Slow Down With Slower Food

After a hectic holiday season, I suspect we all need to tap the brakes and slow down. When the blurred flurry of  meals, snacks, parties, and celebrations dies down, we can finally exhale. Take it easy and slow down.  Tuck away the cookie cutters, bundt pans, roasting racks, new fangled multi cookers, and angst. Embrace slower food. As languid as they might be, I'm not talking about the low and slow braises, hours long simmered stews, or crock pot cookery. Take it down one notch further and explore fermentation, the ultimate slow food. With little effort (a welcome respite) fermentation is
a lesson in slow motion magic. With fermentation, there are no deadlines to meet, temperatures to monitor, or stress to endure. It simply needs time. As an ages old means of food preservation, just about anything can be fermented. While deli style sour pickles and saurkraut might be the most familiar examples, Korean Kimchi, fermented chili-spiked funkified napa cabbage,  takes it to another level and lets the wheels fly off the cart. Better yet, it's fun to prepare, healthy (loaded with off the charts priobiotics), downright delicious, and utterly addictive.  It can be be eaten straight up out of the jar, served as a side dish,  or added to a myriad of other things. With time on your side, slow down and enjoy the ride.

Kimchi.
Packed with aged funk, tangy sour undertones, and peppery heat, kimchi is a sexy power hitter.

Funk it up.

Brine.
There are a couple of different ways to prep cabbage for  kimchi. It can be chopped into bite sized pieces or sliced into quarters before the initial salt bath. For a variation in texture, I combined both methods.

I halved one 3 1/2 pound crisp napa cabbage, chopped one half into 2" pieces, quartered the remaining half, and tumbled  the cabbage into a large bowl before tossing it with 1 large jullienned daikon radish and 4 jullienned carrots.   After dissolving 1 cup kosher salt in 2 cups water, I poured the brine over the vegetables, massaged the salt into the nooks and crannies (making sure to have everything come into contact with the solution), and set the cabbage aside to brine overnight.

When the cabbage wilted and could bend without snapping (about 9 hours), I thoroughly rinsed it under cold water to wash away any excess salt and set it aside.

Spice.
Umami bomb.
The spice paste is everything. It defines kimchi. Grab some rubber gloves.

After tossing 6 peeled and smashed garlic cloves into a food processor, I added a peeled 2" knob of chopped fresh ginger, 1 peeled and diced Red Valley Farm pear, 1/3 cup fish sauce, 2 tablespoons dried shrimp, and 2 tablespoons palm sugar. I buzzed the mix into a paste and mixed it with 1 cup Gochugara (Korean chili flakes). After tossing 2 bunches of  scallions (sliced into 3"batons) with the wilted cabbage, daikon, and carrots, I slathered everything with the fiery paste before stuffing the kimchi into a large 3 quart glass container. After loosely covering the container, I set the kimchi aside in a coolish dark place to do its thing for 3 days, monitoring the bubbling fermentation every day. On the third day, I transferred the kimchi into smaller glass jars, sealed the lids, and slid them into the refrigerator to slow down the fermentation.

While the kimchi is good to go after one day of refrigeration, it gets better and funkier with time.

Slow down.

All good things take time.