Tuna Kimchi Jjiggae or a Hangover Dish from the Can

This duo-post is a dream for any food esthete: pancakes hidden as butterflies, paper-cabbage-kimchi in a jar and all linked by telepathy :) Can't take my eyes off these delicate and metaphoric pictures. Can you?

Tina, illustrator of the newest pretty Korean cookbook claims to like tuna kimchi jjiggae. That reminded me of the two tuna-cans that I have set aside since a year. I love them so much, the ones preserved only in olive oil from the Italian groceries. If you get hands on them and have fermented kimchi ready, you can make the simplest but perfectly glorious dish: dump both in a pot, bring to a boil and serve it with rice. That's it*.

It's a great recovering dish after a hangover (which almost never happens to me :)) for it is strong in flavors, invigorating and demands zero dexterity to make.

Although tuna involves difficult issues I will keep allowing myself to those cans once or twice a year - reserved for this favorite kimchi jiggae of mine. And because this dish is screwed anyway in regard to sustainable cooking principles, I might serve an artificial shik hae as desert. Be warned though that the canned drink never comes up to the homemade one!! 

*Additional notes on making kimchi jjigae: originally it is a stew so it should be cooked with additional water and more ingredients to taste. 
The version described here is a bit eccentric. It is less soupy, more oily and like kimchi fried rice it can be mixed and eaten in a single bowl :)

Cook tuna, kimchi and some kimchi juice around 10 minutes until cooked thoroughly. The cooked kimchi should be tender. A good kimchi doesn't demand additional condiments to cook with but add a little sugar when it has got too sour. At most one little tuna can will be sufficient for one cabbage of kimchi.

Maangchi's Bibimguksu

I am a big fan of Maangchi. It is such a pleasure to see how this energetic lady brings people together from around the globe to exchange their cuisines and to learn about Korean food.

Because my mum never wrote down a recipe and because in former times, i wasn't interested into her cooking (it would be Korean food anyway at any time...), I now gladly take all the reliable recipes that i can find.

Bibimguksu is the go-for-dish when i don't want to cook but eat well (which is almost always the case).

Kimchi and toasted sesame seeds should be prepared ahead.

I took rice vermicelli (the ones that are only soaked in hot water) but thin wheat noodles (Somyun) would be authentic. I replaced lettuces for cucumber but would have preferred the latter if in season.
Carefully handle the amount of Gochujang - the hotness can differ a lot according to each brand (the one in the photo is rather mild).

slowly roasted kimchi risotto with trout and spinach frittata

I. kimchi and holidays

does kimchi come in handy during christmas season? absolutely!

whenever you suffer a butter and sugar overkill nosh some tangy, crisp and juicy kimchi and you will be fully revived for the christmas cookies, stollen and ginger bread front again :) i was amused to read that in these precarious situations of craving for sweets yet being overfull with them, germans tend to eat a cheese sandwich.
well kimchi would be an equally effective, less filling alternative :)

it is also great to have between opulent holidays because the secret behind is: the more kimchi you eat, the lighter you will feel afterward...

II. kimchi at any time

this could be the reason why koreans have the urge to eat kimchi all the time - like the swabian sauce it makes it easier to devour any other component of a dish when eaten together with kimchi. the younger generations might be different but for the older korean people this is still valid.
i once accompanied some korean businessmen in the rhine-main-region and whenever we visited a non-korean eatery they asked the waiter if it would be ok to unpack their kimchi they had brought with. it was not because they were too narrow-minded to
try the different cuisine on its own. but without kimchi and any other "fresh" component they hardly could swallow more than a bite of the plate that oozed with butter and heavy cream.
once we went to a restaurant that was too chic to ask for the allowance and guess what, the evening ended up with leaving the plates mostly full. the only person who could eat the whole serving was me :)

III. what i like about kimchi

kimchi is the evidence that you can yield the utmost umami flavor out of the humblest ingredients by letting time do most of the work. in many situations in cooking where bacon or cheese is added to make a dish tastier, koreans would add kimchi. and because kimchi changes its taste with the ongoing fermentation, it is slow food in the best sense of the word.

so let it be said:

if you have never had kimchi before, don't wait too long until to try it. it will bring a complete new, complex umami taste into your life!

if you have tried kimchi and didn't like it: don't give in, you probably didn't got the right one.
to make good kimchi isn't magic but it demands some sensitivity in finding the right balance of the components. this seems to be hard enough to achieve and unfortunately a lot of kimchi end in bland or oversalt results (i screwed my first exemplars, too).

IV. a kimchi meal for beginners

since the authentic way of preparing banchans along with kimchi is so laborious that i think only really crazy fans of korean cuisine can do that, here is my suggestion that involves fresh as well as cooked kimchi. the great thing is that once you have good kimchi, no additional garlic, onions or spices will be needed.

1) spinach frittata with fresh kimchi

eggs in any form goes well with fresh kimchi.

pan-fry a vegetable of preference (i took spinach for some chlorophyllic green).
pour lightly beaten eggs with salt and pepper over it and let sit.
after it gets firm, turn it over with the help of a plate.
serve with fresh kimchi (wrung out so that there is no excess kimchi juice and drizzled with olive oil).

