Ingredients:
-6 small or 4 large Napa cabbages, salted overnight with coarse rock salt (make a salt and water solution, immerse cabbage heads, remove, rub salt on leaves of each head, leave in fridge overnight, next morning take out, rinse and let sit to drain and dry)
-2 daikon radishes: peel, then grate one of them into long thin strips using a carrot peeler (save the liquid). The other dice into 1-inch chunks
-1/3 c garlic, pounded with a mortar and pestle
-1 bunch chives (long, wide asian ones)
-2 bunches green onions
-rice flour
-korean dried chili flakes (mama Kim wants Suz to keep hers in the freezer so it stays fresh)
-8 oz frozen or fresh oysters (with their juices)
-1/2 c fermented anchovy juice (other asian fish sauce will do)
-1/3 c salted baby shrimp (mrs. Kim sent Susan ours in a maxwell house coffee jar)
Directions:
-add rice flour to 3 cups water until you have a loose batter; add the radish liquid, fish sauce, and dehydrated shrimp.
-add the chili flakes to the batter until it becomes a thick paste
-add the shredded daikon, garlic, chives (cut into 2" long pieces) & scallions (cut into 1" long pieces), and half the oysters with all their juice
-don your rubber gloves, and rub each head of cabbage with the paste--cover the front and back of each leaf and then use your hand to close each head tightly, then submerge it leaf side down into the jar. -Stuff each jar with as many cabbage heads as will fit, maybe mixing in a few covered daikon pieces to fill the empty spots.
-Continue until all of your cabbage is in jars, but make sure you leave a few leaves out of the jars
-leave outside for a day or two, on a tray that you don't mind getting dirty if a jar leaks or explodes. Then transfer to your fridge and taste, eat and enjoy over the coming weeks!
Prep Notes:
Don't forget the house special: tasting the raw kimchee treat! Wrap a leaf covered in chili paste around an oyster and plop it into your mouth. I couldn't believe how good this was, the oyster unbelievably creamy (granted we shucked our own fresh hog island oysters) against the hot, crunchy kimchee leaf. Not something you get to taste every day.
The whole process was a feast for the senses--even the sliced green onions waiting to be rolled into the dough for scallion pancakes filled the air with their nutty, woody scent. Mrs. Kim's anchovy sauce, meanwhile, smelled of cat food.
The first saucey cabbage looked like a bloody dying bird lying at the bottom of the big jar. The room started to smell like cabbage as we went through the process of opening up each head to stuff it with red paste from every angle. If you're wondering about the sound of kimchee, it's a gurgle--oozing and bubbling of wet leaves being stuffed into glass jars.
Sasha said a kimchee prayer ("thank you, cabbage, for letting us stuff oysters and chili into you"). We also decided that kimchee is perfect for koreans: as Sasha and Andrew said, it's patient and improves over time. Or as Sus put it, they're both messy, fiery and stinky.
Now all I have to do is wait a few weeks for my kimchee to get funky, then get myself in a room with someone who can teach me how to make a pork belly and soft tofu kimchee stew!
