A few days ago, I made a new batch of kimchi. It’s been a while since I last fermented cabbage and aromatics (not quite as long ago as this, but probably a year or so). I’m still very much at the novice end of the scale of kimchi mastery, but I’m always happy with my efforts.
This time, I wanted to try a different version – on the back of a conversation with Cath about what would go well with gochujang aubergine, I made a milder kimchi without the gochugaru red chilli powder that I’d normally use, adding lots of fennel, some seaweed, and a small amount of fresh green chilli.
The main fermentation finished last night and the jars were transferred to the fridge. I’ve already eaten kimchi for breakfast. It tastes great. The fennel has a slight toughness to it, but pleasingly so.
As always, I used Felicity Cloake’s recipe as a starting point. For this green kimchi I replaced the daikon and carrot with fennel – cut the stalks off, split the bulb and remove the tough core, then cut into quarter-inch shreds. I added a couple of mild Turkish green chillies cut into rings. I swapped the gochuharu for one and a half deseeded jalapeños which I crushed with the garlic and ginger, plus a dessertspoon of fennel seed, in a pestle and mortar. I added a dessertspoon of dried wakame seaweed and omitted the shrimp and fish sauce. In place of water I used kombu stock – 500ml water, kombu sheets to make up around 6″ by 8″ / 15cm x 20cm / a sheet of A5 paper; soak for 3 to 4 hours. This makes more stock than you need, but you can use the rest in soup – perhaps making a larger batch of stock to facilitate this (see this soup for inspiration); beyond the stated 150ml liquid in the recipe, I needed to add a little extra to the jars to help ensure there was enough liquid to keep the veg submerged while fermenting.
Quite a lot of kimchi recipes use glutinous rice flour cooked in water as part of the spiced paste, which helps it cling to the veg and effectively keep it submerged. The reduced volume of chilli in my green kimchi meant that my paste was thinner and lesser in volume, which is what led to my needing to add more kombu stock. The next time I make this I’ll try the rice flour trick.
Spoilt Broth 