Quick fermented radish kimchi from Introduction to Korean Cooking
Serious Eats recently published a long and unusually comprehensive article by Sonja Swanson, a Korean food blogger and former editor of Time Out Seoul. An Introduction to Korean Cooking in Recipes is a guide to getting to know the cuisine through making the dishes at home, but many of the recipes she links to are not the best known or most obvious examples. (One very famous Korean dish is missing from her list. Read the article, see if you recognize the omission, then skip to the end of this post to see if you’re right.)
For kimchi, case in point, she turns to Yeolmu Kimchee, made from quick-fermented young radish greens and similar to Chonggak, the “bachelor” kimchi we tasted recently from Benu in San Francisco. If you make this recipe you’ll need some young radishes with a good amount of stems and leaves attached so that would rule out the fat red radishes in American markets that have very little greenery. I’m tempted to try this with young turnip greens, in fact. Also see the notes at the end of the recipe for substituting some of the more hard-to-find ingredients.
And, her discussion of banchan is not just a compendium of recipes but a discussion of aesthetics and philosophy: why and how banchan should balance ingredients, textures and colors. Korean Marinated Spinach (Sigeumchi Namul) is a good place to start here. While it can be made with supermarket spinach and familiar seasonings, “namul” refers to wild greens which were often foraged in the forest in much harder times. As you enjoy this dish, you can think about the primal importance of life-sustaining greens as a touchstone in Korean cuisine.
Have you guessed the famous Korean dish that’s missing? That’s actually a trick question because there are multiples. Korean Fried Chicken, of course, but also bulgogi or kalbi or grilled meats in any form. This article is about less-familiar dishes and how you can get started at home. Not a bad sheltering-in-place project. Check it out.
