Allright, before I tell you about these noodles I need to explain about Pucca.

Pucca is a South Korean cartoon featuring the unbearably cute main character, Pucca, (pictured over there–see her?) who is the daughter of the chef of a noodle restaurant in tiny Sooga Village. The animation is somewhat South Parkesque, with the kind of chase sequences that Chuck Jones made famous in his Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons. The humor is bizarre, physical and sometimes very potty–with lots and lots of pop culture references from Bruce Lee to Iron Chef to Sergio Leone.

The main thrust of the series is that Pucca is in love with Garu, who is a young ninja, and she is constantly chasing him around trying to steal kisses. That is about it–everything else flows from that premise.

It is a great deal of fun, and you can watch various episodes on You Tube–just look up Pucca and you will be in business.

Zak discovered Pucca somewhere on the Internet and then found and picked up a bunch of DVD’s of the television series, which is amazingly popular not only in Korea, but all over Asia and Europe. It is also very well loved in our house, especially with Kat and Zak. She has taken to playing at being either Pucca or Garu, wanting to chase or be chased depending on which role she will play. It is very cute–she runs around the house, saying, “Me Garu, me Garu!” which is the signal for one of us to say, “Pucca loves Garu,” and to chase her. The chase ends with kisses, giggles and tickles, and then starts again, and we do this over and over, through the dining room, down the hall, into the kitchen and back again.

As for the noodles–well, the restaurant where Pucca has grown up is famous for za jiang noodles–a traditional Chinese dish that is exceedingly popular in South Korea, so much so that the Korean variants are probably as well known as the original now. It consists of wheat noodles served with a meaty sauce of minced pork and fermented bean paste, garnished with blanched vegetables and herbs.

This version I am presenting here has mostly local ingredients–ramps gathered from the woods here in Athens county, bok choi by Green Edge Gardens, the last of the winter’s store of local carrots, honey from Athens, chicken broth from local chickens, garlic from last fall, local small farm pork, scallions and cilantro from down the road, and Rossi Pasta noodles from Marietta, Ohio. Only the Asian condiments are from elsewhere–fermented black beans, bean sauce, and Shao Hsing wine from China, and fermented bean paste from Korea. The ginger was from California, and the sesame oil is also Chinese. Oh, and I forgot, I garnished it with my very own chili garlic paste, that I made from my own Thai chilies.

A vegetarian version of this noodle dish using minced up mushrooms and tofu can be found here for those who prefer vegetables with their noodles, or those who do not have local, small farm pork available and who do not want to support CAFOs where pigs are kept in horrible conditions, conditions which may have contributed to the recent Swine flu epidemic in Mexico and the rest of the world. (You knew I had to mention that, didn’t you?)

Anyway, this is a delicious, quick supper that can be as spicy as you like, as diners can add more chili garlic sauce at the end to each individual noodle bowl in order to customize the flavor to their own palate. You can add more vegetables if you like–blanched bean sprouts would rule, as would shredded snow peas or napa cabbage. If you can eat shellfish, you could add minced dried shrimp or some fresh shrimp, cut in half longitudinally, and they would be delicious. In the summer, you could add halved fresh grape tomatoes, and I bet they would taste outstanding, as well as put some of Pucca’s signature color–red–into the dish.

So, I bet you are wondering how well did Kat and Zak like Pucca Noodles?

They loved them, which was not surprising to me. They both ate big bowls of them, and then Kat came and started begging for tidbits out of my bowl. The fermented bean pastes add a deep, umami flavor, redolent of the earth, while the fresh ramps, scallions and cilantro add notes of green garlicky, oniony goodness. These Chinese/Korean/Appalachian noodles are truly satisfying and soul-stirring for even the hardest of hearts and pickiest of appetites.

They liked them so much that even though we had them for dinner night before last, they asked for them for dinner again tonight!

Oh, and one more thing–you can serve this sauce with cooked and drained rice noodles if you like. I bet it would be good tossed with bean thread noodles, too.

