Every time I opened the lid, it filled my kitchen with the aroma of percolating ginger, cabbage and garlic.
Ilove kimchi. I like to open the jar, let the heady scent of fermenting cabbage and fresh chopped garlic fill (some might say “pollute”) the air. I like to dip a fork or my fingers into the jar and munch to my heart’s content. Fortunately, I live alone.
But after years of purchasing kimchi at a local Oriental market, I decided to make my own. To begin, I consulted The Korean Kitchen (Chronicle Books, 1993) by Copeland Marks with Manjo Kim. The recipes there included napa cabbage, as well as such hard-to-find ingredients as salted shrimp, octopus, Korean radish and Chinese chives.
I didn’t even have the red chili powder required in the recipe I selected, so I substituted cayenne. Then I left the mixture on the counter for three days, where the cabbage and salt bubbled like a witch’s brew in the heat of my kitchen. It actually popped the plastic lid off its container at one point.
Every time I opened the lid, it filled my kitchen with the aroma of percolating ginger, cabbage and garlic. As the days passed, it looked like this mixture might make some powerful kimchi. But when I tasted it, the kimchi was too salty and had an off flavor. Garbage.
I thought perhaps the problem was the pepper. So I went to an Oriental market to buy the right kind (it’s called “red pepper powder” and looks like bacon bits). Alas, my next batch went into the garbage, too.
Finally, I decided to visit the Gold Star Oriental Food & Gift in Hollywood, where Kyung Sun Shin periodically makes 10 different types of kimchi. With Gold Star owner Won Whang acting as my interpreter, I watched and learned the secrets to a good mock kimchi (cabbage kimchi).
Shin begins by wilting the cabbage with sea salt – not table salt. “Some people try using salt from the mountains but the salt from the sea is sweeter,” Whang told me. And Shin adds a touch of ginger ale “to lighten” the brew. In Korea, they use a lemon soda called Mineral Water Cider, but here she substitutes the soda, which is more readily available.
After watching her mix the cabbage and spices, I was inspired to go home and try it myself – one last time.
When my mixture had fermented for a few days, I brought my homemade kimchi to a tasting panel of three colleagues and kimchi aficionados.
The panel pronounced my mixture a resounding success as they ate it the Korean way, wrapped around rice. I was thrilled. Now, if anything ever happens to my journalism career, I can always make kimchi.
This is a basic recipe. You may want to follow it exactly the first time. Then you can modify proportions of flavorings to suit your tastes.
