Kimchi Adventures: A First Attempt at Lacto-Fermentation

I've been vaguely interested in lacto-fermentation for a while now. But then again, I have at least a vague interest in almost all aspects of food preparation besides butchering, and cooking live sea creatures. But it always seemed maybe a little bit scary, almost an occult process, undertaken only by folks who know what they're doing. Even reading instructions for fermenting in cookbooks didn't help much.

However, it started seeming a lot less scary once I saw it done. At the Common Ground Country Fair, one of the demos I went to was by chef David Levi, on lacto-fermentation (I actually went to two of his demos, the other being on cooking with wild/foraged foods, which was SO cool, and included the most delicious tasting of what he'd made at the end). And it looked so easy. Like, SO easy. He even soothed my fears about sterilization, saying that dangerous bacteria in unlikely to grow, and simply not to eat it if it tastes/smells gross or off to you. Okay, I thought. I can do this.

So I did! The day after I arrived home, I decided to make something resembling kimchi. I chopped up some nice organic green cabbage (nappa cabbage isn't out at my local farmers market quite yet) and radishes, finely chopped some hot pepper and garlic, then grated in a bunch of ginger. I massaged everything but the hot peppers (which I did NOT want all over my hands) with sea salt until the cabbage was tender and there was liquid at the bottom of the bowl, then packed it into a small (since I'd made a small batch only, this being my first try and all) mason jar, put a cabbage leaf on top, a weight (a different sized mason jar filled with water) on top of that, then put it all in a glass container to catch any overflow (and there's already quite a bit of that!).

And now, all that's left to do is wait. It just does everything else itself. Which all just seems pretty magical... Just leave food sitting in it's own juice, plus some salt, on the counter, and it will transform itself into a tasty healthy condiment/salad/pickle-like-thing. I mean that's just awesome. And exciting.

I washed my hands beforehand, and all the containers and utensils used had been washed in soapy water since their last use, but nothing was boiled or anything. Since reading some other sources with far more of an attitude of IF YOU DON'T STERILIZE EVERYTHING YOU MIGHT DIE I'm a little more worried, but trying not to be. If it looks/smells/tastes really gross, I obviously won't eat it. But otherwise... I have a feeling I'm really going to enjoy this stuff.

Kimchi day 2.