Pucca Noodles
Ingredients:

2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
1 teaspoon bacon drippings (optional)
2 bunches scallions, white part only, thinly sliced on the diagonal
2″ cube fresh ginger, peeled and minced
6 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 tablespoons fermented black soybeans
1 pound ground pork
2 tablespoons Shao Hsing wine or dry sherry
2 tablespoons ground black bean sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons Korean fermented bean paste
1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce
2 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 cup chicken broth or vegetable broth
1 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 2 tablespoons of water or the broth
1 1/2 cups julienned carrots, blanched and cooled
2 cups bok choy cut into thin shreds
2 cups ramps, cut into thin shreds
1 cup roughly chopped cilantro leaves
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 pound flat Chinese wheat noodles, cooked al dente and drained, rinsed in cold water, then drained again
2 bunches scallions, green tops only, cut very thinly on the bias
1/2 cup thinly shredded ramp leaves
chili garlic sauce for garnish

Heat wok or heavy-bottomed skillet until smoking. Add oil and optional bacon drippings. (You can leave them out if you want, but if you have them, they add a deep smoky richness to the sauce.) Allow drippings to melt and oil to heat for a minute, then pour in the scallions, garlic, ginger and black beans, and cook, stirring, until everything is a nice golden color and is quite fragrant. Add the pork and using a chopping motion with your wok shovel or spatula, break up the meat while it browns. When it is browned, add the sherry, the bean sauce and paste, the chili garlic sauce and honey, and half of the chicken broth.

Cook for a minute, then add the cornstarch mixture and the rest of the broth and stir well to combine. The sauce should thicken almost immediately. At that point, add in the carrots, bok choy, ramps and roughly chopped cilantro leaves and stir until the bok choy wilts. Stir in sesame oil.

Divide noodles into four big bowls, top with the sauce then sprinkle with the scallion tops and the 1/2 cup of shredded ramp leaves. Add chili garlic sauce to the top as garnish or pass it around so everyone can help themselves and add as much as they would like.

Yes.

The nights have become crisp and cool, and the autumn harvest of Napa cabbage has begun.

The Farmer’s Market is filled to bursting with locally grown goodness: garlic heads nearly as big as my palm, cayenne chilies longer than my hand, Japanese globe turnips, bok choy, Chinese bunching onions, crinkly violet and vibrant green mustard, juicy-crisp daikon radishes–it is a food lover’s paradise right now. These items, of course, are all in addition to the usual summer suspects which are still producing plenty of fruits: tomatoes, eggplants, summer squashes, sweet bell peppers, cucumbers, lettuces, green beans, sweet corn. Of course, that is not to mention the fruits, but the point is that while autumnal vegetables and fruits are definitely in evidence, with piles of hard-shelled winter squashes and pumpkins all over the place, and baskets of sweet potatoes and white potatoes, the summer vegetables are still going strong.

In fact, I think that September is probably one of the best months at the Athens Farmer’s Market, because the deep, rich soil of our county goes through a frenzy of fecundity, throwing out pound after pound of delicious produce with each passing day. Even the garden on my deck has thrown caution to the wind and is currently putting out more Thai chilies, Thai basil and bok choy than we can eat ourselves.

So what is there for us to do but preserve what we cannot eat now?

That is where kimchi comes in.

Kimchi is the Korean answer to the human need for fresh vegetables during the harsh winter months.

This national dish, or rather, type of dishes, is basically a mixture of vegetables and seasonings, often including huge amounts of chili peppers, which are then fermented by the process of lactic acid fermentation. This process, which is carried out by the naturally occurring lactobacillus bacteria (which live in the air and on the surface of vegetables), creates lactic acid from the sugars present in the vegetables. This results in a naturally bubbly, tangy food product that is beneficial to health in many ways. Scientists from around the world have found that lactic acid fermented foods may have anti-cancer properties, and Korean scientists recently found that kimchi may have anti-viral properties that were beneficial in treating bird influenza.

These possible health claims for kimchi aside, what is known about it is that it is low in calories, high in fiber, filled with vitamin C, beta carotene, iron and other beneficial nutrients. The exact nutritional profile depends on what ingredients are used to make the kimchi, so these statements are just generalizations.

