kimchi recipe (and bonus essay)

(click on picture to enlarge)

As I've said before, I don't care for kimchi. It's not that I don't like spicy food, as most Koreans seem to believe is the only reason foreigners could possibly not like "the most delicious and healthy food in Korea." (See essay at the end of this entry.) I love spicy Mexican and Thai food, just to name my two favorite cuisines. Kimchi is slimy and sour, in addition to being spicy. I've been told that if I keep eating it, I'll eventually grow to like it and even become addicted. To which I reply, why would I want to force myself to become addicted to something?

Many people (including Matthew) do like kimchi, however, and might be interested in making the stinky (seriously, when Matthew opens a jar at home, I start inspecting the boys' diapers to see who made Mommy a present), slimy stuff. A new Korean teacher at Matthew's school wrote out the recipe for him. This is a bit amazing, since most Koreans I've asked don't know how to make kimchi themselves. Their mothers or mothers-in-law do all the kimchi-making. I wonder if it's becoming a lost art among the younger generation of Koreans.

I will do my best to type it below, in case you have difficulties reading the photograph above. Some parts do not entirely make sense to me. Some quantities/amounts she added in to the original directions. I don't really think 2 c of red pepper powder means 2 cups, maybe 2 ccs. Also, she doesn't say anything about letting it ferment. Maybe you can figure it out. Think of it as a culinary adventure.


Kimchi Recipe (by Jane)

1. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

2. Spread salt on the cabbage. And let it be 4-5 hours. (The salt should be bigger one like this [sample salt is taped to page] One handful of salt per 3 quarters of cabbage)

And Now Let's make Sauce
([for] 3 cabbage) Get ready --> Red pepper powder (2 c), well minced garlic (7-8), well minced green onion (3), salted fish juice (2 table spoon per one quarter of cabbage), sugar (2 tablespoon), salted shrimp (2T), 1 fresh oyster, 1 onion, 1 pear or apple.

3. Put onion and pear in the blender.

4. Put everything in a bowl and mix well.

5. Pour half cup of water in a pan, and put 2 tablespoon of wheat flour. Boil it with low temperature. Keep stir it. When it looks like glue. Then stay it to get cold. And then mix with the sauce.

Sauce Ready!

6. Wash off the cabbage and let it water drip.

[illustration of cabbage on a wicker tray]
(It'll take 3 hours to dry.)

7. Finally spread the sauce on the cabbage. Yummy~

[And then an illustration at the bottom. It's apparently Matthew as Dr. House from "House MD," yielding a scalpel and proclaiming, "I'm a surgern." Hmmm...maybe an allusion to his ambition to become an MD? Or maybe she thinks his personality is like House?]



Finally, as promised, a middle school student's essay that I corrected this week. The prompt was, "Does Kimchi have medicinal properties beyond fresh fruits and vegetables at increasing the body's resistance to swine flu, the HIV virus, and other diseases?" I'm typing out the student's original response, without corrections. (Although there are some errors and the student doesn't actually answer the question, you have to admit this student's mastery of a foreign language is pretty darn good for middle school, an age when many American students haven't even begun learning a second language.)

Kimchi has been the most delicious and healthy food in Korea. Many Americans hate to eat it because it's too spicy. However, they will start to it at once if they know how good Kimchi is.

First of all, Kimchi is a anti-cancer food. Many healthy ingredients are included in Kimchi such as cabbage which prevents intenstine cancer and garlic which prevents stomach cancer. those who don't want to get cancer really should eat Kimchi.

In addition to that, Kimchi is a vitamin-containing food. Besides, when Kimchi is passing through the fermenting stage, containment of vitamin increases up to over two times than initial containment of vitamin.

What is more, Kimchi is a low calory food. It contains a lot of eatable fiber. Thus, it prevents and treat all kind of adult diseases like diabetes, heart diseases and fat, etc.

Now you see how healthy you would be to eat Kimchi. I'm proud of my ancestor who invented a laudable food -- Kimchi. I highly recommend people to eat Kimchi, and hope they like it.

gettin' domestic

If you know me very well, you know that I'm a very sarcastic person. The name of this blog is pretty tongue-in-cheek. Not that I'm not a happily married, happy mother, but I don't know that I live in a state of bliss (especially if ignorance must accompany it). And I'm not really all that domestic. I like to knit, cook and bake, and there ends my domestic skill. My mother and husband will both tell you that I'm horrible at cleaning. I don't "use enough elbow grease," according to them. Whatever. Martha does not scrub her own pans.

