Three of the Chinese cabbages had to be harvested before the triggers devoured any more of the leaves. I had to remove a lot of them due to damage before I could wash them all.
The only reason I grow this cabbage is to make Kimchi. It is a fermented cabbage with Asian spices, carrots, and Daikon radish. I make it two or three times a year for myself.
After cleaning and chopping the cabbage, I sprinkle coarse sea salt onto it and let it sit for a few hours to soften the cabbage. Then I make a rice flour paste, add in the hot pepper paste, pepper flakes, fish sauce, garlic, and ginger.
The carrots and radish are shredded thinly, then the spice mix is added.
The center of the cabbage looked like a rose opening. With everything mixed together, it is ready for jarring to ferment for a few days before refrigerating.
It smells so good even before it is ready to eat. I had a little anyway.
Canned Cabbage Leaves:
I needed to thin out the largest leaves on the different cabbage plants. I decided to pressure can them to add to soups and stews this winter.
I removed the center core after washing the leaves, then cut them into small pieces. I boiled them for about 45 minutes before adding them to jars to can. Now, I have 7 pints on the pantry shelf.
Herbed Butter
I had trimmed back some of the onions that were leaning over and had a lot of garlic chives to cut back as well. I decided to make some herbed butter into pucks for the freezer.
I pulsed the herbs lightly in the chopper before adding the melted butter that I had clarified early last fall.
Once the mold was filled, I put them into the freezer for a few hours, then bagged them for later use. They will come in handy when cooking, having the fresh herbs in the butter already. This is the first time I've made them, so it will be a nice addition.
Herbed Salt
I still had a lot of onion tops to use and had run across a post about using them to make onion salt for seasoning. Well, that's what I did, another first for me.
The only thing I should have done was dry the onions off with a paper towel before chopping them. The salt came out fairly wet, so I had to put it into the dehydrator until it dried thoroughly. It gave me about a pint and a half, which should be sufficient, I imagine.
The remaining onions were just dried for adding to recipes. I got a whole pint of those.
I'm still doing my best, sticking to having salads for lunch. For this one, I added some poached salmon; it was so good.
That's a wrap-up for today. I have to get out into the garden before it gets too hot. The Kale needs to be cut again, and I see some more herbs are ready, too. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.
