Kimchi pancakes

Kimchi is a famous type of fermented vegetable with chili paste, which provides a mix of savoury, spicy, sour and sweet tastes. It is such an unique flavour that you can’t find it anywhere else. There are quite a lot options when it comes to the vegetables. There’s radish kimchi, cucumber kimchi, eggplant kimchi, etc. The most well known one is made of Chinese leaf cabbage. This sweet and juicy cabbage pairing with a bit of white radish and carrot, and some apple or pear for a hint of fruity taste, provides so many nice memories from my childhood.

My grandfather was a Chinese verbal teacher in a Korean high school, so my mom grew up in a Korean-Chinese mixed community. The way of Korean wives doing housework, the way of them cooking, all of those influenced my mom deeply and of course influenced me too. Korean food is still the second biggest cuisine in my family. I remember my mom used to make a huge terracotta jar of cabbage kimchi twice a year and share them with my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. In those hot summer days, we sat in my grandparents yard. The grape vines kept us shaded from the shining sunlight and provided some shelter from the hot stuffy air. Then we would have a a bowl of cold noodle serving with chilled kimchi as dinner.

Kimchi itself is a great side dish. But I’m also a big fan of including kimchi in warm dishes to bring out the balanced sweetness and sourness. This kimchi pancake recipe is tasty and healthy. You can serve it as a main dish, as a starter, or even as a snack for sharing.