Peach Fig Kimchi

I made a similar condiment 2 years ago and it was a huge success. I didn't measure it then and I didn't measure it now. I'd compare it to mango chutney before kimchi but it is made in the kimchi style. "Real" kim chi is a korean fermented cabbage condiment/salad/side dish. It generally contains cabbage, daikon radish, sometimes carrots, chili, garlic, scallion/onion, ginger, sometimes fish sauce. It is sour but there is no vinegar added when made correctly; the sour flavor is all from lactobacillus fermentation. There are tons of different recipes using a wide range of ingredients, sometimes even fruit.


Peach Fig Kim Chi

5 Peaches, chopped
1/2 lb Figs, chopped 
bunch Garlic Chives, diced
1 Shallot, minced
1 inch knob Ginger, microplaned
2 jalapeno, minced

Chop peaches and figs coarsely, put in a strainer set over a bowl, salt heavily and stir. Stir a few times while chopping the other ingredients. Combine everything in a quart mason jar and leave loosely capped for about a week. (Its ok for air to get in but no bugs!) Stir every 12 hours.


By chopping and salting the fruit before adding the other ingredients, a significant amount of liquid is drawn out of the fruits. When making kimchi, you want everything to be submerged in liquid, not exposed to air. By pre-salting the fruit, you also insure that any bits that do get exposed to air above the surface of the brine (or in this case fruity/ mushy/ briney stuff) will be salty enough that they wont mold. Stirring frequently reincorporates any bits that are near the surface, as well as slowly mashing it up. I use a chopstick. The fruit has so much liquid that I remove some at the start so that when finished it will have a nice, thickened, almost chunky applesauce texture.


A microplane is a superfine super sharp grater that is great for ginger, citrus zest and hard cheese. I always use it for ginger. You get really fresh, juicy ginger and are left holding some of the stringy pulp instead of eating it. I used garlic chives because they are so prolific in my garden. (You could use scallions and garlic instead.) They are a little bit tough raw sometimes and I was concerned about the texture in the finished kim chi. Luckily, they worked out fine chopped small and fermented for a week.

Peach Fig Kim Chi, after a week of stirring twice a day.

Kombucha

new 10 day old Kombucha scoby, after mature Kombucha was drained

I love GT Dave's Trilogy Kombucha. Its pretty much the only one I ever buy. Ginger/ lemon/ raspberry perfection. I don't really buy it often these days but there was a time when I did. There also was a time about 4 or 5 years ago, when I made my own Kombucha for a little while. It was never great but I was never too methodical about it either and it was always drinkable.

mother scoby

Recently a friend gave me a new kombucha scoby. (symbiotic. culture. of. bacteria. & yeast.) There are many traditional ferments that are scoby based. Kombucha thrives in an acidic environment made of sweet tea. Weird, right? When its done fermenting its fizzy and sour and sometimes a little sweet still. The culture eats up the sugars and converts them into lactic acid, carbon dioxide, probiotic bacterias and more.

 The first time I made it years ago, I based my recipe off of Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation book. This time I based it off of his Art of Fermentation. He's the best. While his style is not my style by any means, I really enjoy reading everything he does. Its really accessible. He gives really rough recipes/ encouragements in paragraph form. This is what I took away from it:

Kombucha

12 tea bags, steeped 4 mins
6 C boiled water, rested for about 2 mins before steeping
1 1/2 C sugar, stirred into tea after tea bags removed
6 C boiled and then cooled water
1/4 C mature Kombucha
Kombucha mother
3 Tbl raw cider vinegar

new scoby beginning to form

Boiling water is essential to remove chlorine, which lots of fermentation projects dislike. If you have boiled and cooled water to begin with, you can proceed faster. If not, make tea with the full 12 C and then let it cool forever. Make sure it is room temperature before adding mature Kombucha or scoby or you might kill it. I didn't have enough mature kombucha with my scoby, its supposed to be about 10% of total volume, so I added vinegar to raise the ph and add more raw culture support. You then leave it to ferment for about a week. Ideally it sits in a big open mouth crock or jar, with a covering to dissuade flies but still allow airflow. This fermentation is aerobic and requires fresh air to work properly. I used an old cookie jar, of which i had dropped the lid on my head and shattered it, making it useless for cookies any more, covered in a paper towel and sealed with a rubber band... 

mama scoby creepin up to the new jawn

crazy air bubble island in the scoby

It worked exceptionally well. Generally new layers form onto the mother scoby and as it gets super thick, you can peel away layers and give them to people. For some reason, when I did it, the mama scoby fell to the bottom and sort of floated lackluster near the bottom of the jar. However, a brand new, beast-thick scoby formed at the top. After about 8 days, the mama was creeping up towards the baby but it never connected. I waited 10 days (averaging in the low 80's the whole time) before bottling it, which was this afternoon. I bottled up four Grolsch swing top pints and a plastic bottle to test the carbonation. (you can tell how carbonated its getting by squeezing, something you cannot do with glass) If it carbonated too much they will explode, so the tester is nice to have. I think it will be a few days until I move them to the fridge. Fermentation slows dramatically in the refrigerator but doesn't quite stop.


