This is a recipe for Korean cabbage kimchi. It's spicy, sour, funky, and excellent.

ingredients

• 3 heads napa cabbage
• 1 1/2 onion, sliced very thin
• 3 inch piece of daikon, julienned
• 6 green onions, sliced small
• 9 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 Tbsp minced ginger
• 1 1/2 c Korean chili powder (고추가루, gochugaru)
• 6 Tbsp fish sauce
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• 1 c water
• 2 Tbsp flour
• lots of salt for pickling
• Large bucket or other container with a good lid

instructions

Peel away the outer leaves of the cabbage, then cut into quarters lengthwise. Cut each quarter into 4 or 5 pieces widthwise. Soak the chopped cabbage in a 10% salt water solution (enough to cover the cabbage completely) for 2-6 hours. That means weigh your salt. For every 1 liter of water, add 100 grams of salt. The cabbage should be soft and bendy at this point, and should be at about 3% salt concentration.

You can tell the salt concentration in the cabbage (more or less) by making a known percentage saline solution, tasting it, then tasting a (rinsed) piece of cabbage.

Rinse the cabbage very well in fresh water and squeeze dry. It should now take up much less room in the container.

In a saucepan, combine the water and flour and cook, stirring constantly, until you have a thick goo. Let it cool to lukewarm, then stir in all the rest of the ingredients. Now take this red paste and mix it thoroughly with the cabbage in the container. Be sure it's really mixed in well, so that all of the cabbage is coated.

Now cover the container tightly with a lid and leave it somewhere cool-ish room temperature to ferment. It could take anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks, depending on the temperature and the amount of salt the cabbage has absorbed. Check on it every 3-4 days. When it's ready, it should be distinctly sour and have a pungent odor. It doesn't seem to go bad (ie get moldy) easily, so don't worry about leaving it for another day or two if you're not sure. After that, keep it in the fridge. It should stay preserved for quite a while, getting slightly more sour as time goes on.