Speedy Kim Chee

So I usually am someone who likes to take on the most challenging and time consuming culinary adventures, but today I thought I would give myself a little break. Kim Chee, or Korean pickled cabbage,  is usually a process that takes a very long time. However, I found a fun recipe from Tyler Florence, my favorite Food Network star, for a quick Kim Chee.

I adore spicy food and Kim Chee is a favorite. One of my favorite restaurants back in Monterey, where I studied for graduate school, was a Korean restaurant. Before you even ordered your main dish, they filled the table with about 30 small plates of pickled goodies, all free! You could pretty much make a meal out of just the pickles. They had a few Kim Chee options, and I just love that funky, spicy flavor.

What I liked most about Tyler's recipe, is that besides the cabbage, I actually already had all the ingredients at home! I tried his recipe with a few changes of my own. (The original recipe can be found here).

You will need:

1 head of Napa cabbage
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup rice vinegar (I had flavored rice vinegar at home, so I used that)
1 TBSP sugar*
2 TBSPs hot chili paste.**
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated
2 colves of garlic, chopped (I used a garlic press)
2 scallions, finely sliced


*While Tyler calls for sugar, I actually use a product called Caster Sugar. It's super fine and dissolved easily. It's used a lot in desserts, and I always use it when making dipping sauces that call for sugar.

**Tyler recommends using Srirachi paste. I had Srirachi sauce at home, but to make sure that my marinade was thick enough, I mixed equal parts of Srirachi sauce and a Thai chili paste I had on hand. The Thai sauce has a bit of sweetness and a little funk from fish sauce.



Remove the outer leaves of the washed cabbage. Remove the hard core of the cabbage and cut the whole thing into 2 inch strips. Put the cabbage into a colander over a bowl. Add the salt and mix it up with your hands. Let it sit in the colander for 2 hours so that the leaves are wilted.

When the cabbage is done, mix up the brine by combining the vinegar, garlic, ginger, chili paste and scallions.

Rinse the cabbage to get rid of the salt and then dry it. I used a salad spinner. Add the cabbage into the brine and give it a good mix.

Put the mixture into a sterilized jar (boiled for 10 minutes). Pack it down well and add enough water to just cover it. Label your jar and put in the fridge. According to Tyler, it will be ready to eat in 4 hours. However, the flavors get deeper and deeper the more it sits, so I would give it overnight.

Since this is my first time making this, I figured I would wait until it was ready and give an update. So it's now been overnight and I tasted the finished product... It tastes great - but not like Kim Chee at all! I like it a lot - but it's super gingery, almost has a flavor of pickled ginger. Next time, I probably will use less ginger and more Srirachi. The ginger gives it a kick that goes right up your nose. It's very refreshing and summery. Try it out and give it your own twist!

Makdous - Preserved stuffed baby eggplant

Oh are you in for a treat!

I first had Makdous about 15 years ago. My aunt Orna in Israel made it for me. Once I tasted it I couldn't get the flavor out of my head. It haunted me. In graduate school, I stalked a woman who owned a Jordanian restaurant and begged her for her family recipe, which she gave me. This recipe is kind of a mix between my aunt's and the woman at Petra Cafe in Monterey, CA (wish I could remember her name!) It takes two days of work and your fingers will smell like garlic for a week.

Just a note- this dish is not for picky eaters. The flavor is intense, sharp, funky. You've never tasted anything like it. It's not super easy to make either, but if you are like me, you will be HOOKED and everything else in the world will taste bland and boring after your first makdous.

OK...

I haven't made this dish in about 2 years because it's quite hard to find baby eggplant, but I found some gorgeous ones at the Petworth farmer's market in Washington, DC the other day and got excited.

I used:

18 baby eggplants
About 1 cup of raw walnuts
2 whole heads of garlic
1 Tablespoon of Kosher salt
Hot green chili pepper, thinly sliced
Olive Oil, lots!


DAY 1

First, I cut the stem off the eggplant carefully to keep as much of the eggplant as possible - they are small to begin with, so don't take off too much length.

Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil.  Put the eggplants in and boil them for 10 minutes. I place a small plate in the pot to make sure all the eggplants are under water. They will look wrinkly when they are done.

Take a small knife and make a slit in each eggplant. The eggplants are very soft so be careful not to cut them through. It should look like a pouch.

Rub a little salt into each pouch and drain in a colander over a bowl in the refrigerator over night. Eggplants have bitterness that is stored in the liquid. The salt helps to get that liquid out and get rid of the bitter taste. This time I put 2 small plates on top of the eggplants so they are being squeezed and all the liquid gets out.

DAY 2

Take the eggplants out of the fridge.



Peel two whole heads of garlic and squeeze all the cloves into a bowl.I use a garlic press for speed and to make sure I get all the garlic out.

Pound the walnuts into tiny pieces. I put the walnuts into a ziplock bag and use a rolling pin to pound and roll them into tiny pieces.

Mix the garlic and walnuts together with one tablespoon Kosher salt and enough olive oil to bind it all nicely (about a tablespoon). I use my hands to mix it all up, since they already smell like garlic from peeling two heads!

Once it's all mixed up, put a heaping teaspoon of the mixture into each eggplant in the pouch. Use your fingers to mush the inside of the eggplant flesh a bit and get more of the filling inside.

