Kimchi — Day 2
I could hardly wait to open the refrigerator this
morning and check on the cabbage I salted yesterday.
One dramatic change had occurred: The cabbage had
reduced to about a third of its original volume...
The leaves (in particular the ribs) still had a lot of crispiness to them, perhaps even more than they'd had yesterday.
I rinsed the salted leaves with two changes of water, spinning them dry each time. Afterward, the cabbage was still well-seasoned but not briny the way it had been when I first lifted the lid of the bowl.
Now to add the other ingredients...
I'm going to stick mostly to the simple recipe that I chose yesterday, with a couple of small modifications (I heard somewhere that every Korean family has their own idiosyncratic way of making kimchi, so I am convinced that by modifying a traditional recipe I am in fact increasing the authenticity of my approach).
To make the spice paste, I first combined 2 T sugar with 2 T "rooster sauce" (Sri Racha chili-garlic sauce), 1 t rice vinegar, and 1 t soy sauce, stirring until the sugar was dissolved.
To the liquids, I added 4 minced cloves of garlic and a "walnut-sized" piece of ginger, grated with a broad microplane grater (Cuisipro, which makes a nice grater with a dumb shield that actually hurts to remove), and mixed again.
Finally, I added a bunch of scallions (coarsely chopped), two jalapeños (seeded, stemmed and julienned) and half a teaspoon of crushed red pepper.
I tossed this fiery mixture with the cabbage...
...and then transferred the lot to a glass bowl.
Reasoning that Koreans have been making kimchi for hundreds of years, and that for most of that time they (indeed, we) didn't know anything about microbiology or refrigeration technology, I decided to ferment my kimchi outside, instead of in a refrigerator. I predict that this will give the bacteria a little more elbow room, biochemically speaking, than they would have in the fridge, and hope that the more violent outdoor fermentation will give my kimchi a potent sour kick.
So I covered the bowl with Saran wrap, rubber-banded it just in case, and put it inside a decommissioned gas grill that is sitting on my deck. It's about 70°F outside today: not too hot, not too cold.
Stay tuned...
Posted: Sun - April 3, 2005 at 03:46 PM
The leaves (in particular the ribs) still had a lot of crispiness to them, perhaps even more than they'd had yesterday.
I rinsed the salted leaves with two changes of water, spinning them dry each time. Afterward, the cabbage was still well-seasoned but not briny the way it had been when I first lifted the lid of the bowl.
Now to add the other ingredients...
I'm going to stick mostly to the simple recipe that I chose yesterday, with a couple of small modifications (I heard somewhere that every Korean family has their own idiosyncratic way of making kimchi, so I am convinced that by modifying a traditional recipe I am in fact increasing the authenticity of my approach).
To make the spice paste, I first combined 2 T sugar with 2 T "rooster sauce" (Sri Racha chili-garlic sauce), 1 t rice vinegar, and 1 t soy sauce, stirring until the sugar was dissolved.
To the liquids, I added 4 minced cloves of garlic and a "walnut-sized" piece of ginger, grated with a broad microplane grater (Cuisipro, which makes a nice grater with a dumb shield that actually hurts to remove), and mixed again.
Finally, I added a bunch of scallions (coarsely chopped), two jalapeños (seeded, stemmed and julienned) and half a teaspoon of crushed red pepper.
I tossed this fiery mixture with the cabbage...
...and then transferred the lot to a glass bowl.
Reasoning that Koreans have been making kimchi for hundreds of years, and that for most of that time they (indeed, we) didn't know anything about microbiology or refrigeration technology, I decided to ferment my kimchi outside, instead of in a refrigerator. I predict that this will give the bacteria a little more elbow room, biochemically speaking, than they would have in the fridge, and hope that the more violent outdoor fermentation will give my kimchi a potent sour kick.
So I covered the bowl with Saran wrap, rubber-banded it just in case, and put it inside a decommissioned gas grill that is sitting on my deck. It's about 70°F outside today: not too hot, not too cold.
Stay tuned...
Posted: Sun - April 3, 2005 at 03:46 PM
Quick Links
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 23, 2006 02:49 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 23, 2006 02:49 PM