Mak Kimchi

I can't believe it either, but I made kimchi!  Well not just "I," because Alyssa and George were the team leaders and we were instructed via video by the adorable Maangchi.  You can watch her too at http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/easy-kimchi.  This recipe is worth the couple hours, and the perfect project to have friends come help with, not to mention it's a great way to use up some produce from around the house (or farm, in our case).

Maangchi's recipe calls for the following (but we made some changes, according to what we had from the farm.)
10 pounds Nappa Cabbage (we used a mix of cabbage, bok choi, baby bok choi, and tatsoi)
1 Cup Salt
1/4 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Sweet Rice Flour
3 Cups Water
1 Cup Garlic
1 Cup Onion
1-2 Tablespoons Ginger
1 Cup Fish Sauce (about half for us)
Squid (which we ommitted)
2 Cups Leek (scallions instead)
10 Green Onions
1/4 Cup Carrot (or more, if you like it like we do)
2 Cups Radish (we had big, beautiful turnips)

So, here goes:

Cabbage
-Chop the cabbage into bite-size pieces, soak in cold water in a huge bowl, and sprinkle with salt.  Every half hour our so you need to toss the cabbage and add salt; the whole cup of salt should be used on the 10 pounds of cabbage which will pull most of the moisture out of the greens.
-After and hour and a half of this, rise the cabbage well to remove all the salt, and let drain.

Keep soaking; Keep salting!

Porridge

-Bring the 3 C water and sweet rice flour to a boil, stirring frequently.

-Add the 1/4 C sugar and continue cooking until translucent.

-Let cool

Kimchi Paste

-One at a time, add the 1C fish sauce (or less!), 2 1/2 C hot pepper flakes (we use about 2 C), 1 C crushed garlic, 1-2 T minced ginger, and 1 C minced onion to the porridge.

-Now add in the green onions, leeks, raddish and carrots (cut them how you like, thin slices or julienned) and mix it all together.

"Action! Mix the cabbage with the kimchi paste!" as Maangchi says.
-That's right, just mix it all together.  (If you're doing this by hand, please wear gloves!)
-Now store it in tupperware, or glass jars and wait for it to ferment... or start eating it as soon as your little heart desires.  It will ferment slower in the fridge, so you won't get that sour flavor so fast.

Our kimchi project yielded a total of 1.625 gallons from 8 pounds of cabbage, and now we can use our creation in fried rice, as a stew, served as a side dish, or the perfect condiment.