Cucumber Kimchee

The garden has been providing lots and lots of cucumbers lately.  We planted two varieties.  One was a pickling cuke and the other was a traditional elongated white fleshed variety.  Pickling cukes have a green center and they have black spines on them.  They are short and stubby, knobby and thick.

It's not the length but the girth that matters.

We made pickles earlier in the season but I thought I would try my hand at making some kimchee.  I have been really interested in fermentation the past two years.  First I started with pizza dough, then beer and hard cider, followed by the soppresseta disaster, then kefir and now fermented vegetables. 

 

I draw inspiration from great meals that I have had in restaurants.  There is a noveau Korean-styled restaurant in Fremont called Revel that had awfully good food.  As with most Korean food, I really enjoyed the side dishes almost as much as the main courses.  I also steal the good ideas of others and modify their recipes to what I have on hand.

So if you have an accommodating spouse or friends who have lost their sense of smell, try your hand at making some seriously spicy vegetables.  There is something not altogether right about kimchee.  It could be that it is decomposing or it could be that it reeks of foot and ass.

I tried making two varieties of kimchee.  Honestly, I doubt they will taste much different but variety is the spice of life.  In this recipe there is not too much variety but lots of spice. 

Wash your cukes and chop into good sized pieces.  Bear in the mind that they will shrink during the process.  The other cukes were quartered but not quite through.  The quartered cukes were put into a water bath with a generous amount of brine.  The bite sized bits were simply salted.

You spice up my life.

Let the cukes rest for a day.  They will release a lot of their water and feel more firm.  To the bite sized bits, add garlic chives, minced garlic, fish sauce, rice wine vinegar and some Korean ground chili powder.  I am not sure I got the right kind of chili powder but it looked right.  Mix thoroughly then put in some glass jars and refrigerate. 


Add just the right amount of fish sauce to get the proper fetidness.

I did not have enough confidence to put the jars in the basement or in the ground.  Keeping the kimchee in the refrigerator seemed like a safer bet.

 

A chili paste was made with water, minced garlic and garlic chives for the quartered cukes.  The quarter cukes were put into a plastic container which I suspect will get thrown out once the kimchee is eaten.  Let's hope that the kimchee does not corrode the plastic like the blood of Alien did to the hull of the Nostromo. 

"Micro changes in air density, my ass." - Ripley to Ash