2) risotto with slowly roasted kimchi and white fish

the classic rice dish with cooked kimchi is kimchi fried rice but if that is too simple, here is another option. who would have thought but kimchi goes well with butter and white wine, too :)

chop 2 handful fermented (!) kimchi and roast it in the oven (180° C) for 1 hour with 1 tbsp of butter. the oven-roasting will turn out all flavors and result in a shiny mellow kimchi. this method will meet those people, who aren't yet used to the harsh and tangy taste of fresh kimchi.

for 2 servings
sweat 200 g carnaroli rice in 1 tbsp butter.
deglaze with 200 ml white wine and stir.
add the roasted kimchi.
successively add 800 ml kimchi broth (kimchi juice with boiled water and additional salt).
add 1 tsp of butter and optionally 2 tbsp grated parmigiano at the end.

serve with pan-fried white fish (i took trout), black pepper and chopped basil.

V. a special invite

it's a great pleasure to release my musings on kimchi for my dear fellow blogger miss boulette: not only do i share her love of everything "classic" and of sweet yeast breads, her blog keeps me marvel at how sensational authenticity is paired with modernity in presenting korean cuisine.
thank you for the dinner invite - i am so looking forward to it!! :)

my kimchi background or not my kimchi background

I.
in the course of finding a reason why i am still a beginner at kimchi-making i could have come to the conclusion that it is that it was a grown-up-thing. then i read this excuse at orangette and couldn't repeat what had been said already :)

so here is the other explication:

my parents actually never got into western cooking when living in germany (not that they didn't like it but because every time & energy left was spent to prepare & procure korean ingredients, which was tough in those days in a small west german town :)). thus normally i would have got normal korean taste buds.

it was our german daymother then, a dedicated housewife, who introduced me and my sister to what we referred to as german food. in retrospect it was typical middle-class cooking of the early 90ies:
potatoes every day in every form, creamed spinach, stuffed red pepper, cucumber salad, homemade yogurt and streusel cakes... pizza with a thick bread crust (which we loved and would have never questioned), spaghetti bolognese (made with the infamous industrial condiment...). no bufallo mozarella, no dijon mustard. no sea- nor fusion food.

there was not a single exotic or exclusive produce in her kitchen but also we don't remember a single dish that wasn't delicious. not only did she cook every day but also there was desert every day :) one of my favorites was her "stuten" - a dense white yeast bread with a hint of sweetness that was served with lots of butter every second week - when we came back from swimming courses with a great appetite.

i think, she cooked the best that she could with the produces and circumstances given (among the suppliers was a discounter that is so disdained among today's foodies but that recently opened a successful branch in queens, nyc and also runs the popular trader joe's - just to put that into context :)). and apart from my family background it could be the influence of her cooking why until today, it is still the humble stuff that takes my heart. while everything fancy and glamorous, i just seek out of curiosity.

after leaving this culinary home behind and moving to korea, i was craving for pasta, breads, cakes and anything else "western" all the time. and as banchans were always abundant and western food totally deficient at our home, it never came to my mind to make anything else than the latter after i left home for studies. for a long long while.

but since last year i felt it was about time to get back to the roots and to finally make kimchi by myself - grown up or not :)


II. preliminary notes on kimchi:

1) it can be incredibly elaborate to process 40 kg of chinese cabbage at once which is a normal family batch for gimjang. while in germany my mother had to preorder her supply of cabbages before the day of the farmer's market. it must have seem so excentric for the market people, who did not know anything about kimchi, to see how many cabbages one woman alone could take away in a day :)

2) on the other hand: it is a piece of cake when processing just a single cabbage.
it was hilarious to see the first jars with tiny batches of kimchi popping out in blogs and it made me giggle. but now i think little batches totally make sense in a beginner's stadium.

3) kimchi making is like bread making: it is all about finding your happy medium in a universe of variable coordinates. the quest will never end but also, it won't take long to get the first satisfactory, if not mind-boggling results!

4) possibly there are as many sorts of kimchi as there are of bread. (think of how endless variations exist of turning flour, water and salt into a delicious bread. kimchi includes a couple of more components...)

5) you can add radish, spring onions, chili, pears, seafood and other extras but in order to make good kimchi it is no more necessary than:

- chinese cabbage
- onions
- garlic
- ginger
- gochugaru (korean red chili flakes)
- fish or shrimp sauce- glutinous rice flour
- salt, sugar.

- rubber gloves and a food container.- no other condiments at this stage, please.


III. my beginner's recipe for one chinese cabbage

(prep time 30 min. waiting time 2 hours)

1) half one very small chinese cabbage (1 kg)

2) dissolve 200 g salt in 2 l water

3) soak the cabbage in the salt water and let it sit for 2 hours. turn the cabbage around once every half an hour so that it is soaked evenly.

4) prepare the chili paste:

a) puree

• 4 garlic cloves (except for the very young garlic i remove the root parts),
• 60 g peeled and cut onions
• 13 g peeled ginger
• 80 ml fish sauce
• 13 g sugar

b) in a separate huge bowl mix

• 20 g glutinous rice flour with
• 100 ml boiling water and
• 30 g gochugaru

c) add the puree to the gochugaru mixture and mix well until it becomes a smooth sauce

5) slice 100 g onions very fine and add into the sauce.

6) put on the rubber gloves. wash the cabbage under running water and wring it out.

7) throw into the bowl and coat the cabbage with the chili sauce.

8) fill the cabbage in a food container as airtight as possible but leave some free space. pour all remaining sauce over the kimchi.

9) keep it one day at room temperature, afterwards stored in the fridge.

10) after five to ten days it will be fermented enough to cook with it. raw kimchi can be eaten at any stadium. if well covered with the kimchi liquid it will last several months.


more praise on kimchi and a meal suggestion in the next post!