Recipe: Happy Bellyfish Kimchi

Happy Bellyfish Kimchi.

We made this kimchi through a class with Happy Bellyfish, an online cooking school based in Germany that specializes in fermentations. (More about them later when we review Zoom cooking classes as a trend/necessity.) It’s a good solid basic rendition and easy to prepare. One interesting twist: most kimchi recipes have a starch element to thicken the sauce and most use glutinous rice flour which will be hard to find in many places; happy bellyfish substitutes a grated raw potato. Makes about 1 liter kimchi.

Ingredients:
1 kg napa cabbage (one small head or half a large head)
2 T kosher salt
200 g daikon radish (buy a six inch long radish or use equivalent amount of a larger radish, peeled and cut into inch-long matchsticks)
100 g (1 large) carrot, peeled and cut into inch-long matchsticks
3-4 scallions
1 c hot water
1 medium raw potato, peeled (or 2 T potato starch or glutinous rice flour)
4 T or more gochugaru (Korean chili powder, do not substitute)
¼ c fish sauce
¼ medium raw onion, coarsely chopped
¼ ripe pear, cored and coarsely chopped (I peeled but don’t know that you need to)
6 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
One inch piece of ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
Salt to taste
1 T sweetener (honey, agave syrup or sugar)

Method: chop the cabbage into bite size pieces about 1 ½ inch square. Massage 2 T kosher salt into the leaves then cover with water and brine for at least 1 hour but no more than 5 hours. Drain the cabbage, wash it to remove salt, then pat mostly dry with a kitchen towel. Peel and cut the carrot and daikon, cut the scallions crosswise into 1 inch sections (including some of the green) and mix with cabbage in a large ceramic or glass crock or bowl.

Make the paste: grate the potato with the finest mesh on a box grater then mix with the hot water; let stand a few minutes to leach out the starch. Drain and transfer to a blender jar along with gochugaru, fish sauce, onion, pear, garlic, ginger and sweetener and blend briefly till smooth. Pour over the vegetables in the bowl and mix very thoroughly with your hands, pressing the paste into the vegetables so every surface is exposed to the cure. (It is a very good idea to use disposable gloves when doing this.) Taste and add salt if needed (probably only a little if any) and additional gochugaru if you want it hotter. Cover with a plate then a weight and press down as much as possible to extract liquid. Cover the bowl or crock and allow to cure 5 days on a countertop in a room around 68 degrees ambient temperature. Check daily and toss the mixture lightly; remove any mold that forms with a spoon or tongs or your fingers. (Our sauerkraut frequently develops a bit of harmless but annoying mold; the kimchi did not, probably because the chili powder inoculates the brine and keeps the mold from growing.)

After five days, taste the kimchi. The cabbage should be reduced in volume and there should be a good amount of rich red brine. It’s fine to eat at this point, but you should transfer most of it to a glass container (like an empty kimchi jar) and store in your refrigerator so it can continue to develop. Will keep for several months.

How to eat kimchi? Koreans eat it with almost any savory dish, and so can you. Use as a condiment like any pickle, or mix into kimchi fried rice.