Photo: Nina Lincoff
I have been paid in pickles. Fermented, stinky pickles. In high school, I was given a container of homemade kimchi as payment for giving a music lesson. Normally, that would seem like a phenomenally awful trade-off. Old cabbage instead of cash? But kimchi is not your ordinary fermented veggie, and I happily took the stinky container.
To non-Koreans, kimchi can be terrifying. The fermented vegetable-pickle hybrid is not the most approachable of foods. For one, paechu kimchi, the most common form of kimchi, consists of some kind of vegetable that has been fermenting away in a violently red, fishy-spicy-sour-sweet brine. And it hasn’t been there for just minutes, hours, or even days. Think weeks. Like the better-known sauerkraut—Germany’s kimchi-equivalent—fermented and pickled vegetables get better the longer they sit. Flavors deepen and grow more complex, heat is increased, and that indescribable, earthy depth only the most savory of foods have, strengthens over time. The stench also gets a bit worse. That separate fridge sometimes found in Korean households? It’s for kimchi. Why is it in the garage? Because kimchi, as delicious as it is, is rank.
That’s what happens when you let chopped Napa cabbage soak up in a paste of brine shrimp, fish sauce, garlic, ginger, and smoky chili powder. Although the stench can be off-putting, I suggest plugging your nose, grabbing a pair of chopsticks, and trying the first bit of kimchi you can get. There’s a reason it’s the most recognized banchan (side dish) in Korean cuisine. Kimchi has been around for over 2,500 years, so it’s safe to say that the recipe has been well-tested. Kimchi has the depth of flavor that can only be achieved with the time its spent fermenting away.
Since this may be your first kimchi experience, we’ll start off slow with cucumber kimchi: similar flavor, less fermentation, and a little less scary.
With the arrival of a new year, a new quarter, a new start, it’s the perfect opportunity to start pickling. But since it’s 2012, and there is a high chance the world is going to implode, skip the traditional pickles, and get started with kimchi: the pickle with an edge.
Cucumber Kimchi
Adapted from David Chang’s Lucky Peach
2 pounds small Kirby cucumbers
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 tablespoon salt
5 cloves of garlic
1 ½ inch of fresh ginger, peeled
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon brine shrimp
½ cup Korean chili powder
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water that have been boiled and reduced to a syrup)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ cup water
1. Wash and dry the cucumbers and cut into half-inch long pieces. Cut in half if the cucumber is wider than an inch. Toss the cucumber pieces with the white sugar and salt. Refrigerate the cucumber overnight to draw out excess water.
2. The next day, strain the water from the cucumbers and set aside. Place the remaining ingredients in a food processor and puree until smooth. Toss the strained cucumbers with the brine and jar the kimchi. Eat immediately! Keep leftover kimchi refrigerated.
