See, I told you it would happen. I pickled and spiced napa cabbages using two different recipes back in June/July to create the famous Korean condiment-of-a-thousand-faces known as kimchi.
The first attempt ... Well, let's just say I have been to wary to eat it since the day I made it. One, it involved some apple sauce, for a sweet tang to go with the spiciness; this seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm kind of leary of the results nearly two months later. And two, on the first night of pickling, I was cruelly reminded of the necessity of a loosely-lidded jar to allow gasses to gently escape. Curiosity about my first ever attempt at kimchi led me to open the jar I'd been storing in my roommate's pantry cabinet (Shh! Don't tell him!) A few twists of the the lid, then WHOOSH!--and a stream of sweet/spicy/sour cabbage water sprayed across the counter and me. Oh well. So I cleaned myself up, placed the jar in a plastic bag on the floor of our recycling annex (yes, we have a recycling annex--right next to our dumbwaiter, as a matter of fact), and waited a few more days until it was good and funky before refrigerating. And ... I haven't tried it since--and I have a rather wide and unusual palate.* I have suggested two reasons why--the taste and eruption--but it's probably the third reason that's most accurate: the other recipe is just far better.
You see, I brewed up an truly spicy version for the guests at my uncle's annual Fourth of July picnic, since I knew there would both be an abundance of hot dogs and perhaps a few adventurous eaters who might appreciate a fiery Korean condiment. Actually, if no one else but myself had eaten any kimchi, I still would have been pleased. But apparently, people were really into it (not as much as my home-made limoncello or grilled clams, but I digress.) Months later, Mandy and I still use this kimchi to spike our tacos, sandwiches, and take-out Chinese food. It's good'n'pickled and incredibly hot, but I'd like to do it again--with the authentic Korean chili powder. You see, I live near New York City, so when a recipe suggests you go to an Asian grocery store, I can pretty much go any grocery store and find an plethora of ethnic food aisles. But this time, I really wanted to get it right (and I was glad for an excuse to go on a food adventure in Chinatown), so I went to Hong Kong Supermarket. Surely, a place with live frogs, preserved duck eggs, strange freeze-dried fish, and hundreds of Japanese snacks would have Korean chili powder, right? Apparently not. I searched high and low, found two separate aisles of spices and sauces (of the East Asian
and South-East Asian variety), picked up a bottle of srihacha for Maggie since Baltimore is a rooster-less desert, and left with a small bottle of additive-free red chili powder. Not the right kind, surely, but I used the whole damn thing and don't regret it.
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| Uh-oh! Looks like it's time to make more ... |
*Just last week, I bought for myself as little snack I saw while shopping at the grocery store: a can of smoked oysters--not your typical impulse-buy treat. (They were delicious, by the way.)
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