It also tastes good, and makes other foods taste good too. I love it in noodle soup, and with beef or chicken. It is great in fried rice, too.

The first time I made kimchi was last April, and then I used seasonal local ingredients to great effect, including ramps (wild Appalachian garlic), radishes, Japanese globe turnips, mustard greens, and of course, the giant Napa cabbage that inspired the entire idea. (When you see a cabbage that is bigger than your baby, you just need to buy it and use it for something special. Well, at least, I have to, I don’t know about you.)

This time around, I ended up using three smaller Napa cabbages, two heads of bok choi, some Japanese globe turnip tops, mustard greens (I love the way mustard greens taste in kimchi), giant cayenne chilies, scallions or Chinese bunching onions, and huge heads of German extra hardy garlic. All of these ingredients were organically grown here in Athens county by the good folks at Shade River Farms, Haulin’ Hoof Farm, Green Edge Gardens/Athens Hills CSA, and Rich Gardens Organic Farm.

The very few non-local ingredients were the kosher salt, and the ginger, Korean chili flakes and fish sauce. The former I bought in at Kroger and the three latter ingredients came from our local Asian market. (And I must insist on using the Korean chili flakes–they add the proper flavor and color to the kimchi. And they are easily found in most Asian markets in cellophane packets. They are brilliant scarlet and very fragrant–you cannot miss them.)

How does this Athens Autumn Kimchi taste?

Well, truthfully, I have no idea. I have to wait three days before tasting it, to give the little lactobacillus guys a chance to do their stuff.

I promise to report back on the results.

But I suspect that it will not only taste like kimchi, but it will also have the flavor of this very special place–a small town in Appalachian Ohio, a place of clay soil and steep hills, winding rivers and streams and brilliant blue skies, country houses and rolling pastures dotted with grazing cattle, horses,sheep and goats.

I suspect it will taste like home.

Until then, here is the recipe I used, if you feel the need to gather up some of the early autumn harvest and make yourself a jar or two of kimchi to enjoy over the next few months. (Once it ferments after three days, you can start eating it, and it will stay at about that level of fermentation if you keep it in the fridge for around a month. I have kept mine longer, although it keeps fermenting the whole time you store it. The cold retards the process somewhat, but it doesn’t stop it. Some people don’t like the flavor of long-fermented kimchi, but I do, so I don’t mind that it keeps going and going and going, rather like the Energizer Bunny.)

Oh, one more thing–before you make this recipe, you might want to read my first post on making kimchi–“Up Close and Personal With Kimchi”–some of the photographs of the process may be helpful to you, as well as the general commentary.

Athens Autumn Kimchi
Ingredients:

8 pounds Napa cabbage
1 pound bok choy
1/2 pound turnip greens
1 1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon kosher salt
3 heads garlic, peeled and sliced
4″ long chunk of fresh ginger 1″ thick, peeled and sliced
1 1/2 cups Korean ground red chiles
2 bunches scallions or Chinese bunching onions, trimmed, washed and sliced thinly (about a cup and a half)
1/2 pound fresh mustard greens, washed and sliced into 1/2″ wide ribbons
2-6 fresh red chilies, stemmed and quartered (this depends on how hot your chilis are, how big they are and how hot you want your kimchi to be)
2 pounds diakon radishes, peeled and cut into thin half-rounds
1/3 cup fish sauce (if you are a vegetarian, leave this out)
2 teaspoons raw or brown sugar

Method:

Fist, you need to gather your materials: you will need a one-gallon jar, and a one quart jar (I made enough so Morganna could take some back to the dorm with her) preferably glass, with a screw on lid or self-locking lid. Run them both through the dishwasher and make certain to put it through the heat dry cycle. Or, wash it well by hand, then pour boiling water over both the jars and the lids, then allow them to air dry. Also, you will need a very large bowl, crock, pot or basin and a large plastic bag. I used one of the giant Ziplock bags which are meant for storage of household items. It is tough enough to be rinsed out and used for later batches of kimchi, and it makes the periodic mixing of the cabbage during the brining process much easier.

