Let's be real, I think many of us are feeling less than pristine at the moment. I'm currently residing at the degree of disarray which causes me to consider the latest Fiona Apple release to feel eminently relatable on a sonic level. Restrictions are starting to lift here in the UK, but while we're still reporting daily death rates as high as 230 it doesn't seem right to jump the gun if the situation doesn't necessitate it. So, I've been continuing patrol the same grounds, applying for jobs in cafes and bubble tea shops, going to bed around two in the morning and waking up at eight; I'm not exactly a paragon of togetherness but the the phrase "getting by" is as forgivable now as it ever will be.
One thing that does, inexplicably, make me feel somewhat out of control is opening the fridge door and being greeted by a large surplus of seemingly incompatible leftovers. I've mentioned it before, but I subscribe to notion that buying a food product means that you are then responsible for using it in it's entirety (whether or not I'm wholly successful at doing so). To be fair, usually I don't need to be convinced to eat room temperature leftovers from dinner in the light of the midnight moon, but occasionally I'll be presented with a small mug of gravy, 100ml of vegetable broth, and half a tin of chopped tomatoes and feel like I'm on an episode of Ready, Steady, Cook (UK readers - remember that?).
The flip-side of this leftover drama is that when I do cook something from the remnants of a previous meal which also happens to be delicious in it's own right, I feel incredibly fulfilled. I'm sure the illusion of a perfectly circular attitude to refrigerator contents stays intact for at least 30 minutes before I realise that I probably should have thrown in a handful of the rapidly wilting coriander that sits beside my window (we can't be perfect all the time). It is precisely this feeling of ephemeral completeness that I want to share today, with a recipe that calls for, nay requires, leftover rice; a kimchi-rice pancake.
It may seem unduly particular to call for leftover rice specifically, however freshly cooked rice is too starchy and will contribute an overly soggy texture to the pancake; it needs some time to lose some of it's moisture. In the interests of flexibility and practicability, I'm this recipe takes a pretty loose attitude to what can be used as "rice". My leftovers for this came from a dinner of rice and kidney beans, so a few of the beans were included within the pancake which was perfectly fine. At the same time, grains such as farro and pearl barley would also work nicely. As long as what you're using isn't going to add a deleterious amount of moisture to the pancake batter, then you'll be set!
Don't be disheartened if the pancake doesn't look particularly neat and tidy; it is a rugged beast by nature and if it tears a little bit in the process of frying, all is not lost. Flipping things has never been my strong suit, and when I went to turn mine it doubled over on itself instead of falling neatly on it's other side. This caused me to crow "oh no, it's ruined" before being assisted by housemate-of-the-blog Owen, who heroically (and easily) unfolded it with the spatula, turned it out on to a plate, and used that to turn it back out into the pan, which you can do if the dynamic flip is a scary concept for you. It's probably what I should have thought to do!
This whole situation left me wondering what the word "ruined" meant in that situation. The risk wasn't that I'd be left with something inedible, or that the pancake wouldn't taste as good. No, my worry came from a fear that the pancake wouldn't be Instagrammable, and subsequently I wouldn't be able to write about it here. Maybe this sounds shallow, but considering that food blogs source much of their traffic from their corresponding Instagram posts. This puts a burden on food bloggers to "style" their food before they take a picture, which is entirely antithetical to home cooking for a number of reasons. There is no symmetry, to home-cooked food, nor does it follow the golden ratio or any other commonly accepted standards of beauty; the word homespun exists for a reason. And, let's be real, once we've finished cooking we just want to f*cking eat, right?
I've talked before about the food bloggers of 2005 but it's a topic worth dredging up again. I we look at the food photography from 15 years ago, we'd find it bizarrely angled and lit, completely devoid of plate-work, but it'd be a much more accurate representation of the spirit of home-cooking. Sure, 2005 had some regrettable aspects; the continuing love affair of Bush and Blair, the toothlessness of the Kyoto Protocol and Bird Flu (it also had Extraordinary Machine by the aforementioned Fiona Apple which was a great thing), but bloggers were certainly served well by the year. Photographing and arranging my food on a plate is, by far, my least favourite part of the process. But, then again, without Instagram would I have a platform to share my blogging at all? It's an uneasy relationship.
I think the important part here is to ensure that this fixation with the appearance of food doesn't extend to every day home cooking. Oftentimes, a meal will look like you've dredged up a bowlful of swamp detritus, yet will be vibrant and well-balanced to the taste. Not every meal can be bedecked with pomegranate seeds, or garnished with perfectly geometric segments of avocado; sometimes, we must come to appreciate amorphous shades of beige. Where would we be without hummus, for example? In terms of the kimchi pancake, I hope you'll come to find it's frayed and ragged edges endearing. Taste it, and I promise that you won't even care.
