Experimental Kimchi

I've been concocting some more great food experiments in this kitchen. Yesterday I harvested a bunch of red cabbage leaves that grew back on the plants after we harvested the cabbage heads months ago. I was amazed how much grew back on the plants after we cut off the heads and decided that I might as well try to use this second growth for something good. I decided a nice batch of kimchi would be a nice experiment that I haven't tried before. Kimchi is a great Korean fermented food used to help in digestion. Most often consumed in small amounts after a meal. I've only had it a few times but I love all things that are going to be beneficial to for my gut flora and overall body health. 

There are really numerous methods that I found but here's how it went down for me:

1. Chopped up about 5 pounds of red cabbage leaves with one large head of napa cabbage. Typically kimchi is made with all napa cabbage but I am always altering something here.
2. Added about a pound of sliced carrots.
3. Mixed that all up and put into a giant crock. Covered the veggies with a brine made of 1/4 salt per quart of water. This was allowed to sit overnight so that the veggies could start leaching out their water.
4. Drained the veggies and added the spice mixture: 5 cloves garlic, 3 T. fresh ginger, 3 T. dried chili peppers, 1/2 cup chopped red onion, about 1 T. soy sauce, several dashes of lime juice, 1 1/2 t. sugar. Some of thee recipes I found suggested fish sauce or anchovy paste which is probably pretty authentic for the Korean delicacy, but I went without since we don't have fish sauce in this house. 
5. Then I pressed the mixture into my jars and covered with the reserved brine so that the veggies were submerged. 
6. They will sit on my counter for several days as I check them daily, push the veggies under the water and wait until I feel like they are properly fermented. Pretty simple and magical. Then they'll go into the fridge for safe keeping.

Sauerkraut Production

Yesterday my mother and I got busy in the kitchen after a harvest of her red and green cabbage. I get so excited thinking about eating the product of our toil and the work of fermentation. We put together three different sauerkraut recipes and I'm pretty pumped about all of them.

We used a purple garlic sauerkraut recipe from Holistic Kid. 

Our roasted jalapeno and garlic sauerkraut recipe came from Balanced Bites. 

One giant bowl of shredded cabbage.

I love garlic and there was certainly copious in these krauts!

Into the basement for fermentation to do it's magic.

One crock of plain sauerkraut

Kitchen Crew

My mother and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen this past week. After a giant Thanksgiving meal prepared for only four people, we felt like the dishes would never end. We had a delightful four days spent relaxing and eating much.

My Thanksgiving plate in all it's beauty:

We also ventured back into the kitchen to make bierocks. We had a bunch of cabbage on hand and I suggested making bierocks to use it up. She kept asking when I had made bierocks and learned how to do it. I assured her that I don't really remember ever learning how to make them, but knew they were simply dough filled with meat and cabbage. Not that difficult. We managed just fine.

First a filling was created out of red(why is it called red cabbage when it is obviously purple?) cabbage, onion, garlic, beef. I also added a touch of spicy mustard and Worcestershire sauce with black pepper. 

Dough was made. I went for a nice medley of rye, whole wheat, and white flour on this one. Rolled out the dough and cut into squares to be filled. 

Baked and ready for the eating. They were pretty good. I must say that you can roll out the dough pretty thin. It does a really good job of baking up and leaving you with a lot of bread and not much filling. These were good, but I think could have been thinner. Overall, success!