Once all the eggplants are stuffed, arrange them tightly into a sterilized (boiled for 10 minutes) jar. Insert a few slices of the chili pepper between layers. This will infuse into the oil and add a subtle spicy flavor.

Carefully pour a nice olive oil into each jar, covering all the eggplant. Use a spoon, chopstick, or other long utensil to gently move the eggplant around, letting the oil get into every nook and cranny. Be careful not to poke the eggplant! Add more olive oil if the eggplant is no longer covered.

Label and date the jars. I use these great labels made by Ball that actually wash off, so you don't have to worry about picking them off later and ruining the jar with little sticky bits.

Yay! You did it! And your reward will be ready in 5 days. Leave the jars outside the fridge and watch them. If the olive oil settles and the eggplant is not covered all the way, add more olive oil.

After 5 days, you can open them up. Take out a makdous, and take a bite. Let the oil drip all over your chin (it's a MESSY dish) and just enjoy the divine flavor. You can serve a few sliced up if you want to be more civilized, but any makdous connoisseur will tell you that the only real way to eat it is with your fingers. (Wear an old ratty shirt that you don't care about).

As long as the olive oil stays above the eggplants, you don't need to refrigerate these and they will last up to a year!  If you're brave enough to attempt this, please let me know what you think!

Pickled Turnips with Beets

This is a family favorite and I've been making them a long time. You've probably seen these at any Middle Eastern restaurant, either as a garnish on your sandwich plate, or as an option on the falafel buffet, tempting you with their purple crunchy goodness. Chances are, you passed. Don't! They are SO yummy.

To make a large batch that will last you all summer, you will need:

5 turnips
2-3 beets
Brine of 3 cups warm water to one teaspoon sea salt
5-7 garlic cloves

Cut the beets and turnips into rounds and let them air dry

Arrange the turnips and beets snugly in a sterilized jar. Throw garlic in every few layers. Pour the brine over the whole thing. Make sure all the beets and turnips are covered or you will end up with yucky looking brown turnips on top. Always put the date that you prepared the food on the jar so you know when it is ready. These turnips take about one week.

If you start seeing foam collecting on the top, scoop it out. It's fine to have some foam (it's fermentation and shows that the process is working), but if you let the foam stay it will eventually break down the food and ruin the batch. Let it sit in a cool place (doesn't have to be in the fridge) for one week. The beets will be soft, but the turnips will have a great crunch and will be dyed a lovely purple. I prefer the turnips to the the beets, and garlic is delicious. My mom actually adds some celery leaves for fun because they turn the pretty purple and it's lovely to serve that way. They look like flowers.

The final product is fun to snack straight from the jar. Other serving ideas include:

Dip into hummus or tzitziki sauce

Put into sandwiches instead of pickles

Cut into strips and add to an assortment of pickles and olives

Add to salads for crunch

A great chaser for vodka shots or a snack with cold beer

 Enjoy!

The basics...it's as easy as 1...2...pickle!

I grew up in the small town of Chico, CA but our refrigerator was unlike anyone else's in town. My mom, originally from Israel, kept the shelves full of homemade treats neatly packed in jars. There were the garlicky treats like pickled turnips, the sour treats like home made sauerkraut, the spicy treats like the Yemenite spread, Zchug, and the sweet treats like crab apple jelly from the crab apples that grew in our front yard. Preparing a meal was easy when there were so many already prepared yummy things ready to be added to any recipe.

Now that I am a mom, I really am in awe of the time that my mom put into making us healthy and tasty treats from scratch and bringing the flavors of Israel and the Middle East to our home in Northern California. I want my daughter to grow up remembering the sight of jars boiling on the stove and helping me to taste the pickle brine to check if it's too salty, too dill-y or just right.

Over the years, I have pickled and preserved foods here and there, but not as regularly as I would like. I'm determined to show other parents out there how truly easy it is to make a fabulous preserved treat that will impress guests, make great gifts, and keep your family happy.

So, for those skeptical people out there who think preserving is WAY too hard...it's not! It's actually really easy. The only thing that's tough is waiting a week, 2 weeks, sometimes 30 days for a dish to be ready to eat. However, the actual upfront work is not bad and you have food that will last sometimes up to 2 years or more. So pick a Sunday afternoon, put in a few hours, and reap the rewards for months to come.

All you need to get started is:

1. Some jars. You can pick up good jars that seal tight at most hardware stores, Target, or online, You can use the twist-off kind (like spaghetti sauce jars) or the kind that have a metal latch.

2. A cool place to store your finished product. Most pickles (if done in a sterilized way) don't need to be refrigerated. Just find a cool place (under the stairs, in the basement, or anywhere in an air-conditioned home) and leave them be.

3. Pectin. This is a great item to have if you are making a lot of jams and jellies. It's not necessary but it helps if you want your jam to have a more gel-like consistency.  It's sold in most stores.

4. A great collection of whole and fresh spices. Go crazy! Some of my favorite spices for pickling and preserving are: star anise, peppercorn, fresh or dried chili peppers, fresh garlic, clove, juniper seeds, mustard seeds, cinnamon sticks, cardamom seeds, bay leaves, fresh dill and fresh ginger. No powders for preserving!

5. A constant supply of fresh lemons, sugar, sea salt, Kosher salt and a fabulous olive oil.

Happy preserving!