Whyever Kimchi?

 

Why any fermented food? 

First let us think historically. In the past, before refrigeration, spoilage was a constant consideration. By trial and error, I am sure people all over the world found that foods kept better if they were allowed to ferment. It was a safety factor. Besides the safety, it also assured a food supply long after the season when things were freshly produced.

Fermented vegetables, milk products such as kefir, or cheese also, could be kept for much longer than fresh produce of the same type. Scandinavians even ferment fish!

Beer and wine remained safe for long periods of time, relatively speaking.

Nowadays we know that the organisms in fermented foods help maintain gut health, which maintains the health of the whole body. Those little bacteria and yeasts are a force that overpowers less friendly organisms that might occur in the gut.

Fermented foods are also pre-digested in a way. More of the nutrient matter is available for use by the body. They are easy on the system. 

We also like the flavor. It is a pleasant transformation.  If we didn't like the flavor, we probably wouldn't care about the other factors.

A famous Korean fermented food, a relish eaten with everything at the Korean table, more or less, is kimchi. Much like sauerkraut, it is just a fermented cabbage dish, but with a lot of interesting seasonings.

Rather than just posting a recipe, shall we pretend to watch a young Korean girl, Binna, make a batch of kimchi at home? Okay?

*** 

Binna was ten years old, and already an expert at simple cooking tasks in her mother’s kitchen. This day, in midsummer, which would be a rather hot day, she wanted to prepare some kimchi for her family all by herself. 

First, she went out to the cabbage patch in the family garden early in the morning while it was still cool. The heat of the day would come up soon and she wanted to be in the shade to do most of the work. Nevertheless, since she was young, she decided to make a small batch. She gathered two napa cabbages, putting them in a basket. While still out in the garden she pulled the rough outer leaves off of the cabbages and threw them over the nearby fence to the family hens, who loved such things. 

Then she took her cabbages to the water pump in the yard, and she washed them. They were not dirty, but she wanted to make sure that no bugs or slugs were among the leaves.

Going into the kitchen, she laid the cabbages on a large block of wood used for chopping. Using one of her mother’s cleavers she split the cabbages in half lengthwise and then quartered them also lengthwise. Next, she cut them into one-inch sections crosswise.

She scooped the slices into a very large wooden bowl. Then she salted them quite liberally. The next process was squeezing and kneading the cabbage slices. This took a while, but she did a good job, and the leaves were much reduced and wilted. She set them aside to wilt further.

Going back to the garden she gathered one large daikon radish and two good handfuls of green onions. These she also washed at the water pump.

While her cabbage continued to wilt, she chopped the onions and made little julienne strips of the daikon with the same large cleaver as before on the cutting board.

Now she needed to make a seasoning sauce. She took a large piece of ginger about four inches long, and she peeled and sliced it. She peeled about ten cloves of garlic also. Normally she would have peeled an Asian pear, but it was the wrong time of year, so she used an apple that was still in pretty good shape. She put these things into a stone bowl, a large mortar. To this she added a small cup of fish sauce from her mother’s jar on a shelf in the kitchen. Then taking the pestle she pounded the garlic and ginger until it made a smooth paste. To this paste she added a larger amount of red pepper flakes and mixed them all together. 

She dumped the salty wilted cabbage slices into a basket and went back to the pump and rinsed the salt off the leaves, while squeezing and kneading them some more. She left them in the yard to drain an additional time.

Binna was really a hard worker. She took a little break back in the kitchen. She had some rice, and a little soup that her mother had made the day before and a serving of some kimchi that had been set up months before.

When her lunch break was over, she fetched the basket into the kitchen. Then she dumped the wilted cabbage into a very large ceramic bowl and added to it her chopped vegetables and the sauce she had pounded in the mortar. She mixed it all very well together with both of her hands.

When it was all mixed it smelled very good. The scents of garlic, pepper and ginger together were wonderful.

Shall we pretend we see Binna now, a little tired, but nearly done with her chore, push her hair away from her sweet black eyes, and prepare to finish the task? One more thing remained to be done. She must pack the finished kimchi into a large clay jar and close it up with a ceramic lid capped over the top.

Later her father would set the jar in a cool place. It was a little heavy for her to move very far.

In a couple of weeks, it would taste right, and would also keep for months. 

I did approximately the same process, but with one cabbage and much less running out to the pump and I confess to using mechanical means to pulverize the garlic and ginger.

I think I might have enjoyed Binna's methods more.