“Every time we prepped a cauliflower for the florets there were all these ‘ribs’ leftover, so we chopped them up and made them into kimchi,” says Tom Hill, chef, fermenter and owner of Duck Soup and Little Duck The Picklery in London. Hill noticed greengrocers trimming cauliflowers and other vegetables, throwing the offcuts into a compost box, and this spurred him on to save more waste in his own kitchens, realising that vegetable offcuts could be fermented into high-value food products.
Cauliflower leaves can be tough, which is why I presume they’re usually discarded, but fermentation breaks them down and converts the leaves into the most remarkable condiment.
Have a look in the grocer’s reject box and there’s bound to be something you can ferment: cauliflower leaves, imperfect vegetables, very ripe tomatoes and blemished ingredients, which are all fine with a wash and trim.
Cauliflowers come cradled in a fibrous, leafy green that can be tough, but is delicious when prepped with a little know-how, and then roasted or fermented, as in this recipe adapted from Tom Hill’s kohlrabi kimchi from his cookbook, with Clare Lattin, Ducksoup. I’ve made a plant-based version and have swapped fish sauce for seaweed, kohlrabi for cauliflower and removed the sugar, as I find cauliflower sweet enough.
Hill recommends fermenting cauliflower leaves and stems for a month at room temperature before refrigerating to make sure they are broken down and “cooked” by the good bacteria. Traditionally, kimchi greens are salted for several hours, but I’ve skipped this process as there is no saucy base of rice porridge like in some more traditional recipes. Here, the vegetable liquid creates a sauce with the pungent aromatics.
This recipe for cauliflower rib kimchi is written for the greens, stalks and leaves from one cauliflower. The aromatics can be tweaked to your taste, adding more or less garlic, ginger, soy sauce, gochugaru or other mild chilli flakes.
Cauliflower rib kimchi
300g cauliflower leaves and the white core
1 tsp garlic cloves, peeled
2 tsp chopped fresh ginger, unpeeled
2 tbsp light soy sauce or tamari
2 tsp gochugaru, or another mild chilli flake
2g seaweed – I used wakame (optional)
Trim the leaves and stems from a large cauliflower and finely cut the core into matchsticks. Leave the small, tender leaves whole. Remove the leaves from any thick, fibrous stems and leave whole, then cut the thick stems across the grain into 5-10mm pieces. Altogether you should have about 300g - make up the weight with other leafy greens, if necessary. Wash everything in a colander and leave to drain. Sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt and massage into the leaves.
Mix the minced garlic with the minced ginger, light soy sauce, gochugaru (or another mild chilli flake or powder, to taste) and massage into the cauliflower greens, adding the optional dried seaweed, if you like.
Pack into a 500ml jam jar and press down so the liquid rises above the surface of the vegetables, topping up with water if necessary. Cover with a loose lid and leave to ferment at room temperature (out of direct sunlight) for at least a week, or a month for best results. Enjoy.
