Summer is a time of abundance on the farm! It feels like every day as I am walking around the field, exciting and yummy new veggies are popping up, ready to enjoy. In contrast to the root vegetables and squash of winter and early spring, this week of the summer solstice my kitchen has been full of fresh greens, herbs, berries, and more! But the summer finds a way to come and go too fast, and before I know it some of my favorite vegetables will start to disappear from the farm. Luckily, I have incredible friends and coworkers who love to teach me cool new ways to preserve my food so I can enjoy summer abundance all year long!

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish where food is preserved through lacto-fermentation. From my understanding, that’s a fancy way of saying that you use a lot (and I mean a LOT) of salt to encourage healthy bacteria in your food to break down the sugars and turn them into lactic acid. You can store your kimchi for up to a year! And throughout that time it will continue to break down and ferment becoming even more delicious.

Traditionally, kimchi is made with a few key ingredients: Napa cabbage, radish, green onions, garlic, and ginger. The process is surprisingly simple, as Flynn taught Viv and me this weekend. First you quarter and wash your cabbage before GENEROUSLY salting each leaf. We traded some Red Dog basil and strawberries for Napa cabbage with our friend from Midori Farm. The salty cabbage then sat for an hour and a half as we prepared the rest of our vegetables. We used green garlic, green onions, carrots, and hakurei from Red Dog. There are so many variations and combinations you can try and I’m excited to try different vegetables in the future as they come into season. We combined this with ginger, fish sauce (substitute soy sauce or tamari for vegan), some rice flour, and lots and lots of red pepper. I’m talking hazardous levels of red pepper! Once the cabbage has broken down from all the salt, all you have to do is rinse it, slather it in your spicy slurry, and pop it in a jar! I am by no means an expert, but there are so many recipes and videos online to follow.

I can’t wait to try making this again, and in the meantime we have a huge jar of kimchi fermenting and waiting to be enjoyed all year long! Thanks Flynn!!

~Paige