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.