I'm not much of a sweets person. I'll take a strong goat cheese over chocolate any day of the week. My love affair with the pungent and skanky probably started with sourdough bread, but it really took off when I started making kimchee. Kimchee is sour, salty, and garlicky, and it has a lovely juiciness when you bite into it.

Autumn is the natural time for fermented and preserved foods. Foods were originally fermented of course as a way to preserve surplus that would otherwise rot after harvest time. Turns out too that if you pickle things they retain their vitamin C, which tends to be harder to find in the winter months. In Chinese medicine, the flavor associated with fall is sour. The action of the sour flavor is cooling, contracting, and absorbing, gathering up our energy and contracting it, the same way trees do in the fall.

Kimchee is a raw, wild-fermented food, the wholest of the whole. You don't use a starter culture or any other direct control over the microorganisms. The important thing then is cleanliness and indirect control. I have never had a batch of kimchee fail, but I've seen others turn nasty. With fermented foods it's always a bit of a challenge - how do you tell the difference between good-sour and bad-sour? Kimchee's sour flavor is fresh, light, and tingly, with a slight ammonia smell. The bad kimchee I've had tastes heavy and slightly sick.

In addition to accenting soups and noodles, I've eaten kimchee on rye crackers with sharp cheese, and used the strong liquid as a component in a vegetarian fish sauce replacement.

Cabbage Kimchee

From Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, p 379

1 pound Chinese cabbage (about 1/2 a large head)
1 pound white radish (daikon)
3 Tablespoons salt
2 Tablespoons finely minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic
5 scallions, cut into fine rounds, including green
1 Tablespoon cayenne or hot Korean red pepper
1 teaspoon sugar

If you are using a small whole cabbage, cut it in half lengthwise, and then cut it across at 2-inch intervals. If you are using half of a large cabbage, cut it in half again lengthwise, and then crosswise at 2-inch intervals.

Peel the white radish (I don't - LL), cut it in half lengthwise, and then cut it crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices. In a large bowl put 5 cups water and 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of the salt. Mix. Add the cabbage and radish to this water and dunk them in a few times, as they have a tendency to float. Leave the vegetables in the salty water. Cover loosely and set aside for 12 hours. Turn the vegetables over a few times.

Put the ginger, garlic, scallions, cayenne, sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt in another large bowl. Mix well.
Take the cabbage out of its soaking liquid with a slotted spoon (save the liquid) and put it in the bowl with the seasonings. Mix well.

Put this cabbage mixture into a 2-quart jar or crock. Pour enough of the salt water over it to cover the vegetables (about 2 cups). Leave 1 inch of empty space at the top of the jar. Cover loosely with a clean cloth and set aside for 3 to 7 days. In the summer, kimchees mature with much greater speed; in the winter, the process slows down unless the central heating is ferocious. Taste the pickle after 3 days to check on the sourness. When it is done to your liking, cover the jar and refrigerate.

To serve, remove just as much of the kimchee solids as you think you will need for a meal – a cupful is enough for 4 people – and put it in the center of a bowl. The kimchee liquid in this pickle is left behind in the jar and may be used to flavor stews and soups. Serve this cabbage kimchee with any Korean meal.

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