Random moosages as I see fit.

Duck sometimes brings small sandwiches with him to work.  His sandwiches often include radishes.  This made me really crave radishes.  It’s weird.  I really wanted to put radishes in my sandwiches and stuff just because I saw him do it.  So I bought a great deal of radishes (by the bunch, so I sautéed the radish tops with some garlic since it seemed wasteful to throw away all the radish tops).  Now then, I only eat so many sandwiches and I had too many radishes for the amount of sandwiches I would normally eat.  So I decided to pickle the rest of them.

My mother made these really delicious, tangy radish (quick) pickles once.  Unfortunately, I don’t know what she pickled them with.  I mean, I know she used vinegar and sugar, but I didn’t know what kind of vinegar or how much sugar.  So in the end, I just made it up.  I opted for red wine vinegar, since I had that on hand, I was out of white wine vinegar, and I didn’t want the acridness of white vinegar (and balsamic is too dark).

I sliced all my extra radishes about 1/8″ thick and stuffed them in a mason jar.  Then I heated some red wine vinegar and sugar together (about 3:1, and I estimated the amount I would need to cover all the radishes) until the sugar was completed dissolved and the mixture was just starting the boil.  I poured the vinegar mixture over the radishes and let it cool to room temp.  Then I covered and stuffed it in the fridge.

I had pickles with sandwiches, after I ran out of fresh radishes, with hot dogs, because I was craving a hot dog one day, and sometimes just by themselves.  They were a little sweeter than I would have liked so I might go for a 4:1 ratio of vinegar and sugar next time, but otherwise they were quite good.  I think I might try making fermented radish pickles next time instead of make a quick fridge pickle.

Yes, the whites of the radishes do turn red as they as they soak in the pickling liquid.

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.

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.