Yearly Archives: 2011 - Page 6

Kimchi

Posted by Paul Jaminet on May 15, 2011 64 comments

UPDATE: For our recipe for kimchi, see “Homemade Kimchi” (June 26, 2011).

While the Chinese stir-fry vegetables, Koreans pickle them. Wikipedia explains the history of kimchi:

Early kimchi was made of cabbage and beef stock only. Red chili, a New World vegetable not found in Korea before European contact with the Americas, was added to kimchi recipes some time after 1500. Red chili pepper flakes are now used as the main ingredient for spice and source of heat for many varieties of kimchi. In the twelfth century other spices, creating flavors such as sweet and sour, and colors, such as white and orange, were added.

There are many varieties of kimchi. The Kimchi Field Museum in Seoul has documented 187 varieties of kimchi, and there are an almost infinite number of variations upon the basic varieties.

Kimchi’s Health Benefits

Kimchi is a natural probiotic. At early stages in its pickling, lactic acid bacterial species such as Leuconostoc mesenteroides and Lactobacillus plantarum dominate. [1] As kimchi ages, more species appear and the bacterial environment diversifies.

There is evidence that eating kimchi helps against autoimmune disorders and allergies. [2, 3] It’s also plausible that kimchi would help against bowel conditions, since those often feature a limited repertoire of gut flora. (See Bowel Disease, Part IV: Restoring Healthful Gut Flora, July 27, 2010.)

Kimchi Side Dishes

Kimchi is usually served as a side dish when fresh. Here are a few photos from our local Asian supermarket.

When most people think of kimchi they think of cabbage. Here is a whole row of cabbage kimchi:

Cabbage kimchi is made by soaking the cabbage in salt, squeezing the water out, and layering the salted cabbage with a marinade. Marinades may contain shredded radish, chili powder (which gives the red color), garlic, garlic sprouts, and green onion.

Often the marinade will include oyster or anchovy as a flavor enhancer: you can see a sign for oyster cabbage kimchi in the above picture. These are better quality kimchi; poor quality kimchi may use MSG.

However, there are many other types of pickled kimchi besides cabbage. Here is another picture from our local supermarket:

Along the bottom and upper left are pickled vegetables, on the upper right are fermented seafood. In this picture are probably about 80 different varieties of kimchi.

Here are some examples of what we eat:

On the left is Napa cabbage kimchi, which is for Koreans what salad is to Americans. It includes Korean radish, pepper powder, onion, green onion, apple, pear, sugar, salt, ginger, garlic, salted shrimp, salted anchovy, and oyster sauce. On the right is a spicy radish kimchi.

This is another extremely popular flavor, cucumber kimchi. It’s seasoned with chives, Korean radish, hot red pepper powder, onion, carrot, sugar, salt, ginger, garlic, salted anchovy, and sweet rice flour.

Pickled white radish. One of Paul’s favorites, with a very mild taste; seasoned with cayenne, fish sauce, and salt.

Clockwise from upper left: pickled seaweed (seasoned with vinegar, wine, sugar, cayenne, scallion, oil, green pepper, garlic, and ginger); pickled garlic cloves (seasoned with vinegar, salt, sesame, panicum, black bean, and miso); seasoned sesame leaves (with cayenne and garlic); pickled yellow radish; and garlic stem kimchi (flavored with garlic, sesame, and pepper paste).

This last picture illustrates how we often eat vegetables with dinner. We’ll cook an entrée and starch, but serve the vegetables family-style in their original plastic containers; everyone can serve themselves. It makes for a nice buffet of vegetables with very little labor.

Kimchi Soups and Stews

As kimchi gets older, it becomes sour as acidic fermentation products build up, and the mix of bacterial species tends to change to a less probiotic mix.

Older kimchi will therefore be put in soups and stews and boiled to remove bacteria and dilute the sour taste.

Some examples can be seen in this trailer for an upcoming US public television series, “Kimchi Chronicles”. First, a promo introducing the series:

This longer trailer shows an example of using older kimchi as an ingredient in a stew:

How to Make Kimchi

Here’s a video showing how to make kimchi at home:

Conclusion

It’s a good idea to find some flavors of kimchi, or other fermented vegetables like pickles or sauerkraut, that you like. It’s an inexpensive and nourishing way to obtain probiotic bacteria; and a convenient and easy way to eat vegetables!

References

[1] Cho J et al. Microbial population dynamics of kimchi, a fermented cabbage product. FEMS Microbiol Lett. 2006 Apr;257(2):262-7. http://pmid.us/16553862.

