Kimchi-Style Cabbage with No Fish
I do not claim this is kimchi. I have never been taught by anyone who grew up making it, I leave out the fish sauce and the salted shrimp because of a vegetarian in the house, and I use whatever chili flakes I can get. But it follows the method as I understand it, and the result is close enough to the real thing that I keep making it. This was the October batch, 2.3 kg of napa cabbage in two heads.
Brining first. I quartered the heads lengthwise, dissolved 200 g of salt in 2 liters of water, and soaked the quarters for two hours, turning them every half hour so the thick white ribs got their share. After two hours the ribs bent without snapping. Rinsed three times in cold water and left to drain in a colander for an hour. The cabbage lost about a third of its weight.
The paste: 3 tablespoons of rice flour cooked with 300 ml of water into a thin porridge and cooled. Into that, 60 g of coarse chili flakes, 6 cloves of garlic and a thumb of ginger grated, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce as the salty umami stand-in for fish sauce, a tablespoon of sugar, and a grated pear. Plus a bunch of spring onions cut into finger lengths and a small daikon in matchsticks. Mixed to a thick red slurry.
I rubbed the paste between every leaf of every quarter, wearing gloves after the first batch taught me what chili does to a hangnail, then folded each quarter over itself and packed them into a 3-liter jar, pressing hard. I poured in about 100 ml of the rinsed-off brine to cover, left a good 5 cm of headspace, and sat the jar on a plate.
Five days at 19 °C. It bubbled from day two, the paste turned from bright red to a deeper, more orange tone, and the smell shifted from raw garlic to sour and complex. On day five it tasted right to me: sour but still fresh, with the cabbage crisp and the daikon just softened. Into the fridge, where it keeps changing. By week three it is strong enough that I only use it in cooking. Changes for next time: a little less sugar, a little more ginger, and a bigger jar. It overflowed onto the plate on day three, which is why the plate is there.