Korean Cabbage - Kimchi

I was at a Korean restaurant a while ago and was served a delightful array of salad-looking appetizers with the soup I had ordered. My friend told me it was called kimchi. It was so delicious, I bought some from the store in the back of the restaurant.

The next thing I knew, my kimchi supply was gone. I had to do something, and because I enjoy trying to prepare new things, I thought I'd give kimchi a try. I found a recipe online to start with. The first batch was OK, but it was missing some things.

Over time, I started to figure out what was missing or what I had too much of. Aided by the palate of a Korean-American co-worker of mine (whose mom makes this stuff like it's going out of style), I believe I'm on my way to being accepted with open arms into Korean culture.

Now you can be too.

Ingredients

• 1 medium to large napa cabbage (about the size of a football)
• about 1/4 cup salt (and a bit extra for a brine)
  
• 1/4 cup red pepper flakes (NOT crushed red pepper powder)*
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp minced ginger
• about 5 green onions
• 1 tbsp fish sauce (totally optional)
• about 1/8 cup sugar

Directions

1. Chop the cabbage into pieces a bit larger than bite size. By the end, they will have shrunk. Use the whole thing. Place it all in a large bowl, with enough room to toss it.
2. Dissolve some salt in a bowl of warm water. Pour over the cabbage and toss so that everything gets wet. Let sit at room temperature for about four hours.
3. After your cabbage has reduced, wash it well.
4. Mix the red pepper flakes with about 1/4 cup warm water. It should be pasty, not runny. Add the paste to the cabbage.
5. Add the garlic, ginger, green onions, and sugar. The sugar helps the fermentation process. Your kimchi should not taste sweet in the end, so use some judgment on exactly how much sugar you use. If you’re using fish sauce, add it now too.
6. Toss the mixture. Hands work best, but be careful. If you’ve got plastic gloves, use them. I learned the hard way that even if I think your hands are clean, hours later it still could burn my eyes.
7. After it’s all mixed, bottle it up. I have a huge pickle jar I use, but several smaller ones will suffice. You should get a pretty substantial amount of kimchi out of this recipe. Close them up well and leave them out at room temperature for 24 hours to ferment.

You can enjoy your kimchi right away, but it will definitely taste better if you wait a week. By two weeks, you'll be eating it at every meal because you won't be able to get enough of it.

Come on back after a while and let me know how you liked it!

Bip Bim Bap

As my tour of “all things Asian” continues this week, I just had the urged to make “Bip Bim Bap”. With a name like that, it has be to really good or really funny tasting; I’m just glad that it’s not the latter. Many years ago when I worked as an international telephone operator, my Korean co-workers introduced me to Bip Bim Bap for the first time. Although they never told me what Bip Bim Bap meant; they explained to me it was a combination of thinly sliced meat, assorted veggies, red chili peppers, and different kinds of pickled vegetables (Kimchi is a popular choice); mix all together to form an explosion of flavors. ¬You can find the same dish in Korean restaurants where they would often placed a sunny side up egg on top; you would break the yolk and continue with your mixing of all the ingredients.

It’s been years since I had this wonderful dish, so what better time to make it than this week? Staying true to my budget and now …a healthy diet (with great foods come great responsibilities, or something like that), I set out to make my own version of Bip Bim Bap. In this version, I will make Korean style BBQ to go with vegetable sauté. Simple and delicious. Notice that I left out the fried egg and Kimchi; I’m cutting back on those.

Below are a list of stuff that you’ll need, how much of it will depends on how many servings you intend to have:

• beef
• green onions
• cabbage (sliced)
• garlic (chopped)
• hoisin sauce (pho sauce for my American friends)
• chili pepper or sriracha sauce
• sugar
• black pepper
• rice wine vinegar
• bean sprout
• soy sauce
• rice (I won’t go over how to make rice)
• sesame oil

Although this is technically one dish, there are multiple components, so first thing first.

Directions to make Korean BBQ

• slice beef into very thin slices (the thinner the better) and set that aside
• using a large bowl, add hoisin sauce, sugar (the ratio of sugar to hoisin sauce should be 1 ½ to 1), black pepper, sriracha sauce, garlic, a little bit of rice vinegar, green onions, and a bit of sesame oil. You might want to add a little bit of hot water to help dissolve everything as you mix all ingredients until they are uniform in texture. It should taste sweet, spicy, and tangy, with a bit of saltiness.
• On a very hot grill or flat pan place the sliced beef and cook evenly or until you think it’s done (for me, 2 mins on each side)
• Add the BBQ sauce that you’ve just made to the meat while it’s still hot so that it could soak up all the flavors

Directions for vegetable sauté

• with a hot wok, add oil and cook the garlic until golden brown
• add sliced cabbage and cook for about 4-5 mins (you want to make sure that it’s still crunchy)
• add the bean sprouts
• add a little bit of sugar and soy sauce to taste
• finish off with some black peppers

To serve:

With a large bowl of rice, add the sauté veggies and BBQ to it. Mix everything up and you’re ready to enjoy! This is a very simple dish and there are tons of ways that you can make it your own by incorporating different vegetables and sides. The trick is to experiment and figure out if one dish will complement the next and so on.