[CH] Cabbage Kimchee
Linda Hutchinson (lipant@sympatico.ca)
Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:12:58 -0500
Cabbage Kimchee
October 09, 2005 | by Lulu LaMer
I'm not much of a sweets person. I'll take a strong goat cheese over
chocolate any day of the week. My love affair with the pungent and skanky
probably started with sourdough bread, but it really took off when I started
making kimchee. Kimchee is sour, salty, and garlicky, and it has a lovely
juiciness when you bite into it.
Autumn is the natural time for fermented and preserved foods. Foods were
originally fermented of course as a way to preserve surplus that would
otherwise rot after harvest time. Turns out too that if you pickle things
they retain their vitamin C, which tends to be harder to find in the winter
months. In Chinese medicine, the flavor associated with fall is sour. The
action of the sour flavor is cooling, contracting, and absorbing, gathering
up our energy and contracting it, the same way trees do in the fall.
Kimchee is a raw, wild-fermented food, the wholest of the whole. You don't
use a starter culture or any other direct control over the microorganisms.
The important thing then is cleanliness - indirect control. I have never had
a batch of kimchee fail, but I've seen others' turn nasty. With fermented
foods it's always a bit of a challenge - how do you tell the difference
between good-sour and bad-sour? Kimchee's sour flavor is fresh, light, and
tingly, with a slight ammonia smell. The bad kimchee I've had tastes heavy
and slightly sick.
In addition to accenting soups and noodles, I've eaten kimchee on rye
crackers with sharp cheese, and used the strong liquid as a component in a
vegetarian fish sauce replacement.
Cabbage Kimchee
1 pound Chinese cabbage (about 1/2 a large head)
1 pound white radish (daikon)
3 Tablespoons salt
2 Tablespoons finely minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic
5 scallions, cut into fine rounds, including green
1 Tablespoon cayenne or hot Korean red pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
If you are using a small whole cabbage, cut it in half lengthwise, and then
cut it across at 2-inch intervals. If you are using half of a large cabbage,
cut it in half again lengthwise, and then crosswise at 2-inch intervals.
Peel the white radish (I don't - LL), cut it in half lengthwise, and then
cut it crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices. In a large bowl put 5 cups
water and 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of the salt. Mix. Add the cabbage
and radish to this water and dunk them in a few times, as they have a
tendency to float. Leave the vegetables in the salty water. Cover loosely
and set aside for 12 hours. Turn the vegetables over a few times.
Put the ginger, garlic, scallions, cayenne, sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt in
another large bowl. Mix well.
Take the cabbage out of its soaking liquid with a slotted spoon (save the
liquid) and put it in the bowl with the seasonings. Mix well.
Put this cabbage mixture into a 2-quart jar or crock. Pour enough of the
salt water over it to cover the vegetables (about 2 cups). Leave 1 inch of
empty space at the top of the jar. Cover loosely with a clean cloth and set
aside for 3 to 7 days. In the summer, kimchees mature with much greater
speed; in the winter, the process slows down unless the central heating is
ferocious. Taste the pickle after 3 days to check on the sourness. When it
is done to your liking, cover the jar and refrigerate.
To serve, remove just as much of the kimchee solids as you think you will
need for a meal - a cupful is enough for 4 people - and put it in the center
of a bowl. The kimchee liquid in this pickle is left behind in the jar and
may be used to flavor stews and soups. Serve this cabbage kimchee with any
Korean meal.
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Linda
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Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me - I want people to know
WHY I look this way: I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't
paved.