Pickle This!

Inspired by a friend who brought us a huge bag of delicious vegetables from Provider Farm in CT, I've engaged in some experiments in fermentation.  I'm not a huge fan of root vegetables, but I love pickled and spicy stuff.  This pick shows:

Sauerkraut: classic, green cabbage and salt.  B got me a pickling crock for Christmas, so I used that with a gallon ziplock bag filled with water to weigh down the kraut.  Since I started this batch, B got me some pickling weights (isn't that thoughtful), so next time I'll use those.  Review: easy and delicious.  I let it do it's thing on the counter for about a week and then moved it into the fridge.  I think it could have stayed out longer, but it's still good.

Kimchi 1: I used this recipe, and followed it pretty closely (for once in my life).  I used beautiful watermelon radishes from the farm and the farm garlic.  I went a little heavy on the garlic and pepper flakes.  This kimchi is the dark red on in the picture.  I love this stuff!  It turned out amazing and crunchy and excellent.  Just the thing for dulled winter tastebuds.  Like the kraut, I only had it out for a week, I probably could of let it get a little funkier, but it's still really good.

Kimchi 2: I referenced the recipe above, but went a little rogue.  I omitted the ginger, because I was out of it, and used about half the amount of red pepper.  This one was a combo of white turnip, rutabaga, and green cabbage.  It's more mellow than kimchi 1, but still good.