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Category Archives: cooking

I make! Kkakdugi edition

I found a Korean radish (a daikon varietal) in my fridge the other day.  There was only one.  I didn’t really know what to do with it.  But I felt like pickling something and I do like kimchi, so I made kkakdugi.

I have never made kkakdugi before so I rooted around on the internet to see what people normally use to make kkakdugi and I settled on salt, sugar, garlic, ginger, chili powder, soy sauce, the top of a sprouted onion because I didn’t have any green onions, and some of the radish juice when from when the radish cubes were macerating.

When my mother makes Chinese pickled vegetables, she does open crock fermenting.  I’m…ok with that when she does it.  If mold forms on top, you just scrape it off and continue with the fermentation.  I could have done open crock fermenting with the kkakdugi.  But…I didn’t really want to.  It means that I have to deal with mold and then I have to babysit it.  Also, I have a fun fermentation airlock and a modified mason jar lid to fit said airlock and I wanted to use that.  So I did.

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I haven’t put water into the airlock yet in this photo so it’s not very airlocky.

I left the jar at room temp for four days to ferment before sticking it in the fridge.  I ended up making some kimchi fried rice.  Which…sounds really good right now.  I think I should go make some more.

 

I make! Lamb neck stew edition

Right now if I reach blindly into my freezer and pull something out, I’d say there’s an 80% chance that I’ll pull out some kind of salmon.  But this post isn’t about salmon.  It’s about lamb neck.  Because before pulling out all of the lamb neck in the freezer, I’d say there was an 18% chance that I’d pull out lamb neck in were I to blindly reach into the freezer and grab something.  Because…my mother.

So, I’ve been trying to get rid of lamb neck.  But lamb neck is kind of a weird cut of…meat(?) to work with.  It’s pretty easy to figure out what to do with chops or ribs or something, but what about lamb neck?  Well, I opted for stew.

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I did a fairly standard stew with things that go well with lamb.  I coated the lamb neck (about 2lb) in flour (about 0.33c) and then browned them (I used an electric pressure cooker, which has a sear function) and took them out.  With the leftover fat in the pot, I sautéed a bunch of chopped celery, carrots, and onions (whatever I had on hand) and then coated the vegetables with the rest of the flour leftover from dredging the lamb.  Added some chopped potatoes (also whatever I had on hand), salt, pepper, dried thyme (about 2tsp).  I nestled the lamb on top of the vegetables and then added 3-4c of chicken stock and a bunch of Worcestershire sauce.  I cooked it on high pressure for about 45min.  I’m really liking the pressure cooker guys.  But I’ve also done it on the slow cooker before, 3-4 hours on high or 6-8 hours on low.  But seriously.  Pressure cooker.

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I ended up serving it with focaccia and salad.