Asian chive kimchi

Hello everybody, today I’m going to show you how to make kimchi with Asian chives (a.k.a garlic chives), which are buchu in Korean. It’s called buchu-kimchi, and it’s simple and fast to make but very delicious. It’s refreshing with a green onion-y, chive-y taste that’s lively and spicy. I like to eat this kimchi best when it’s fresh, almost like a kimchi salad. It doesn’t have to be fermented for you to enjoy it, but you can ferment it if you want.

Once I taste this kimchi, I automatically think about rice. It goes well with rice and when combined with a stew (like doenjang-jjigae) and a fish side dish (like seasoned pan fried flatfish) it’s a perfect meal.

I made this kimchi for my readers who came to my meetup in Paris. It was a potluck party, and everyone brought their best dishes, as well as Korean food and even real French cheeses and wine. Everything was gorgeous and delicious, you can’t find that kind of food anywhere else in the world! You see some of the dishes in this video but there were many more, they kept coming as the night went on!

When I went to Paris I didn’t know what I was going to make for the party, but I checked the Korean grocery store listings for France on my website and found K Mart (thanks newhatchepsout for posting it!), and there I found good quality napa cabbage and Asian chives. I got the idea to make two kinds of kimchi: buchu-kimchi (the recipe on this page) and traditional mak-kimchi (which I posted a long time ago) with French oysters.

I don’t know why they have such nice buchu in Paris but the buchu there had long stems, good color, and was so fresh and tender that I immediately decided to make buchu-kimchi with it as soon as I saw it.

What a wonderful party we had! I thank everyone for coming and especially thank Maria Saad and her husband for offering to host the party for us. They put a tremendous effort to make the night successful.

I tried to taste all kinds of foods when I was in Paris. Check out my blog post to see what kinds of places I went to and the things I tried. I hope you enjoyed this video. I have more videos from France coming up so stay tuned!

Buchu-kimchi at the potluck party in Paris

Ingredients

• 1 pound buchu (Asian chives a.k.a garlic chives) washed and drained
• ½ cup fish sauce (or soy sauce for vegetarian version)
• 1 tablespoon sweet rice flour (or all purpose flour)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• ½ cup Korean hot pepper flakes (gochu-garu)
• ½ of a medium-sized onion, sliced thinly (about ½ cup)
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds

Directions:

Prepare the chives:

1. Cut the buchu into 2½ inch long pieces and put them in a large bowl. Add the fish sauce and mix by hand to evenly spread the fish sauce in the pieces.
2. Let it sit for 30 minutes, turning it over every 5 minutes.

Make porridge:

1. Mix sweet rice flour with 1 cup of water in a small pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon.
2. A few minutes later when it starts bubbling, add sugar and stir for another minute.
3. Remove from the heat and let it cool thoroughly. 

Make kimchi:

1. Move the salty buchu into a strainer over a bowl so it captures any salty water drippings.
2. There will be some salty liquid left over in the bowl. Add the cooled porridge and hot pepper flakes. Mix it well with a wooden spoon. 
3. Add onion, buchu, and the strained salty water drippings. Mix it all together gently. Sprinkle the sesame seeds.

Serve:

1. You can serve it right away with rice, or put it in an airtight container to eat later.
2. If you want to ferment the kimchi, keep it at room temperature for a couple of days until it tastes a little sour, then put it in the fridge.