Nice to Be Noticed

Going to take a moment to do a little humble-bragging on a couple of sweet notices I ran across for Good Stuff NW recently. The inimitable Lola Milholland of Umi Organic, whose ramen is a product I'm happy to have on regular rotation in my fridge, noticed my recipe for Kimchi Noodle Salad using her noodles—along with local producers Jorinji Miso and Choi's Kimchi—and has featured it on her recipe page on the Umi website. Thanks, Lola!

And I was looking up some information on the Milwaukie Café, which I raved about awhile ago, and realized they'd included a link to my post about my visit there, Hidden Gem: Milwaukie Café and Bottle Shop. Thanks, guys!

If you see mentions and links to Good Stuff NW out there on the interwebs, drop me a line and let me know. Love it that folks are finding it…well…good stuff!

Photo by Shawn Linehan for Umi Organic.

Chillin' in Summer: 15-Minute Ramen Salad

It looks like summer's heating up, which means the oven is getting a break and the stove is only turned on for a few minutes at a time, if at all. We'd just come back from a blessed few days off the grid camping on Mt. Hood and hadn't yet made a trip to the store, so I was rummaging through the leftovers from our cooler and peeking behind tubs in the fridge for something to make for dinner.

Fortunately our son, who was cat-sitting while we were gone, hadn't devoured all of the goodies I left in the fridge, so there was a box of fresh ramen noodles—my new favorites are Lola Milholland's Umi Organic—and a half jar of Choi's Kimchi. Adding a leftover Persian cucumber that still had plenty of crunch remaining, plus a delightful dressing using miso, again from a local producer, Jorinji Miso, and in about 20 minutes, dinner was in the bag. Or the bowl, as the case may be.

15-Minute Ramen Noodle Salad with Kimchi

For the dressing:
1/3 c. canola or peanut oil
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1 Tbsp. garlic
2 tsp. tamari
2 Tbsp. white miso
1 tsp. gochugaru (optional)
1 tsp. roasted sesame oil

For the salad:
12 oz. fresh ramen noodles (not dried)
1/2 c. kimchi, chopped
1 Persian cucumber (can substitute 1/2 c. chopped English cucumber)
1 Tbsp. chopped chives for garnish

Bring a pot of water to rolling boil.

While the water is heating, make the dressing by placing all ingredients in a blender and blend at high speed until well puréed.

When the water comes to a boil, gently pull apart ramen noodles while adding them to the water. Tease the strands apart with chopsticks while the water returns to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Cook for two minutes, stirring occasionally to keep noodles from clumping. When they're done, drain them in a colander and rinse in cold water to stop them from cooking further.

Chop kimchi into bite-sized pieces. Quarter the cucumber and slice crosswise into 1/8” slices. Place noodles, kimchi, cucumber and dressing in serving bowl and combine. Garnish with chives.

My Kimchi Quest: First Try and Kimchi Fried Rice

I've finally decided to get over my fear of fermentation, that nagging worry that I'm going to kill my family with a deadly bacteria, or at a minimum have glass shards and vinegary vegetables blown all over my kitchen. (Is it any wonder my superpower is coming up with the worst case scenario for any and all occasions?)

Korean kimchi crocks.

But with assurances from experienced friends that neither of those outcomes was likely, and with one quick experiment under my belt—a shrub, or drinking vinegar that my neighbor Bill shared with me—I've decided to tackle kimchi, the ubiquitous pickled and red-peppered cabbage dish found at every meal in Korea. My goal is to make a kimchi similar to the one I had as a foreign exchange student in that country, made by my host mother and stored in earthen crocks on the flat roof of her home.

Kimchi ingredients.

I've found a commercial one that's very reminscent of hers, the Napa Kimchi made by Choi's Kimchi, a local company that began when founder Chong Choi took his kimchi, which he'd been making for his family and sharing with his neighbors, to sell at the farmers' market. Starting with that profile, for my recipe search I decided to start slow, with a super simple recipe by Julia Moskin of the New York Times that she adapted from Tart and Sweet by Kelly Geary and Jessie Knadler.

While it worked like a charm—No death! No explosions!—and was quite delicious, it's not as spicy or quite as vinegary as my Korean mother's (or Choi's). So I'll keep looking for recipes that will measure up to those fond and drool-inducing memories.

Kimchi, and lots of it!

In the meantime, these experiments mean that I've got jars of the pickled, cabbagey Korean condiment resting comfortably in my fridge. Julia's recipe produced about three quarts or so of the stuff, and since my family isn't in the "let's have kimchi for every meal" groove, in order to clear space for the next batch I've had to come up with some creative uses for it.

This kimchi fried rice recipe is cobbled together from several online sources and is terrific all on its own or when combined with various proteins—think tofu, leftover chicken, even seared slices of beef. You can cook up the rice just for the recipe, but if you have leftover rice sitting in the fridge, I think it actually works better.

And I'll keep you updated on my quest for that kimchi of my dreams!