Kimchi-Rice Pancake
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves: 2 people
Ingredients
Pancake
70g of plain flour
95ml of milk
1 tsp of dark soy sauce
1 tbsp of kimchi brine (optional)
1/2 tsp of salt
1/2 tbsp of vegetable oil
Filling
1 red onion, coarsely chopped
White parts of 2 spring onions, sliced diagonally
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced
1 tsp of ginger, minced
95g of carrot, grated
115g of kimchi, roughly sliced
100g of leftover rice
1/2 tbsp of vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt
Topping
1 tbsp toasted white sesame seeds
Green parts of 2 spring onions, finely sliced
2 eggs
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
1 tbsp of gochujang
1 tsp of rice vinegar
1/2 tsp of honey
Method
Heat a frying pan over a medium-high heat, and add 1/2 a tbsp of vegetable oil when it comes to temperature. When the oil is hot, add the onions and fry for 4-5 minutes, or until they've browned slightly. Add in the whites of the spring onion, and fry for a further 2 minutes, before briefly stirring the garlic and the ginger through. Tip the grated carrot into the pan and sprinkle over a 1/4 tsp of salt before frying for another 3 minutes. Finely, add in the kimchi and the rice, and carry on cooking for 2 further minutes. Add this mixture to a bowl and set aside.
Make the pancake batter; measure out the flour into a mixing bowl and make a small well in the middle. Pour the milk, soy sauce and kimchi brine (if using) into the centre of the bowl and add in the 1/2 tsp of salt. Whisk the mixture until smooth. Pour the pancake batter over the bowl of vegetables and mix until thoroughly combined.
To a small bowl, add the gochujang, vinegar and honey and mix until it forms a smooth sauce. Taste the mixture; if you'd like it to be sweeter then add a little bit more honey, or if you'd prefer it to be more acidic then add some more vinegar.
Heat the frying pan over a medium-high heat again, and add in the vegetable oil when it has come to temperature. When the oil is hot, add in the pancake mixture and flatten until it reaches the edges of the pan. Cook on one side for 3-4 minutes. As the bottom of the pancake begins to cook, go around the edges with a spatula (silicone, if you have one) to ensure that they do not stick. Keep doing this, moving further into the centre, until you can move the pancake around by swiveling the pan with your wrist.
After the underside is cooked, it will need to be turned over. The best way to do this (without risking a fold or a collapse) is to unload it on to a plate and carefully placing the frying pan upside down over the plate and flipping it out on to the frying pan. The cooked side will be facing upwards. Make sure that there is no loose oil in the pan before you do this! Cook on this side on a medium-high heat for a further 2 minutes before placing it back on to the plate. Slice the pancake into two halves.
Finally, add 1 tbsp of oil to the frying pan and wait for it to come to temperature (this should happen pretty quickly given all of the frying it had been doing prior). Crack two eggs into the pan and fry in the oil until the whites are fully cooked. Add an egg on to each pancake half, and sprinkle over the gochujang mixture, the spring onions, the sesame seeds and a pinch of salt.
Notes & Adjustments
I usually make kimchi using Maangchi's recipe for vegan kimchi, but the fresh stuff that you can buy from a Korean supermarket is great too! Some supermarkets in the UK will sell a shelf stable version, but they taste more like a mildly-spiced mixture of vegetables which I don't recommend. If you can't get a hold of kimchi, then pick up a Napa or Savoy cabbage and chop up 100g of it, rinse it and add 1 tbsp of salt. Leave it for an hour before rinsing again. You may also wish to double the amount of garlic and ginger that you add into the pancake and add 1 tsp of mild chilli powder to the batter.
If your kimchi doesn't have easily accessible brine then don't worry about this step; I always find that homemade kimchi comes out with more brine than a store bought version, just because it's harder to get all of the water out of the leaves by hand.
If you don't have gochujang, then you could just use any similar condiment to drizzle over the pancake. Sriracha or sweet chilli would also be ideal.
The vegetables you use in this pancake are definitely negotiable, but I would avoid any with a particularly high water content.
Rice vinegar can be substituted for red wine vinegar or lemon juice if needed.
Vegetable stock or water can be used in the pancake batter instead of milk if preferred.
As mentioned before, the rice doesn't strictly have to be rice, but it shouldn't be too starchy. The majority of it should be grains, but if there are pulses mixed in too then that's fine. If you don't have any leftover rice, then you could make some a few hours in advance and leave to dry out before making the pancake.
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