kimchi time

So yesterday I stopped by the Lincoln Square farmer's market, a series of booths in the small parking lot outside the Western Brown Line stop every Thursday night in the summer. And I decided to buy a very large head of cabbage, because I've been wanting to try my hand at making kimchi. My mom makes cabbage kimchi pretty regularly- it's a bit easier/more forgiving than the traditional kind made with napa cabbage, and it lasts longer.

So, I started with this:

Step 1: make some paste. My mom uses glutinous rice flour, but I didn't have any, so I just used all-purpose flour. I'm going to say I used about 1/2 c water and 3 tbsp flour, but who really knows? (and this was WAY more than I actually needed). Set this aside, let it cool.

Step 2: cut up the cabbage into manageable pieces. Salt liberally. Recipes for napa cabbage kimchi tend to say to soak it in saltwater for 6 hrs - overnight, but it isn't really necessary here.

Step 3: assemble the rest of the ingredients. Scallions (green onions- I used 4), garlic (about 5 cloves), ginger (about 1.5 in piece), red pepper powder (the Korean kind, probably about 2 tbsp?), and fish sauce (maybe 3 tbsp?). I cut the scallions into about 1 in pieces, and minced the garlic and the ginger. [So I basically made these proportions up. The recipe I had said to use 1 tsp of garlic and ginger for 1 head of napa cabbage. I didn't think that was possibly enough, so I upped the amounts.]

Step 4: Add the above to the cabbage. I also added maybe 2 tsp of sugar. Mix it all together, adding about 3 tbsp of the paste as you do so. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Voila!

One head of cabbage got about 1 gal of kimchi. I hope it tastes good tomorrow, haha.