You will also need a pair of latex gloves for yourself and any and all of your helpers. You do not want to get the chili oil on your hands when you mix the kimchi and pack it into the jars. It is pretty wicked stuff.

You will also want to scrub your sink out well with soap and rinse it well before you start.

Once all of this is accomplished, you can start making your kimchi.

First, cut off the root end of the Napa cabbages, and then strip away the tough outer leaves. Cut them in half longitudinally.

Then, making a v-shaped cut with your knife, cut the core of the cabbage, then pry it out with your fingers.

Then, depending on how dirty and bug-infested your cabbage may be, you can either wash each leaf individually before cutting them by spraying them under running water, and then setting them on paper towels to dry, or if the cabbages are pretty clean, like the ones this time were, you can fill your sink with cold water, and cut your cabbage leaves into two inch square pieces and dump them into the sink. Swish the pieces around with your hands, then pull them out to dry on a paper-towel lined countertop.

If you use the former method, cut the leaves into two inch square pieces -after- they are washed. It is easier to wash individual leaves when they are whole than after they are cut up.

Cut and wash the bok choy the same way as you did the cabbage. For the turnip greens, cut off the big stems and central veins, remove any yellowed bits and rinse well by either spraying or swishing. Once they are clean, cut them into 1″ wide ribbons.

The next step is salting the cabbage, bok choy and turnip greens.

Squeeze out as much washing water as you can by grabbing handsful of the greens and squishing them well. Dump two handsful of greens into the bag, then sprinkle with some of the one and a quarter cup of salt. Then reach in and squish the greens, rubbing the salt well into them. Continue this process of layering greens and salt, squishing and massaging with each layer.

When all of the greens have gone into the bag, and all of the one and a quarter cup of salt is used, seal up the bag. Give the greens a good shaking and squishing through the bag and then set aside for three hours. Every half hour or so, give the bag a good shake and a squish, making certain that the greens are covered by the juices coaxed from them by the salt. This brining process has two purposes. One is to remove excess water, and the other is to help kill bacteria that are not lactobacillus so that the fermentation can go on properly without the vegetables being attacked by microbes that cause them to rot instead of ferment.

While the greens sit in the brine, cut up your daikon, mustard greens (you may wonder why I don’t brine the mustard greens–it is because there isn’t as much water in them as there are in the other three greens) and scallions. Take your ginger and garlic slices and grind them up into a paste in a food processor.

After three hours have passed, it is time to drain and rinse the greens.

Dump them into a colander, and allow all of their juices to drain away. Then, squeeze out as much liquid with your hands as you can. Rinse under cold water, tossing the leaves as you go. Finally, squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands and put them into whatever mixing apparatus you have–a big bowl, crock, pot or basin.

Add all of the other ingredients to the greens, including that last tablespoon of salt, and put on your gloves. Now, the fun part begins.

Start mixing.

Squish, toss, turn, mix, fold, spindle and mutilate your ingredients in your mixing bowl. (We used our big stockpot set down in the sink for this job–it contains the ingredients really well.) Massage the stuff well into each other, making sure some of everything gets into some of everything else.

After everything is well blended, start packing the kimchi into your very clean and dry jars.

You don’t have to pack everything down tightly so that there is no air in the jar, you just have to tamp everything down gently with the back of your hand.

When the jars are filled, screw the lids on loosely and set into a cool, dark place at room temperature for three days to allow the fermentation to begin.

You will see bubbles fizzing up to the top of the jars as the fermentation process goes along–that is how you know that everything is working properly.

After three days, you can open and taste your kimchi. After that, refrigerate it for storage.

I love pickles.

When I was a little kid, around five years old, my mother caught me drinking pickle juice right from the jar. This disturbed her greatly, not only because I had ruined a jar of pickles by putting my germy little lips on it, but, because she was sure that much acid was going to kill me.

