Kim chi is getting on CNY reunion dinner table
MIRI: Kim chi, a Korean’s traditional pickle, seems to be gaining popularity here at least for this coming Chinese New Year festival.
Nicholas Sia, who is making lots of it this time around, believed that it could be due to a pattern of change in some people’s diet, or perhaps because of an increasing acceptance by the young people.
Many Chinese families find it cool to add a dish of kim chi to the table at the reunion dinner. As a matter of fact, the tangy taste of kim chi is an appetiser at meals and it is a refreshing morsel to be relished after having a lot of meaty and oily dishes.
“To me, the spicy, sour taste of kim chi could incidentally depict challenges of life,” said Sia, who is a commercial photographer by profession, He said did not know a thing about making kim chi even as recent as June last year.
“It all started with my wife having seen a Korean movie that was themed around kim chi and she said the movie had mysteriously stirred up a craving in her to want to try the pickle,” Sia told The Borneo Post. Then somewhat curious, he googled for information, and that was where his romance with the pickled stuff began.
He said ingredients for making kim chi are i n fact ordinary enough and easily available. They are stuff like white cabbage, onion, ginger, glutinous rice paste, garlic, radish, red carrot, celery, leek, fish sauce and shrimp paste, and chilli powder.
The challenge is to mix and ferment the concoction to the right taste.
Sia said there are some strict rules and idiosyncratic routines to observe in the making kim chi. First of all, the utensils for making it have to be absolutely clean and dry. And one step of the process would involve getting the cabbage leaves to be f lipped up and down, purportedly to drive out all the oxygen that might be trapped between the leaves of the vegetable.
“Mess up one step of your preparation and you can end up with a mouldy product,” warned Sia.
The fermenting process is another tricky thing. Too little chilli powder would make your kim chi very sour, although you have not put any sour ingredient. Too much chilli powder would turn your kim chi too spicy, but the plus side is that it is quite crispy. So, a balance has to be maintained to achieve the right taste and texture. Sia admitted he actually would never really know how his kim chi would turn out each time he made it.
Sia said kim chi can be consumed 36 hours after mixing, but it would be better to let it ferment longer.
“It’s a bit like making wine,” he said. “Leave the wine longer to mature, and it would taste batter. The same wit5h kim chi”
Sia said it had been some eight months already that he had been dabbling with kim chi making, and to his own surprise, he already gathered up a group of loyal customers.
He opined that each kim chi maker can produce each unique taste of the pickle of their own which might also pander to the each unique taste of a consumer. Thus, the question of rivalry in the trade needs not actually arise.