Pickle | Sybaritica

This recipe is built around the Sichuan Preserved Vegetable I featured in a foodstuff post recently. I am going to be cooking it with diced chicken breast and cashews in a hot, sweet, and sour sauce using chili, sugar and vinegar. This particular combination is pretty much ‘ad hoc’ for today’s dish but it is very much in the general tradition of Sichuan cookery…  Read more

I had a rather large zucchini leftover from a bunch I bought for other purposes and, being left home alone for the past few weeks while my wife is away, I decided to play around a little. A first, I thought I might do a pickle of some sort based on a minted vinegar (and I still plan to do so sometime), but then I decided to do something spicy in a vaguely Indian type of preparation that could be used as a side condiment, or even a ‘bread and butter’ type accompaniment.

Now, I will say at the outset that, though the result of this experiment was pretty, I did find that some tweaking is necessary. Accordingly, if you are inclined to play around with the basic idea yourselves, you may wish to read my notes at the end of this post…  Read more

This particular foodstuff is something I have bought and used in a variety of different forms. The name on the can label, ‘Preserved Vegetable’ is further amplified in the Chinese script as being a Sichuan specialty, and one might be excused for thinking that the contents are any sort of vegetable that has been preserved in the style of Sichuan. In fact, any time you encounter the name ‘Sichuan Preserved Vegetable’, you are almost invariably dealing with a specific plant, sometimes known as a ‘Mustard Tuber’, which is fermented with salt and then quite heavily spiced, chiefly with chili paste or powder… Read more

The Pickled Cauliflower I made a little while ago turned out quite nicely and I was interested to see how it might be used as a cooking ingredient. The dish I came up with for today’s post is something of a fusion, incorporating a little of India, China, and the American Southwest. That being said though, I’m going to save you the trouble of scrolling all the way to the end-notes and tell you right away that the result was not quite as good as I hoped… Still, some of my readers might like to see what I did and suggest how it might be improved…  Read more

I often buy a commercially made pickle consisting of sections of gherkin, cocktail onions, and cauliflower florets with turmeric as a main flavor component. The cauliflower is my favorite part but I usually find that there are too few pieces in each jar and, with most brands, they are often just a tad too sweet. Accordingly, I made a batch of pickle containing nothing but cauliflower, just a little sugar, and a spice blend to suit my own taste…  Read more

As a follow up to my basic Brine Pickled Daikon post a few days ago, I am, for today’s recipe, going to use Daikon again. This time, however, I am going to make a variety of the Korean style pickle known as Kimchi. May people will be familiar with Kimchi, at least in passing, but  the sorts made with Daikon are not generally as well known in the west as are the cabbage varieties.

As one might expect, there are countless versions of Kimchi… Daikon, Cabbage, or otherwise… but the most familiar combines a main vegetable along with secondary items, chiefly green onions, ginger and garlic, and then these are fermented in a spicy paste of red chili. In Korea, it is also very common to add seafood products which, when fermented, add a rich depth to the overall taste. Oysters are quite common, as is fish sauce, or else the very pungent Korean Salted Shrimp. I am going to be using Dried Shrimp in today’s recipe, but other than that, it will be pretty straightforward…  Read more

Today, I am going to be using some of my wife’s homegrown Daikon to make a very simple but tasty brine-fermented pickle. Since our Daikon yield this past season was very small, the tiny daikon we grew can be pickled whole rather than cut up in chunks as is more common.

Most people are familiar with the Korean style of pickle known as Kimchi, but usually only with the very popular type in which vegetables, most notably cabbage, are fermented in a fiery medium containing lots of chili powder or paste. A lesser known type (at least outside of Korea), is the sort sometimes referred to as ‘Water Kimchi’ is simply made using a clear brine. This sort, most commonly made with a radish of some sort, also usually combines other mild flavor additions such as green onions, ginger and, especially popular in Korea, sliced Asian pear. Today, my recipe will be very simple indeed. As such, there is nothing particularly Korean about it but it does capture the basic idea and is thus a good introduction to the process of brine-pickling in general…  Read more

Today’s post features a very interesting food product that I have used in my kitchen many times over the years. Essentially, it is a salted cabbage pickle, somewhat like a rather dry Chinese version of sauerkraut, and is a specialty of the northern Chinese municipality of Tienjin. It is commonly available in Asian groceries, often packaged in vacuum-sealed plastic bags, but it also comes in a variety of attractive earthenware crocks, which, I have to admit, is probably what inspired me to buy it in the first place… Read more

I have featured a Chinese variety of Pickled Mustard Greens in a previous ‘Foodstuffs’ post already, but I came across a canned variety from Thailand that looked interesting and I thought you might like to see how the two compare… Read more

When I featured Chili Bamboo Shoots in a Foodstuffs post some time ago, I mentioned that I would like to try using them as a dumpling filling. After a couple of other experiments using the stuff I only have a little left in the jar and I need to use it up. There really isn’t enough to use them alone as a dumpling stuffing, so I decided to use some of my homemade Pickled Mustard Greens and ground Pork to round out the volume. Anyway, for this experiment, we will be essentially be doing the Chinese style dumpling known as Jiaozi, or more specifically, 蒸餃子(zhēng jiǎozi), since we will be steaming them… Read more