I helped Grandma make many a batch of her dill pickles–my job was to scrub the heck out of the pickles before they went into the brine. When it was time to pack them into jars, my other job was to pick whole dill blossoms and peel whole cloves of garlic to put in the jars before Grandma squeezed the cukes in. The fragrant umbrels of dill looked like floral fireworks pressed against the glass of the jars, while the scent of garlic, vinegar and brine permeated my skin and hair, much to my delight.

As a pre-teen and a teen, one of my favorite snacks was a whole crisp, garlicky kosher dill pickle, fresh from the jar or barrel. I remember being impatient when it came to letting pickles age before nibbling on them, but when I did pick at them before their time, I found Grandma’s admonitions to leave them alone were right–young pickles are not always very good.

My love of pickles has diminished somewhat in adulthood, though I still love plenty of sour foods. I no longer drink pickle juice straight from the jar, but I will dig into my huge jar of spring kimchi and snag a choice morsel or two for a snack about every other day. Sometimes I will even eat that for breakfast;.

The last of cucumbers are in season, and are gloriously inexpensive, so I bought about three pounds of them at the farmers market with an eye to turn them into pickles. But what kind?

I nearly turned them into kimchi, but while I know that there are summer kimchi varieties made with cucumbers, they are meant to be eaten quickly, and are not meant for preservation and winter consumption. And I wanted to make pickles, but not plain old dill pickles.

So, I got the idea of making cucumber pickles with the flavorings that go into kimchi: ginger, garlic, fresh chilies, shredded, salted daikon, and dried Korean chile flakes.

(To find Korean chile flakes, try a Korean grocery or a general Asian market. The Asian market here in Athens keeps the Korean chile flakes in the refrigerated section. For reference, you can always print out the photo here of the chile and take it with you.)

I used a recipe that included a short brining time, because I was too impatient to let the pickles sit for a day, and because I didn’t really have a good place to leave them undisturbed where cats couldn’t get into them. This recipe was for sandwich pickles and included a heinous amount of sugar in it–sugar which, for the most part I left out. (I really, really dislike sweet pickles. They made me gag as a kid and to this day, tasting them still makes me shudder. I don’t know why, because it isn’t like I dislike sweet and sour flavor combinations. But something about sweet pickles—eech. It just gets to me.) I did leave a spare one tablespoon–and it didn’t so much as change flavor of the pickles as enhance them.

The first step I took was to peel and shred the daikon radish, which I then rubbed with about a teaspoon of salt, and let sit until much of the juice was drawn from the vegetable’s tissues.

That is the purpose of salting or brining when it comes to pickling, by the way–it helps remove excess water from the vegetable tissues. This does two things. First, the removal of some water gives the vegetable a crisper texture, and secondly, this slight dehydration process helps preserve the vegetable by means of making the vegetable a less hospitable place for bacteria. Salt, of course, also inhibits the growth of many harmful bacteria, so it also has a cleansing and preservative effect on its own, outside of its physical effects on the texture of the vegetable.

The cucumbers I sliced thinly on the diagonal–after obsessively scrubbing the somewhat muddy skins, of course–and tossed into a large stainless steel bowl with the thinly sliced serrano chiles and set them all to soak in brine (a solution of salt and water) for three hours.

While the cukes were brining and the daikon was leaching out excess water, I peeled and cut into very thin slivers four ounces each of garlic and ginger. I could have minced them up and that would have been easier, but I decided I liked the look of very thin slivers much better than a paste of ginger and garlic floating around in the pickle jars. Slicing tiny slivers is easy–you peel both the garlic and ginger, and then slice them into very thin slices. Then, you stake 3-5 slices on top of each other and then cut each stack into very thin strips. It is really easy once you get used to it, and when you must do a lot as I did, it becomes a moving meditation. I find such cutting relaxing.

After three hours, I drained the the cucumbers and chilies, and rinsed them well under cold running water, rubbing them with my hands to get the excess salt out of them. (I should have worn gloves for this, too, because all that salt is really not good for dry skin. Gee–maybe it is because of that dehydrating effect that salt on organic tissues? Hrm. Maybe.)

