Kimchi: A Cinderella Tale

 Recently we added a delicious new dish to the menu at work, braised pork cheeks with house made kimchi and a flash fried egg. During this time I also received a copy of David Chang's Momofuku cook book and discovered an excellent Korean supermarket called H-Mart. This confluence of events has drawn the waft of spicy, fermented cabbage to my attention.

Driven by my compulsion to make my own paechu kimchi (napa cabbage kimchi) I turned to the power of the internet for instruction.

The Ultimate Kimchi offered an interesting and unusual methodology. It required the broccoli (?) to be "cut into byte-sized pieces." I was not sure whether this meant that they need to be cut into eight bits or just an indication that the broccoli is to be sliced so infinitesimally small as to be negligible in the finished product. As I read through the recipe I came to the following passage:

"After sprinkling salt, gently stir it into the cabbage. Do this with your hands, rather than with a tool. (We'll discuss more on this later.) Use your hands like you're hugging the cabbage. Move them gently around the sides, and then gather them into the center. Then push the cabbage to the sides (gently) and pull your hands around the edges like you're swimming with a breaststroke.

The hugging motion is gentle. Generate love while you're doing it. Its hard to overstate the importance of this step. Whenever we make Kimchi, it comes out good, but nearly as good as Grandmaster's. We're pretty sure that the missing ingredient is love. No one generates love with the intensity and purity that Grandmaster does. Its interesting to watch Grandmaster at times like these, too. If someone speaks to her, she may nod, or smile, or she may not react all -- but her concentration never wavers. She is completely absorbed in what she is doing. She is also completely aware of everything going on around her -- who is saying what, who is doing what, and where they are -- but she has her attention focused on one thing -- and that concentration makes a big difference in her kimchi." 

Eternally grateful for receiving such insightful tips I set about preparing for my first kimchi. I indiscriminately hugged all of the cabbages in the local grocers until they asked me to leave because they confused my expression of love for making out with the savoys. Apparently they also found my behaviour inappropriate at the local indoor pool where they took issue with my "swimming with a breaststroke" technique.

Having plastered the apartment with Post-it note reminders to not forget to include love, I thought it would be advisable to cross-reference with a second website.  Maangchi You Tube tutorial was highly instructive and more significantly I wasn't left emotionally crippled by the feeling of inadequacy at having to compare to the Grandmaster.  

 Drawing on these lessons and using the recipe for paechu kimchi and kakdugi (radish kimchi) from the Momofuku cookbook as a guide, I devised the following recipe.

Nappa cabbage and radish kimchi

1 medium and 3 baby Napa cabbages, outer leaves removed and washed

1 medium Korean mu radish, cut into 3cm cubes and juliennne the scraps 

4 tbsp coarse sea salt

3/4 cup and 4 tbsp sugar

30 garlic cloves

30 slices of peeled ginger

3 tbsp salted shrimp

3/4 cup kochukaru (Korean chili powder)

1/2 cup fish sauce

1/2 cup usukuchi (light soy sauce)

1 bunch of spring onions, sliced

1/2 bunch of garlic chives, cut into 3cm lengths

1 large carrot, peeled and julienned

Cut the cabbages in half and cut the medium cabbage into 3cm pieces. Salt the cabbage and cubed mu radish, add the 4 tbsp of sugar and refrigerate overnight.

Mince the garlic, ginger and salted shrimp. Add the fish sauce, kochukaru, usukuchi and remaining sugar. Adjust the dressing with water to achieve a thick sauce consistency.

Thoroughly drain the cabbage and combine with the dressing (be sure to be wearing gloves for this stage). Then stir in the garlic chives, spring onions, julienned carrot and radish.

Refrigerate for at least a week. The flavour will develop the longer it is allowed to sit.

Having completed my kimchi today I was struck not only by its' intoxicating potency of flavour and colour but it reminded me of the Cinderella ingredients that are part of so many Asian cuisines. As with the salted shrimp in this recipe often there are these elements that smell and taste like sucking on the ugly step-sister's toes. However wave the fairy god mother's stick blender over them and they transform into something with depth, interest and a complex, exotic beauty that brings harmony and balance to the land.