[2] Won TJ et al. Modulation of Th1/Th2 Balance by Lactobacillus Strains Isolated from Kimchi via Stimulation of Macrophage Cell Line J774A.1 In Vitro. J Food Sci. 2011 Mar;76(2):H55-H61. http://pmid.us/21535768.

[3] Won TJ et al. Oral administration of Lactobacillus strains from Kimchi inhibits atopic dermatitis in NC?/?Nga mice. J Appl Microbiol. 2011 May;110(5):1195-202. http://pmid.us/21338447.

Happy Mother’s Day! with Hot Chocolate

Posted by Paul Jaminet on May 8, 2011 25 comments

Our best wishes to all Moms!

We thought we’d post something kids and moms can enjoy together: hot chocolate.

Hot Chocolate

We recommend some combination of whole milk or heavy cream, dark chocolate, and coconut milk or coconut oil.

We like ours thick so we used cream and coconut oil. (Shou-Ching suggests mixing some coffee with the cream — for Mom only! (Paul suggests some Irish whiskey.)) We used 72% chocolate, which is sweet but not too sweet.

We mixed about 100 g chocolate with a heaping tablespoon (~2 tbsp) coconut oil and 1 cup cream. Melt the chocolate with the oil in a sauce pan:

Then add the cream or milk and stir until well mixed:

Whipped Cream

It wouldn’t be hot chocolate without whipped cream on top. We use 1 cup heavy whipping cream and 1 tbsp rice syrup as a sweetener.

We do the preparation in the same plastic container we’ll use to store the extra whipped cream – less cleanup that way:

Whip the cream, then add the rice syrup and whip some more:

Serve

Transfer everything to a mug and top with cinnamon or nutmeg:

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

Rack of Lamb

Posted by Paul Jaminet on May 1, 2011 11 comments

We made rack of lamb for Easter dinner.

We made two flavors of crust. Both were excellent.

Ingredients

The first crust flavor had macadamia nuts, parsley, regular mustard, and parmesan cheese:

The second crust flavor used macadamia nuts, pistachio nuts, butter, and Dijon mustard:

In addition to the ingredients shown, you’ll need a bit of olive oil.

Preparation

First, coat the lamb in salt and pepper and then pan-sear it in a little olive oil at high heat:

This takes less than 2 minutes per side; the goal is not to cook the lamb, which will be done in the oven, but to seal the surface to retain internal moisture during cooking and to prepare the surface for the crust.

With the back of a spoon, spread the mustard over the seared lamb:

Meanwhile, in a food processor combine the other crust ingredients with a bit of butter or olive oil for better cohesion. For the parsley crust, we ground the nuts first and added the parsley last with a bit of oil:

Spread the rest of the crust ingredients over the mustard-covered lamb:

Preheat the oven to 400ºF, and place the lamb on a foil-covered baking sheet:

Cook for 20-25 minutes. They’ll come out looking like this:

Slice between each rib and serve:

Some of the crust detaches, but it still goes great with the lamb. (Conventional recipes use bread crumbs, which we eschew.)

Conclusion

This is an easy entrée to prepare and it tastes fantastic! With a little wine, it’s excellent for your HDL.

Seafood Paella

Posted by Paul Jaminet on April 17, 2011 19 comments

Paella is the classic rice dish of Valencia on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

It’s a great food for a dinner party: the ingredients take some time to gather, but paella can be made in bulk and provides a complete meal in one bowl. It also uses some wine, so you can drink while you cook and get in the party spirit before the guests arrive!

Ingredients

You’ll need a collection of meats, and seafoods are the usual choice. We chose shrimp, calamari, mussels, salmon, and spicy Italian sausage:

White wine and bone broth provide the necessary liquids. Our ox feet bone broth has plenty of collagen and fats as you can see:

Other ingredients we used are saffron (the threads are soaked in water overnight), red pepper, onion, uncooked white rice, a lemon, garlic, paprika, and parsley:

We also used olive oil and coconut oil (not shown).

Cooking

You can start by stir-frying the onion and garlic in olive oil for two minutes, then adding red pepper for a minute, then the saffron and paprika:

Immediately after the saffron and paprika, add the rice (this was 2/3 cup uncooked), stir to coat it in oil and spices, add the wine and broth, and cover:

Cover the pot and simmer the rice in the broth about 15 minutes at low heat. As it cooks it absorbs liquid; if the broth runs low, add more bone broth. After 15 minutes looks like this:

At this point add the meat, and cover again to steam-cook the meat:

When we made paella a second time, we cooked the shrimp in coconut oil separately and added it to the paella only after the other meats were cooked. This enhanced the flavor of the shrimp: