It's still cold outside, but it's already March. Did you know that Daylight Saving Time starts this Sunday? That really hits me with the coming of the spring season than any other abstract seasonal indicator, including that poor groundhog that gets pulled out way too early in the chilly winter time.
While I still am big on hearty soups and stews along with my well-fermented kimchi I made over a month ago, I like some refreshing crunchy bites in my daily meal. So here comes an easy cucumber salad in kimchi-style seasoning called oi (오이 - cucumber) muchim (무침 ~ mixed in seasoning).
It's a quick and easy dish that's meant to be eaten right away. It's a good recipe to keep for anyone who craves a quick fix of kimchi without going through a whole kimchi-making process. It also goes well with protein dishes or works well as an accent flavor mixed with other salad greens. Of course, it's just as good with a bowl of rice, as a banchan (반찬 - side dish) is meant to be.
Just like kimchi, you start by salting the vegetable - in this case, cucumber - to draw out excess moisture. This comes useful in making other salads too. If you've ever experienced making a salad with cucumbers, you might have had a soggy salad in the puddle of salad dressing. By salting it first, then rinsing off the salt and gently squeezing the cucumber, you can reduce the amount of the puddle and keep the cucumber crunchy longer. Okay, maybe not for a salad you make for yourself, but this extra step may come in handy if you're making a salad for a dinner party where a salad ends up sitting for a while.
Whereas the tangy crunch comes from fermentation in kimchi, we just add vinegar for the tang in this quick version. Rice vinegar is easy to find, and brown rice vinegar seems to be a norm in Korean markets. You can use other cucumbers, but I find these mini ones best for its size, lack of seeds and crunchiness. With its simple preparation and no wait for fermentation, you can taste this refreshingly tangy, spicy, crunchy bites any time starting now.
INGREDIENTS:
1 package Persian cucumbers (mini, thin cucumbers, 7 in a package)
2 tablespoons coarse sea salt
Seasoning
2 tablespoons rice vinegar or brown rice vinegar
1 tablespoon Korean red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
2 scallions, washed and chopped fine
2 ~3 cloves garlic, peeled and grated
2 teaspoons sugar
DIRECTIONS:
1. Cut cucumbers to thin slices. Sprinkle sea salt over cucumber slices and mix well. Let it rest for 10~15 minutes, just until cucumber slices start to sweat and soften. This also depends on how thin the cucumber slices are, so keep an eye on it. If it's your first time and you're not sure, go under rather than over, meaning, don't let it sit too long, which will get the cucumber too salty and too soft.
2. In the meantime, mix rice vinegar, red pepper flakes, toasted sesame seeds, scallion, garlic and sugar together.
3. Rinse off salt from cucumber in cold water and gently squeeze to remove excess water.
4. Mix cucumber slices in seasoning.
Keep it in an airtight container and store in the refrigerator. It is best to consume the salad within a day or two, no more than a week. Everyday you keep oi muchim in the fridge, it'll lose the bright color and crunch bit by bit, until it just looks all too sad to eat. Don't let oi muchim sit in the fridge and turn sad.
celery muchim
! TIPS !
! You can also use the same 'salt-to-sweat-then-wash' method and the same seasoning using daikon radish or Korean radish (무 - mu) to make radish salad (무생채 - mu saeng chae).
! I have also made the same salad using celery hearts (see the picture above). Use one celery heart, including the leaves in the middle, for the seasoning amount in this recipe. Celery remains crunchy for a longer time, up to about a week. The flip side of what keeps it crunchy is that it takes a bit longer to absorb seasoning, so it tastes better the next day.
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KOREAN WORDS
현미 (hyeon mi) brown rice
식초 (shik cho) vinegar
현미 식초 (hyeon mi shik cho) brown rice vinegar
