Creole Fusion Kimchi with Okra and Sweet Potato Greens

Ok, we're going to start off with a bang here: kimchi made out of okra and sweet potato greens, and we're going to vary the base kimchi recipe to include Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, which gets a lot of play around the kitchen here, most notably as an all-purpose barbecue rub. Our ingredients will be:

Okra (Looks like about 3 cups. The purple ones are from our home garden.)

This bunch of sweet potato greens. This is an unfamiliar ingredient we've never used before. Tasted raw, the leaves are fairly bland with possibly a hint of a parsley flavor, and have a mucilaginous quality somewhat reminiscent of the okra. The stems tasted fine too and will add a bit of nice crunch, so in they go!

Leek (this one)

Garlic (4 large cloves)

Ginger (about half this much, not peeled)

Korean hot pepper paste (3 tablespoons)

Korean hot pepper powder (2 tablespoons)

Tony's Creole seasoning (1 tablespoon)

Kosher salt

Rice vinegar (1/3 cup)

Steps taken:

• Washed okra and sweet potato greens. Coarsely chopped greens with stems, tossed with salt.

• Put salted vegetables into salad spinner with a couple of heavy bowls on top.

• Put garlic, ginger, hot pepper paste, red pepper powder, Tony's seasoning, and vinegar into food processor and pureed:

• At this point a decision was reached not to let the vegetables drain and wilt overnight. Actually we've always skipped that step, and it seemed especially unnecessary considering we were mostly using okra, which wasn't going to wilt anyway.

• The vegetables seemed a little too salty at this point so they got a slight rinsing.

• Mixed the spice mixture with the vegetables.

• Packed veggies into a re-used quart yogurt jar, capped it loosely, and left it on top of the fridge.

• At this point there were leftover vegetables that would not fit into the jar. What to do??

• Answer: Stir-fry them with the leek we forgot to add earlier and serve them for dinner over rice with an egg on top. Delicious!

We'll be checking back in on the jar of okra and greens in a few days, but I'll be damned if it doesn't taste great already! Truthfully, the Tony's isn't all that noticeable, but it's not hurting anything either. Maybe we should have added more, or it should have entirely replaced the salt?