With that disclaimer, I've been wanting to add a touch of domesticity to this blog. My friends here keep asking me for recipes, since Matthew and I definitely prepare food more than the average waygook. My loyal readers outside Korea (Hi, Sumi, Sara & Sue ; ) will hopefully be entertained by the lengths to which I must go just to recreate some of my favorite foods.

This is my stove. There are three gas burners on top, and a small gas oven on the bottom.


By small, I mean that the opening measures 12x6". Due to all the weird shelves, the largest baking dish that fits measures 6x8" at the bottom. It's a Pyrex dish that's wider at the top. I can make recipes that are supposed to fit in a 8 or 9" square pan. However, if I fill the pan too full and the contents rise to the rim, some of it will inevitably stick to the top element.



These are the controls. (Oven control is on the bottom right.) No temperature, just handy little pictures (featuring fish & bread) that vaguely indicate which elements are in operation. We've gone through a lot of trial and error to figure out which settings work for different recipes. The first time I made pineapple upside-down cake, it took forever to bake because I had the oven on too low. The second time, it was Cajun-style. (Sorry, no photo documentation on that.)


I should mention that I'm "lucky" because most Koreans (and foreign teachers in Korea) do not have ovens of any kind. Some of our friends here have toaster ovens. Others of the more permanently-settled type (i.e. married to a Korean) have normal-sized ovens. Traditional Korean cooking does not include baking and most Koreans prefer to buy baked goods from the store.

Here is baking lesson #1: meatballs

I don't actually use a recipe, but here's basically what I put in the batch I made today:
3 slices of bread
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
half of a medium-sized white onion, chopped
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons dried basil }
2 teaspoons dried oregano } All herb amounts are guestimations;
2 teaspoons dried thyme } I just dumped them in.
salt and pepper to taste
400 grams ground beef
400 grams ground pork

Soak the bread in the milk until it's soggy, then squish all the excess milk out and crumble the bread into a mixing bowl. (This is a great alternative since I don't have a blender and haven't found prepared bread crumbs here.) Add the eggs and all the seasoning. Mix well with a fork. Dump in the meat and mix it all together with your hands. Yummy ; )


Shape the mixture into balls about 1 1/2 inches wide and place on some type of broiler or grill sheet.


Bake with the upper element partially on and the bottom element fully on. (This would be known as broiling in a normal oven.) Keep a close eye on them, because burnt meatballs suck and stink up your whole apartment. You'll need to cook them 5-10 minutes on the first side and 2-5 on the second side. Maybe. If the back of your oven is hotter, like mine is, you'll probably need to rotate the pan one during the first side's baking time.


When the meatballs are done (NOT pink in the middle), move them to a paper-towel-lined plate to cool. Once they're cool, you can store them in the fridge or freezer until you are ready to add them to spaghetti, sweet-n-sour sauce, etc. The batch I made today yielded about 5 dozen meatballs.


Follow that with cooking lesson #1: creamy carrot soup


Ingredients:
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup butter
4 1/2 cups sliced carrots (1/4 inch thick)
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
2 cans (14.5 oz each) chicken broth*
1 tsp ground ginger**
2 cups heavy cream (make sure you get the unsweetened kind!)
1 tsp crushed dried rosemary***
salt & pepper to taste

In a large pot, saute onion in butter until tender. Add carrots, potato, broth, and ginger. Cover and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes or until vegetable are tender. Cool for 15 minutes.
Puree in small batches in a blender or food processor (thank you, Kelsey, for letting me borrow yours) until smooth. Return to the pot, add cream, rosemary, salt & pepper. Cook over low heat until heated through.
Makes 6-8 servings.

*Broth: You can also use vegetable broth. We make our own. To make vegetable broth, chop up some vegetables (onions, carrots, leeks, zucchini, garlic, etc. -- whatever you want to use) and add some herbs (fresh or dried) and a lot of water. Bring to a boil and then leave it to simmer for several hours. Strain everything chunky out and (voila!) you have vegetable broth. Chicken broth is basically the same, but with chicken. Matthew has discovered that he can get a chicken carcass at the local grocery store for W500 (usually about 50 cents, but currently closer to 35 cents with the horrible exchange rate) if he just asks for it.
**Ginger: We brought dried ginger with us, because we packed the entire contents of our spice shelf. Fresh ginger is actually easier to find here and would probably work great. You would probably want to use more than the recipe calls for, since dried herbs are more intense. Grate it as finely as you can.
***Rosemary: I used fresh rosemary when I made this recipe here. Rosemary plants are very easy to find in Korea, although it's not commonly used for cooking. Koreans just like the aroma. I probably used between 2 tsp and 1 tbsp of fresh, chopped rosemary. (I broke off 2 or 3 sprigs, rinsed it, pulled off the leaves and chopped those up.)