Then, it was time to make the pickling solution–I just poured the two vinegars, the water and the sugar into a pot, and brought it to a simmer over medium heat. When it started to boil, I poured in the Korean chile flakes, the ginger and the garlic and let it boil for about five minutes. This turned the solution a brilliant scarlet hue that kimchi-lovers know very well. and the fragrance once the ginger and garlic were added was delicious. I almost wanted to drink some right then and there.

But instead of that, I stirred the cucumber and chile slices into the pickling juice, and let them simmer for about five minutes.

Then, I packed them into hot jars, and as a final step, I added a bit of Ball’s Pickle Crisp to the top of the pickles, then screwed on the lids. Pickle Crisp, which is the proprietary name Ball gives to calcium chloride. Calcium chloride helps pickles retain their crisp texture by acting to firm up the natural pectins found in the cucumbers without also raising the pH level of the pickling liquid.

The most important thing you have to remember when packing pickles into jars, is to be obsessive about poking out excess air bubbles. Cucumbers are notorious for trapping pockets of air among themselves and between themselves and the glass of the jar. I have found, and was taught by Grandma to pack cucumbers fairly tightly, and after pouring in the hot brine, to use a thin spatula, a table knife or some other implement (a chopstick works pretty well) to poke around the pickles and down the sides of the jar to seek and destroy the air bubbles. After that, you just have to top up the vinegar solution while leaving the recommended empty space at the top of the jar.

Then, I just processed the jars for ten minutes. They all sealed perfectly, and I cannot wait to try the pickles!

But, wait I will. Pickles are not usually at their best when first made. They should really age a bit on a cool, dark shelf undisturbed. During this time, the flavors mellow and begin to cuddle with each other, becoming friendly. The vinegar loses its raw, sharp quality, the garlic snuggles up tot he ginger who kisses the cucumber, and the Korean chile pepper weaves all of these tastes and textures into a cohesive, spicy whole.

(Though, I have to admit that I tasted a couple of pickle slices before I started packing the jars. Even hot and fresh and new, the pickles tasted pretty darned good. They are also very spicy, so keep that in mind if you decide to make this recipe, and lower the amount of Korean chile flakes accordingly.)

Have no fear–when I open my first jar of these scarlet and pine colored wonders in a couple of weeks, I will write an update letting everyone know how they turned out.

Until then, here is the recipe, if you feel the need to experiment right along with me.

Kimchi-Style Cucumber Pickles

Makes four pints or two quarts.

The theme of this year’s Eat Local Challenge is “Preserving The Harvest,” and I thought that I could use this opportunity to not only make up a few more batches of kimchi and Hunan salted chilies, but also highlight a few recipes using these delicious lactic-acid fermented vegetables.

Lactic acid fermentation is an ancient method of preserving vegetables for the winter in both the East and the West. In China, this method, which involves salting vegetables, with or without the addition of ginger, garlic and chile peppers, and then leaving them in covered crocks to allow the naturally occurring lactobacillis bacteria to begin fermentation, is used to make all sorts of pickled and preserved vegetables, from mustard greens to giant radishes. Koreans use this method to make all different sorts of kimchi, and in France, Germany and Austria, cabbage, both green and red, is fermented into saurkraut.

All of these fermented vegetables are important in the diets of people who live in cold climates, not only because they provide vitamins (especially vitamins C and A) and vegetable roughage in the winter months when the world is covered with ice and snow, but because these deliciously tart, salty pickles are filled with beneficial bacteria which help ward off viral infections. In the times before central heating and flu shots, viral illnesses killed millions, so naturally health-giving foods like kimchi were very important to people’s diets. And frankly, these foods are still important, because really, I would rather eat kimchi than get a flu shot.

Kimchi I trust. Flu shots–eh, not so much.

