam. If you store the fruits well, they'll keep for several months in the refrigerator. I store apples and pears in the fridge in the same plastic bag they came in, except I press out as much air as I can and spin the bag so that the opening is closed at the top. Even though aging fruit gives off nitrogen, what makes them rot faster in the fridge is the exposure to moisture and oxygen.

This is a simple pear cobbler recipe. If you would like to add a variety of other colors and textures, then up to 1/4 unsweetened dried cranberries or raisins, raw or lightly toasted pumpkin seeds can be added to the filling or the streusel-like topping. If you don't care what color the pears are after baking, you may add lemon juice to the pears

Ingredients

2-3 lbs ripe anjou pears, chopped into 1/2" slices
up to 2 tbsp organic granulated sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice (optional)

1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. old fashioned rolled oats
1/3 c. all-purpose unbleached flour
1/4 c. unsalted butter, softened or cut into chunks

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Directions

1.  In a large bowl, combine chopped pears, granulated sugar, nutmeg, and optional items. Mix well so that the pears are evenly coated with sugar and spice and everything nice.

2. In another bowl, combine oats, flour, butter, and brown sugar. Cut the butter into the flour so that it resembles coarse crumbs, or something.

3. In an 8" x 8" baking pan, add pear mixture and top with the oat mixture.

4. Bake in a pre-heated oven for 30 minutes.

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

It was debatable between Martha Stewart's or Alton Brown's recipe for this, about which method to use. Frankly, while the number of eggs I would have to sacrifice for a quart of delicious ice cream would be about the same, Alton Brown's would have had me hatch open a jar of peach preserves for two tablespoons of the stuff. The closest to preserves (not jam) that I have is peach marmalade which I picked up from Portland Nursery's apple tasting event last fall. While I am tempted to make the AB version, it wouldn't couple well with other uses of ice cream such as in rootbeer floats or ice cream sandwiches. And, the way June is looking at the moment (very cold and wet), it doesn't look like there'll be locally grown peaches at the farmer's markets any time soon.

Since I wasn't about to sacrifice two beans for this, I used one vanilla bean plus one tablespoon of vanilla extract. Also, refrigerating the "custard" overnight didn't seem to make the ice cream churn any faster in the ice cream maker. Leftover egg whites freeze really well and can be used later in other recipes.

Don't toss the vanilla bean pod parts after you finish making the cream base. Wash the bean pod clean and set aside to air dry. When the pod is completely dry, immerse it into honey or sugar to make vanilla honey or vanilla sugar.

Ingredients

1 vanilla bean
2 c. whole milk, chilled
6 egg yolks
3/4 c. organic granulated sugar
2 c. heavy cream
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Pour milk and cream into a heavy-bottomed pot. Split the vanilla bean down the middle and use a knife blade to scrape out the tiny black seeds. Add the seeds and the pod to the milk/cream mixture. Bring to a boil then turn off heat and let the pod steep for 30 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar until the yolks become thick and pale yellow.

3. Temper the egg mixture by gradually adding 1/4 cup of the hot cream and whisk to combine. Repeat until the cream mixture is thoroughly incorporated into the egg mixture. Whisking or beating with an electric mixer with a balloon whisk attachment.

4. Pour liquid back into the pot and heat until it thickens. When the liquid is able to coat the back of a spoon, turn off the heat and let cool on the stove.

5. Using a fine mesh sieve, pour the cream mixture into a container large enough to accommodate it all. Cover and let chill in the refrigerator until the liquid temperature is 40 degrees F, or chill overnight.

6. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

The Spice Route by John Keay

"The human body needs minerals, notably salt; but pepper, the most substantially traded of all spices, is a dietary irrelevance. One might live a perfectly healthy life without ever ingesting, inhaling or otherwise being exposed to any one of the desiccated bits of vegatation that have traditionally been considered spices. Nor are they addictive in any physiological sense. The withdrawal symptoms might be evinced at times of scarcity were purely social and economic."