Kim-cheese toastie:
It’s enchanting when 2 worlds collide and the mundane can become magical. A road stacked with rush hour traffic becomes a shimmering toboggan run as children volunteer to go out and play. The school day is a ski day with parents kicking back. Weekday rules fall by the wayside, we are in unchartered territory!
But what about snow food? Apres ski is as important as the skiing. No Alpine raclette or Croque-monsieur here. What will be our equivalent?
Fortunately, I found myself this week on a fermenting workshop. My first experience of fermenting started just under a year ago embarking on milk kefir and a sourdough starter. Until this week that was pretty much my experience of fermenting. I was keen to learn more.
In steps Caroline Gilmartin PhD of Every Good Thing and mum to my cooking tutee, H. She has become a fermenting guru and now markets her own products locally and holds fermenting classes in CliftonWood.
Although my foodie’s brain is not wired too well for science, I do know that adding fermented foods to your diet can aid your immune system and help our good bacteria thrive. (Of which we have 2.5kgs in our bodies I learned!) So I was all up for learning how to make my own fermented Kimchi and Sauerkraut for good health and longevity!
Sauerkraut is basically fermented shredded cabbage and pretty fuss free and simple to make. However, Kimchi is a little more involved and packs an amazing hot heat punch! It’s probably a little less well known in the UK, but it is deep-rooted in Korean food history. It is a mixture of raw chopped vegetables including Chinese cabbage which is fermented in a red pepper powder based sauce and is mildly addictive!
It seems the most challenging part is waiting until your delicious pots of goodness are ready to eat; Luckily with Kimchi, it’s only 3 days! So, after a stint with the kids and sledges, what better way to recreate a tasty, ski snack by colliding 2 worlds together….a toasted kimchi and cheese toastie…….or kim-cheese toastie as I now call it!
As with most things they taste better when you make them yourself, but quite a few health shops will stock ‘live’ kimchi in their chiller cabinets. These are the ones to go for! I hope you will give this a go….my husband had never heard of kimchi and he loved these!
Kim-cheese toastie
- Good quality loaf (preferably sourdough), sliced
- Cheddar cheese, mature, grated
- Kimchi
- Butter, spreadable
- Frying pan
- Get two slices of bread and butter them on the outside. This will be the outer side of your toastie and go beautifully golden in the frying pan
- Open out the bread and cover one side of the unbuttered bread with cheese, so there is about a 1cm covering all over
- Pop 2-3 tbsps of kimchi on top of the cheese and put the other slice of bread on top. Buttered side facing out and close up the sandwich
- Have a frying pan on a medium-high heat. Place the sandwich in the pan and leave for about 5 minutes making sure it doesn’t burn but goes golden brown
- Flip the sandwich over carefully and let it cook for 5 minutes on the other side. I like to weight it down with a plate/tin to ensure a tight toastie!
- You could serve this with some soup as we had at our workshop, or just enjoy two big toasties as we did after sledging. LUSH!
Don’t forget to share your versions on the FFF Facebook group….and if you are looking for more ideas of things to cook with the children this weekend if you can’t get out, then take a look at the recipes below!
10-minute chocolate chip cookies
To find out more about fermenting classes with Every.Good.Thing, join the fermenters club on Facebook.