Back to the topic at hand–a recipe using kimchi, which I admit is neither wholly Korean, nor Chinese, but is an amalgam of the two. It is a noodle soup which is similar in flavor and style to a traditional Chinese noodle shop favorite, shredded pork and fermented mustard greens soup, but which uses shredded kimchi instead of the traditional Chinese pickled mustard greens. I also used some bits of roast pork instead of stir frying fresh pork with the greens along with some onions, ginger and garlic, and for a broth, I used my Chinese chicken and pork stock. I added fresh baby bok choy and some thinly cut sticks of seeded cucumber for crunch and a fresh sweetness that contrasted beautifully with the kimchi. The noodles I used were some fresh egg noodles that took all of about forty five seconds to cook in boiling water.

It went together simply into a quick local dinner, in large part because I had the big jar of kimchi in the fridge, a batch of roast pork I had already cooked and packed up in portions for the freezer, and the stock already made and frozen in quart-sized containers. I am a big believer in cooking ahead and either stocking the freezer or pantry with staples like stocks, sauces, preserved vegetables and pre-cooked meats so that I can make my very own fast foods in no time. All I had to do tonight was shred up the cucumber, wash and core the bok choy, and bring the stock to a boil, then cook the noodles. After that, it is nothing but assembly.

How did it taste?

Quite good, actually–I think I will add it to my arsenal of winter cold fighting soups. It was quite spicy, and the broth was rich with a deep meaty flavor. The sweetness of the Chinese roast pork went well with the salty kimchi and the greens were fresh and bittersweet. My favorite part, though was the cucumber; I loved the slightly cooked texture–it is smooth and cool as jade, but still lightly crisp, with a rich velvety quality. Even better is the fact that I cannot imagine a sore throat or cold being able to stand up to the ginger, chile, garlic and friendly bacteria in the kimchi, nor the sinuses being able to resist the drainage potential of rich chickeny broth fragrant with pungent aromatics. It will be a knockout healing potion, I bet.

One of the best parts about this dinner was how local it was; the main components of it–the vegetables in the kimchi, as well as the fresh vegetables, all came from Athens county, while the chickens and pork came from both here and from near Columbus. Only the Chinese condiments used to flavor the pork, kimchi and soup stock, came from elsewhere.

Oh, and one more note–Kat really liked this soup broth, even though it was very spicy. She would point at my bowl and say, “Ma1″ quite emphatically, which is her way of saying, “Mom–give me some of that.” So, I put a tiny bit of the broth in my soup spoon, blew on it and then held it for her to sip. Which she did.

Then, much to our and her Uncle Dan’s amusement, her eyes opened wide, and she held her mouth open, sucking air. Her eyes bugged half out of her face, and her skin turned red around them, and her nose started to run. I gave her a sip of water, which she guzzled, and then, I figured she would either start to cry or just avoid the broth from then on.

No way. Instead, she set her sippy cup down on her high chair, pointed at the bowl again, and gasped out, “Ma!” Then, with a very determined and overly emphatic point, she repeated, loudly, “Ma1 Ma!”

I gave her another sip and she slugged it down, and the eye-popping and mouth dropping routine repeated, much to our amusement. Then, she had a sip of water and grinned at me like a maniac, and started pointing at the bowl again, proclaiming, “Ma! Ma! Ma!!!!”

The endorphine rush had hit.

A chili-head is born.

Stay tuned for more on Chinese noodles, preserving the harvest and other culinary adventures.

Kimchi Noodle Soup

Serve with strong fermented tea like pu er or smoked tea like lapsang souchong.

I have been having a good time playing around in the kitchen with Korean flavors and recipes.

First, the kimchi–which is fermenting along very nicely, thank you, and tastes better and better every day. (I have to remember to take some to the farmer’s market tomorrow for the two farmers who grew the cabbage and the mustard greens that went into it.)

Inspired by the books Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen by Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall and Eating Korean by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, I decided to make authentic bulgogi, which translates as “fired beef.”

For years I had been making a bulgogi-like grilled sliced steak, marinated in lots of garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce and sugar and served wrapped in lettuce leaves, and last summer, after reading one of Sarah Gim’s posts on Slashfood, I made bulgogi burgers to much acclaim from friends and family, but I had never really ventured into the realm of the real thing.

