Daikon (mooli) Kimchi
By Thom Eagle
Prep the vegetables
about 500g daikon, peeled and cut into cubes
2 carrots, peeled, quartered lengthways and sliced
sea salt
Put the veg in a bowl and sprinkle over a good tablespoon of sea salt. Mix well with your hands and leave for at least 6 hours or overnight – they’ll shrink as they release quite a lot of liquid. Tip them into a colander and leave to drain.
Make the porridge
50g cooked white rice
50g cooked pear
2 tbsp fish or soy sauce
a thumb of ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, grated (microplaned ideally)
gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder), to taste (start with about 1tbsp)
2 spring onions, finely sliced
Method
Mash or blitz the rice and pear together into a paste and place in a large bowl. Mix in the fish or soy sauce, the ginger, garlic, gochugaru and spring onions and mix well.
Add the drained vegetables, squeezing them a little as you go to get rid of any extra water, and mix into the porridge, ideally with your hands. Massage the porridge in! When it’s all mixed give it a little taste and add more chilli or fish sauce if you think it needs it, bearing in mind that while the flavour of the kimchi will change as it ferments – getting sourer and funkier – it will keep the overall balance you give it now, salty and spicy and sweet. Taste, adjust, taste again.
Pack it into a clean jar, making sure you don’t leave air pockets that could harbour moulds or yeasts, and pushing down the top as much as possible for a smoothish surface. Scrunch up a piece of baking parchment and place it on top of the kimchi before sealing the jar – this will help keep it submerged and away from the air.
Leave it out at room temperature (somewhere you can see it!) but out of direct sun for about three days, once or twice a day “burping” the jar by opening the lid slightly to release any gasses building up in there. After three days it should be fermenting nicely and taste good and sour, at which point you can put it in the fridge to carry on fermenting slowly.