Kimchi Fried Rice

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 c. bacon, chopped
1/2 large yellow onion, chopped fine
2 Tbsp. garlic, minced
2 c. kimchi (with juice)
2 c. enoki mushrooms (or other mushrooms)
4 c. cooked jasmine rice
1-2 Tbsp. sesame oil, to taste
1 Tbsp. fish sauce, to taste
2 Tbsp. gochujang, to taste (available at Asian or specialty grocers)
Salt, to taste
4 eggs

In large skillet or wok, heat vegetable oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add bacon and sauté until it starts to render its fat. Add onions and sauté till tender. Add garlic and stir to warm it, then add kimchi and mushrooms. Sauté until tender. Add rice and sesame oil and combine well. When it’s warm and starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, taste it for seasoning and add fish sauce and gochujang, as well as salt, if desired.

When ready to serve, fry eggs separately in a bit more vegetable oil, keeping yolks soft and runny. Put the fried rice in a bowl and top each serving with a fried egg (or two).

Serves four.

Photo of kimchi crocks (onggi) from Wikimedia.

Winter Warmer: Kimchi Stew

I've said it before, I'll say it again. My neighbors rock. The folks next door are both scientists, love dogs, make great cocktails—the husband gave Dave his recipe for Manhattans, which we've been happily slurping up ever since—and invite us to their yard parties. A couple of doors down are two tremendous cooks who've fed us lovely dinners and even let us make bread in their oven when ours was on the fritz.

The house behind us was formerly occupied by a grumpy gus who never cottoned to the young hippies (us) who moved in, started cutting down the laurel bushes that nearly engulfed the house and taking down the cyclone fencing. A few years ago he sold his house to a young couple who, within a week of moving in, planted a 100-foot-long garden along the south-facing street side and announced we could help ourselves to the bounty.

This was promising enough, but when we found out that the husband was into beer and the wife was a culinary instructor, the future was sealed and we've been passing bacon, pizza and cocktails back and forth over the back fence ever since. (Which never fails to impress friends who come over.)

Susana eventually opened her own cooking school with her best friend and fellow instructor Melinda, who felicitously happens to be a master butcher (yes, this is a fairy-tale relationship). Ever the good neighbor, Susana called the other afternoon asking if I'd be interested in a batch of stew left over from a Korean cooking class that her students couldn't finish because they were too full from the other dishes they'd made.

I've had enough of her cooking to know a terrific dinner had just fallen into my lap, and ran over immediately to pick it up. The base of the stew was a delicious fresh kimchi they'd made in class, augmented by a combination of tofu and some pork belly from a pig Melinda had butchered for a class the day before. I extracted a promise that she'd share the recipe before dashing back home to warm it up for dinner.

Exquisitely flavored and needing nothing more than some fluffy rice to make a company-worthy feast, this dish is destined become a regular addition to our dinner repertoire. I can't wait to start trying it with some of the terrific locally made kimchis available in town (Choi's, I'm thinking of you!), and it's giving me a very good reason to attempt making some of my own in the near future.

Susana's Kimchi Stew

1 lb. pork belly, in 1/4" dice
1/2 onion, diced
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 qt. cabbage kimchi
2 qts. chicken stock
1 block firm tofu, medium dice
Salt, pepper, fish sauce to taste

Brown the pork belly and then add the onions to brown, then add garlic. When garlic is slightly browned, add in kimchi and stock and let simmer on low for about 30 minutes. Add in tofu and let simmer for a final 5-7 minutes to warm tofu through and season to taste with salt, pepper and fish sauce.

Theme and Variation: Kimchi Pimento Cheese

Contributor Jim Dixon of Real Good Food makes a truly impressive pimento cheese spread, one of those gotta-have-it signature recipes that qualifies as legendary. I'm planning on taking this new variation to our upcoming Fourth of July Free-for-All trip to the Gifford Pinchot.

I spent the weekend camping on a beach on the Columbia with a bunch of fathers I’ve known for more than 40 years. Beach bocce, boating adventure, too many mosquitoes and lots of good food made for fun-filled days.

Here’s one of the things I made for the trip.

Kimchi Pimento Cheese

I made my usual batch of pimento cheese, but added about half cup of the kimchi I made at a Portland Culinary Alliance workshop a few weeks ago.

1.25-1.5 lbs cheddar, roughly even mix of yellow medium and white sharp
4 roasted, peeled, seeded red bell peppers (about 2 cups worth after the peeling, etc., or the equivalent amount of roasted red peppers from a jar, either red, pimento or piquillo)
2-3 Tbsp. mayonnaise (homemade or Best Foods, aka Hellman’s east of the Mississippi; Duke’s in the south)
1 Tbsp. sweet pickle relish
1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. good bourbon
Crystal hot sauce to taste
1/2 c. kimchi (Choi's, a local company, is wonderful if you don't have your own)

Grate the cheese with a box grater or with a food processor (I prefer hand grating since you need the processor bowl with the steel blade for the next step and I don’t want to have to clean it). Combine the peppers and other ingredients (here’s where you add the kimchi, but not the cheese) in the processor and pulse a few times. Add the cheese and pulse until well mixed, but not so much that you can’t detect little bits of red pepper. You want everything chopped and mixed but not pureed.

Eat with bread, crackers, raw vegetables, or, like we did, on chorizo and egg breakfast tacos with a little shredded cabbage and extra Crystal hot sauce.

Get my recipe for incorporating his basic pimento cheese spread into a truly unique mac'n'cheese. Bet this kimchi version would work as well!