I made 2 new batches of sweet tea before I attempted to bottle up the finished Kombucha. I have a smaller crock that I'm putting the original mother in, to see if it makes a new baby or just gets bigger.  And I'm putting the baby but already huge scoby into the same big jar again, because it fits it perfectly. 

next round

Hopefully they will carbonate nicely and taste delicious. I expect 10 more days until the next cycle is ready. If this first round tastes decent and doesn't need tweaking to get a nice balance of sweet and sour and carbonates nicely, then I will start trying to do a secondary fermentation to add more flavors in the next round.

I should have lots of scobys to give out in the next month for any Philly friends. Ill probably have Kombucha for everyone I know to drink soon also...

Beet Pickle

I made delicious raw fermented beet pickles. The recipe is from Phickle except i didn't add the basil. I even have way too much basil growing, but cumin seemed like enough. I sliced them thick and left the skins on. They fermented for 10 days in our ridiculous heat wave and were super sour and wonderful.

I have a double shot glass that fits perfectly into skinny mouth canning jars and this is how i should ferment from now on.




Cumin Beet Pickle  (phickle.com)

2 C Water
1 Tbl salt
1 1/2 tsp cumin seed

About a dozen beets; some were super small and a few were large.

I chopped up all the beets I had and it fit in a qt jar. Covered with brine above. Let sit at scorching room temperature for 10 days Cleaned the rim carefully and put a clean cap on it and stored in the fridge. Great snack pickle but i wouldn't put it on a sandwich.

Rat Tail Radish

These odd little vegetables have all come and gone already but we grew so many that they'll be on my plate for months. I made raw fermented pickles out of them to stretch out their eating season. They take longer to grow than many traditional small sized radishes because this strange Indonesian heirloom variety is grown for its seed pods rather than its roots. Most other radishes are picked before they bolt, or send up a flowering stalk. This variety branches out profusely, so profusely in fact that i had to thin out about half of what I had planted to make room for them to grow. On these branches grow an immense array of tiny white/pink/purple flowers. With time, these tiny blossoms become huge radish pods. In fact its easy to get overwhelmed with picking them but persevere because they are best when tender and smaller. I harvested about 9 or 10 pounds over the course of about a month from about a dozen plants. I left the over grown seed pods on the plants, pulled them from the ground and left the whole plant to dry. Now I have lots of seeds for next year, even though I only need a few. Im spreading these to everyone I know. Like many Asian radishes, they are season sensitive. This variety only works when planted in the spring. A lot of small root radishes can be planted at any time and harvested within a month, which makes them great for filling in odd spaces at random times in the garden. These radishes were planted early here in Philadelphia, around mid March, and were harvested between mid May and early June.

Here is how I pickled them:

Rat Tail Radish Pickle

8 C Water
6 Tbl Sea Salt
3Tbl Pickling Spice
2 Cloves Garlic

A cookie jar full of Rat Tails, (maybe 12 C ?....)
Time- about 1-2 weeks in summer, to taste

The exact quantities do not matter. What does matter is the proportions on the brine. I use Sandor Katz recommendation of 4C water: 3Tbl salt for my raw fermenting brine. This is the way pre industrial pickles were made. The salt inhibits the growth of bad bacterias and promotes the growht of benefecial lactobacillus bacterias. The vegetables need to remain submerged under the salty brine. THIS IS CRUCIAL, exposure to air will create mold-which can be skimmed off but its better not to make it in the first place. I use a big cookie jar and then a smaller jar placed in the opening to weigh down the veggies. I then cover the top with a dish towel to keep bugs from landing in it.

As these good bacteria grow, the brine naturally turns sour! You dont need to add vinegar, which is itself a fermented product. I think I let this batch sit for 8 days, I tasted it and like it so I packed it up and put it in the fridge. Once each jar is packed, cover the contents with the brine. Refrigeration greatly slows the fermenting process but does not stop it. You can try packing them into smaller containers over times so you will get pickles of varying sourness if you like. Raw fermented products will continue to ferment indefinitely. Ive had sauerkrauts in my fridge for a year without them going bad. Time and temperature and salt are all related. The saltier the brine, the slower the ferment. The slower the ferment, the more complex flavor development. In the Winter a batch of Saurkraut or Kim Chi could take months to be sufficiently fermented, using the same amount of salt that might only take weeks in the Summer.

The Rat Tails are great fermented raw because they stay crisper. I water bath canned a few jars earlier in the season and wasnt pleased with the texture. They were really tasty both ways though. They naturally have a peppery/mustardy flavor that goes great with sour brine, garlic, fresh herbs or pickling spices. Hit me up if you want some seeds for next year if you're in Philly or buy some online from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.