It turns out that my faux bulgogi wasn’t too far off from the real thing. The recipe from Eating Korean was quite minimal; including a marinade containing only soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, Korean malt syrup, garlic, salt, and black pepper, with scallions as an optional garnish.

On the other hand, the recipe in Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen was much more complex, with inclusions of rice wine, grated Asian pear, scallions, walnuts, corn syrup and sesame seeds in the marinade. The author notes that her family’s method of making bulgogi is similar to the more complex recipe from the royal kitchens, so that accounts for the added ingredients and the resulting kaleidescope of flavors.

I combined the two recipes to make my own version.

First of all, I decided to substitute nuoc mau (Vietnamese caramel sauce) for the malt or corn syrup, since I had absolutely neither of those, and only about a tablespoon of nuoc mau left to use up before making another batch. The Asian pear was an intriguing ingredient; apparently, it is used not only for its flavor and slight texture, but also for its tenderizing properties. Just by happenstance, the owner of the local Asian market had given Zak an Asian pear to try the last time he had been shopping, so there it was, sitting in my fridge, waiting to be used. Of course, I had to snack on its crisp, juicy flesh while I was shredding it to go in the marinade; needless to say, I have some more Asian pears sitting in the crisper drawer right now, for snacks or cooking. They are amazing: they have a light, honey-floral scent and a texture similar to fresh water-chestnut. And they have an icy, crystalline flavor to them that is so refreshing–it seemed almost a shame to put it on meat, but I did anyway, and am happy that I made that choice.

I had no walnuts in the house, so I went ahead and used the sesame seeds and didn’t worry about the nuts.

I also made double the amount of marinade so I could reduce some of it down with beef stock to make a glaze for the finished beef. I am sure that is not traditional, but I don’t really care–it tasted very, very good–especially with the Asian pear.

Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen also suggest three traditional salads as side dishes: radish salad, cucumber salad and leaf lettuce salad. Well, I was fresh out of radishes; they had all been used up in the kimchi making extravaganza, and I had no cucumbers. Leaf lettuce, however, had been in abundant supply at the farmer’s market, so I had bought a great pile of it. I looked at the recipe, and it seemed stunningly simple, yet all of the ingredients were tasty, so I thought–”Why not?”

How did it all turn out?

Well, we ate all of it. I am sorry the photographs turned out so lousy; the camera was acting up and then the battery died after only a few shots. I had no backup batteries in the charger, so I went with what I had, which unfortunately are not appetizing pictures. Yet, let me say, the flavors of the beef were fantastic after a brief grilling, but were even better after the reduced glaze was applied. The salad was surprisingly great; it is hard to believe that a salad that consists of so few ingredients can taste so fresh and delightful. It was a great foil for the beef.

The kimchi, as noted above, was coming along nicely, with a strong garlic top note (probably from the combination of garlic and ramps) and a tangy fizz from the fermentation, with a whiff of incendiary power from the ginger, mustard greens and chili. The rice, which was not short grained as it should have been, but long-grain jasmine, because that is what we had, was great with the glaze drizzled over it, and the bean sprouts I simply tossed with some sesame oil were crunchy and nutty.

Since the author of Eating Korean tells me that bulgogi is an integral part of bibimbap–a mixed dish of various ingredients served over rice, I think that I shall have to try that as my next Korean culinary experiment. Although I don’t think it is absolutely true that bibimbap requires bulgogi-at least the writer at Zen Kimchi doesn’t seem to think so-I still think that a beefy version of it would be quite tasty. I mean, as it was, I mixed everything on my plate into a fine and tasty mess before and during eating it as it was, so bibimbap seems to be the next logical step.

Until then, though, here is my way of making bulgogi. If you want to make a glaze to pour over the beef and rice after it is cooked, double the marinade recipe, add about 1/4 cup of beef or chicken broth or stock, and simmer over medium heat until it reduces into a thick, shiny glaze.

Bulgogi

Just before dinner, toss thoroughly with the lettuce, and serve immediately.