There is an older couple at the market who grows, harvests, and sells a variety of vegetables and fruits. With the fruits and vegetables, the woman, who just happens to be Chinese, creates wonderful dishes. When I walked up to her booth the other day, she told me she made a new kimchi with pohole, a Hawaiian fern. I was immediately excited to eat her new kimchi and share it with you.
This vegetable kimchi has bok choy, mustard greens, green onions, garlic chives, sweet onions, pohole, garlic, ginger, Korean chili powder, and salt. Many kimchis include fish sauce or salted shrimp, but this one is made only from plants. Having been a vegetarian for 25 years, I still notice when a food has no animal ingredients.
Kimchi is a Korean way of preserving vegetables. The vegetables are salted, mixed with seasonings, and left to ferment.
Fermenting is when bacteria in the food change the food. In kimchi, the lactic acid bacteria from the raw ingredients eat the natural sugars in the vegetables and make lactic acid. The lactic acid keeps the vegetables from spoiling. As the lactic acid builds, the kimchi becomes too acidic for spoilage bacteria to survive. The lactic acid also gives kimchi a sour flavor.
Raw vegetables naturally carry many kinds of bacteria. Some bacteria do the fermenting, and other bacteria make food rot or can make people sick. The salt added to the kimchi decides which bacteria multiply. Many bacteria cannot handle salt. Salt pulls water out of those bacteria, so many stop growing and some die. Lactic acid bacteria can handle salt.
The ingredients for kimchi are packed tightly in a jar with little air, and the lactic acid bacteria grow well without air. So the salt and the packed jar keep other bacteria from multiplying while the lactic acid bacteria multiply.
Kimchi that has not been heated still contains living lactic acid bacteria. Living bacteria that may benefit the body are called probiotics. Research suggests probiotics can support the bacteria living in your gut.
Pohole is the young, curled shoot of a fern, called a fiddlehead. (Is it really called a fiddlehead. I have only heard that from you.) On Maui the fern is called pohole, and on the Big Island the fern is called hoʻiʻo. I have eaten pohole right off the plant.
You are welcome to eat fermented food.
Stacy 🌺
Information in this post comes from my learning and research.
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I share my experiences and my perspective. Eating and healing look different for everyone. If you are struggling with food or your relationship with your body, please find support. You don’t have to do this alone.