Page 44 - Hong_Kong_&_Macau's_Best_Restaurants_English_edition

SAVOUR FEAST

Kimchi, perhaps
the most famous
of fermented
foods, can be
ready to enjoy
after one week

Last year, I started experimenting with
fermented hot sauces, starting with a recipe
from Los Angeles restaurant Sqirl’s excellent
cookbook Everything I Want to Eat. I had
amassed a mountain of fresh habanero
chillies and wanted to make something from
them—and then I read through the recipe,
which stated that the sauce had to sit for
four weeks in a dark place after it was made.
My monkey mind immediately said, “That
is a whole month, Mina Park!” I took a deep
breath and went ahead. And then I waited.
The resulting hot sauce was a revelation,
with a flavour profile that was so deep and
fiery, reminiscent of many Asian sauces.
Since then, I have been playing with recipes
with a variety of chillies, from fresh cayenne
and Thai bird’s eye to dried guajillo and
pasilla. I sometimes add aromatics such as
garlic or shallots, have added sugars, and
have played with using different vinegars to
finish off the sauce such as rice vinegar or
apple cider vinegar. This is where another
virtue of fermentation becomes clear—you
can play around as much as you like and
time will usually be very forgiving.
In June, green plums (also known as
maesil) were in season in Korea. They’re
sour and firm, the colour of jade and
covered in a gorgeous, fuzzy skin like a
peach. I lugged home a small sack of maesil,
ready to experiment. I had never played
around with them before, but I wanted to
try my hand at making umeboshi (Japanese
salted green plums) and maesil syrup, which
I often use as a sweetener in place of sugar.
For the umeboshi, I followed a recipe by
American pickling guru Nancy Singleton
Hachisu. I nestled the plums in salt and
then—I’ll be honest—I completely forgot
about them. More than three months later,
I finally remembered to check on them and
then realised I had missed a crucial step in
Hachisu’s recipe, where I was meant to dry
the plums after three weeks of salting. To
my surprise and delight, the umeboshi were
still divine, with a luscious, silky texture and
an intense, profound flavour. I should learn
to forget about my fermented foods more
often, because thankfully, when it comes to
fermentation, time is always on your side.

42 | T .DINING 2018