Kimchi recipe

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Rain and rain and rain.  Now my inability to get the garden planted last week doesn't look too bad.  The potatoes are doing fine - erupting up from their subterranean spud reserves - but the cold wet ground can't be a thrill for the other seeds.  Even the violets look a little chastened.  


But meanwhile, here is next month's kimchi about to be packed into the crock . . . .

The recipe for this simplest kimchi:  Chop up a couple of cabbages (in this case red and green for color).  Chop up some carrots as well.  At every layer, knead in some generous shakes of salt and red pepper.  (If, like me, the only hot pepper you have is the stuff for shaking onto pizza, well that seems to work.)  Try to crush and manhandle the cabbage a bit as you knead in the salt.  Then pack it all tightly into a crock, cover it with a plate and weigh the plate down with something heavy.  Set it in the basement for a month or so.  After a few days a brine should form.  Check on it once in a while and skim off any scum that might form.  

I'll let you know how it turns out.

UPDATE: The recipe above left out a crucial ingredient - which is plenty of GARLIC!  Otherwise the kimchi has been a great success.  In later batches I didn't bother with the red cabbage, because I like the crunch of the traditional green cabbage better.

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