Eating my Kimchi

After a few days of fermentation we decided to taste this concoction that I made. In my second attempt of the paste, I added soy sauce instead of fish sauce, by accident. So then I added fish sauce as well. Maybe one day I'll cook as if I can read, instead of like this.

Appearance: Not bad, for shrivelled old chinese cabbage and brown bits. Kind of like coleslaw that you forgot about in a drawer a decade ago, with a steady drip into it. The spring onion adds some nice non-rotten colour. I thought it would be redder. Maybe I should add cayenne pepper and not just chili powder next time. I can handle the heat...

Texture: Still slightly crunchy. The sogginess of the kimchi is freshened up by the crunchiness of the daikon. Mm. Yeah, I can see this working. I would even consider adding some more crunchy things to it to freshen it up, like celery or cucumber.

Smell: PEEEEE YOOOOOO! This stuff smells strongly, of garlic and... well, fermented cabbage. Not for the faint of heart. Not too bad if you're okay with the smell a sushi take-out box gets the next day; it's the same kind of strong, vinegary, soy-sauce smell. Possibly because I added soy sauce, which I'll leave out next time. My eyes were bleeding a little bit.

Taste: Mostly coming from the sauce, I can taste the fish sauce quite well. The soy made it a bit too salty but the ginger and daikon definitely save the day. Far too much garlic; the recipe called for 4 cloves. I think you could get away with using 2. But from what I've heard, Koreans like their food pretty garlicky. My mom and I like it, but it was too garlicky for my dad.

All in all, a success, although the recipe (and my reading skills) could use some tweaking.

Making my own Kimchi

Ha, I don't even know if this recipe is real kimchi. The recipe book calls it 'Pickled Vegetables' but please. It's kimchi. Call it what it is. If that's what it is. I won't know til it's fermented. But as far as I know, kimchi is cabbage that's been fermented in chili, salt, fish sauce and stuffs. So... That's what I'm making. But this recipe book is basically full of asian recipes without hard-to-find ingredients. YAY!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1/2 a small chinese cabbage
1 litre cold water
100g salt
4 garlic cloves
4 spring onions
2.5cm fresh root ginger
10cm piece of daikon, weighing about 175g
15ml chili powder or 5ml cayenne pepper
30 ml fish sauce
5ml sugar

1. Rinse the cabbage. Seriously. There were all kinds of weird insects in mine. I think they were evolving new species. Rinse that stuff. Rinse it good... Put the water and all but 1.25ml of the salt in a large bowl and

OH CRAP

I put 1.25 ml of salt in the bowl and the rest in the paste. Well, less than they asked for, more like 3 tablespoons, but still... Oh god oh god oh god.

...

Maybe if I don't tell anyone, they won't know.

...

Anyway, stir til the salt has dissolved. Add a plate to weigh it down and keep it covered. Leave it to soak for 8-10 hours.

2. Set the flat side of the cleaver on each garlic clove; strike it with your fist. Discard the skin and finely chop the garlic. Trim the spring onions, leaving some of the green tops. Cut across and coarsely chop.

3. Scrape the skin from the root ginger with the cleaver. Slice the ginger, cutting across the fibrous grain. Crush each slice with the flat of the cleaver, then finely chop the slices.

4. Peel the daikon and cut it crosswise in half. Cut each half lengthwise into 3mm slices. Stack the slices and cut into 3mm strips.

5. In a bowl, mix the chili powder or cayenne with the fish sauce, sugar, and the remaining salt (1/4 teaspoon) using the chopsticks. (or, if you're me, a kak ton of salt. Oops). Add the garlic, spring onions, ginger and daikon strips and stir until the mixture is all red.

6. Drain the cabbage, rinse with cold water, and squeeze it between your hands to remove all the moisture. Place the wilted cabbage, cut side up, on the work surface. Beginning with the large bottom leaves, pack the daikon mixture between each leaf.

7. Fold the cabbage leaves and push them into the jar. Pour any leftover daikon mixture on top. Cover with the lid, and leave in a cool place to ferment, at least 3 days. The cabbage will wilt and produce liquid.


I really hope this isn't too salty. Good thing we don't know how it's supposed to taste anyway... *cough*