Spring
This is a time for salads, pickles and fresh green soups and pestos.
Wild kimchi
Kimchi is a traditional Korean way of preserving vegetables whilst giving yourself amazing gut-friendly bacteria. Wild food is nutrient dense, so even better for you. We recommend adding a mix of wild foods to your recipe but if you are not 100% sure of what you are collecting or where it is safe to forage it, you can replace these with organic vegetables and it will still be just as tasty.
ingredients:
-
Approximately a mixing bowl full of of wild garlic
-
Approximately a mixing bowl full of other wild edible plants including three cornered leek -(leaves, stems and flowers), navelwort (leaves and stems), magnolia (petals only), a few peeled alexanders stems, sea radish stems, a few leaves of sorrel or a few dandelion leaves. You can replace this this with crunchy vegetables such as carrots, Chinese/napa cabbage, pakchoi, radish and spring onion.
-
30g apples
-
30g onions
-
10g ginger
-
1-2 tbsp honey or brown sugar
-
2-3 tbsp gochang chilli flakes (more or less to taste)
-
1 tbsp apple cider/white wine vinegar
-
1tbsp salt- for the paste, plus 50g salt for brine
-
Wash the vegetables/leaves; chop into large chunks as needed. Make a brine by dissolving 50g of salt to 1 litres of water, add this to the bowl of veg and use a plate to keep the vegetables submerged in the brine. Leave for an hour.
-
Meanwhile make your paste by blending the apples, onions, ginger, honey/sugar, chilli and vinegar in a food processer/blender.
-
Once the veg has soaked rinse the off the brine, massage the paste into the vegetables and pack into jars; the juices should cover the vegetables. Weigh down the vegetables in the jar with a stone/weight/smaller jar of water. Do not refrigerate for the first few days - until it stops bubbling. After that keep your kimchi in the fridge. It should be ready in approximately a month- taste to see. Kimchi should keep up to a year if refrigerated.