Banchan is the fabulous Korean tradition of small side dishes, of which perhaps no other culture is so famous for. Served alongside rice for thousands of years, the number of dishes served at a meal was a metric for social status and prosperity.
The Korean love of kimchi, or pickles and fermented foods, really shines through in the endless array of varieties, of which there are hundreds, and those are just the officially famous ones. The concept of kimchi is limited only by imagination, and the number of ingredients both domestic and foreign that Korean chefs can get their hands on. Fermenting foods may have been a necessity to survive the long, cold Korean winters in ages past, but it’s also incredibly delicious.
I suppose I could have gone full royal court and made 12 sides, but I thought that just a humble 6 would be a good start, and decent tribute to the long history of kimchi in Korea.
So today. . . or over 4-5 days more accurately. . . we’ll be transforming this…
…into THAT.
and then we can make this!
a delicious bibimbap, or Korean Rice Bowl. But first we have a lot of pickling and fermenting to do. So let’s get started. (Feel free to scale these recipes up or down)
Continue reading “Korean Kimchi Feast”
ANTHROCHEF 