Chilling with Kimchi and Rany
COOKING COURSE: GETTING PLASTERED OVER A TRADITIONAL KOREAN VEGETABLE DISH
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week she’s in a ferment. cook. Who would even have does involve loads of garlic. thought it likely here in a palatial Among a bevy of airbrushed new suburb with a view of the women is a man called Saul who Mall of Africa? also thought he was making kimchi
Rany Jo has the Umami Kitchen till now. I read the recipes and and she WhatsApped the class feel as agitated as I’m sure he does. a lengthy list of instructions yesterday, My recipe came from a friend one of which was to wear who lived in Seoul. On the workshop black head to toe because of working notes are four different kimchis with dark red chilli powder. we will prepare. None of them The woman on my left, a real chef bears much relationship to mine. on this course, is even wearing “It has to be cut evenly – and I a black hat. Another instruction mean it!” Her eyes flash at me as was to “have romantic time with I cut everyone’s onions. “Do not your significant other before coming shred your finger!” she directs a to class.” carrot grater. I feel faint and lean
Kimchi is a healthy, fermented against a pillar. “Just blood sugar,” probiotic and madly tasty but it I mumble as Rany frowns.
There is that moment when I know I know nothing. It’s now. It’s exciting and dizzying and scary all at once. I’ve been an infrequent hand at kimchi-making for over a decade, keen to hone my skills live, with Rany Jo, a real professional Korean
For the suk bak ji kimchi, daikon is required in major quantities. I shave the giant Asian radish neatly. A surprise soft section of the vegetable sinks my thumb into the blade. Rany wraps on plaster like a tourniquet.
Happily we’ve arrived at the part where we eat lacy kimchi pancakes, picking chopsticks out of a vase. Next is eggy fried rice with kimchi. Everyone’s joky and relaxed after constructing a final white cabbage kimchi.
I’m elated, triumphantly wounded in the course of kimchi education.
Through the window I watch two golden mongooses running in sunny unison across Rany’s smooth lawn. My kimchis will begin bubbling into deliciousness in a couple of weeks. What was I so worried about?