June's Adapted Kim Chi

Here's a tried many times recipe adapted from various others (aren't all recipes?) and tested with thumbs up and vicious demands that I cough up the secret... ok maybe I'm being abit of a drama queen when I say vicious...

Although I want my kimchi to be as authentic as the ones made by a korean, in korea, it's just not possible when you are not living there and most of the stuff are now made in you-know-where. Here's as good as how I can make it here in Singapore...

Ingredients:

2 Chinese Cabbage
1 pkt Korean Chilli Flakes
1/2 white radish (go figure what you wanna do with the other half. Or you can save it for my next dish)
1 cup garlic
1 green onion
1 bunch spring onions
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 cup water
1/2 cup fish sauce
salt lotsa salt
1 bottle secret ingredient... if I tell you, it won't be a secret anymore...

Prep time: maybe an episode of Juumong

Do I really have to?... arrggghhh ok... you need a bottle of chin chalok. You know what that is? It's that foul smelling pinkish sauce with lotsa tiny tiny white prawns in it. Get those that are not already in chilli sauce.

Directions:

1. Wash all your veg off-course, just in case some forgets.
2. Remove the hard core of the chinese cabbage. As much as possible, keep the layers intact.
3. 'Baptise' each layer of the cabbage with generous sprinkling of salt and set aside for the salt to infuse
4. Cut up the white radish into thin strips. Do the same with spring onions, except with spring onions it's basically just cross-sectioning it to shorter length.
5.Blend garlic and onion until mushy. Add some fish sauce as lubricant if the blender refuse to do as it should
6. In a small pot, cook rice flour, water and sugar until it forms a light paste. Stir it constantly to ensure eveness of paste and to prevent the base from burning.
7. In a big pot or basin, mix the flour paste thoroughly with chilli flakes, garlic and onion mush, spring onion, white radish and fish sauce. Adjust the amount of chilli flakes according to the 'fiery' prefered.
8. Do a taste test and season the mixture with additional sugar or salt where required.
9. When absolutely happy, wash out the chinese cabbage and drain it of excess water.
10. Coat each layer of cabbage with the chilli mixture and stuff the cabbage in a container and in the fridge it goes.
11. Pat yourself on the back... after you wash your hands... because you have yourself yummy homemade kim chi...

Getting started...

So the title of my blog says busy work wife... and here I am wondering where do I find time to blog in between the working, the cleaning, the cooking, the being a good wife, the lack of sleep and of course not forgetting the shopping, the korean drama watching and the travelling.

Does it sound even familiar? I believe I'm not the only person on the planet feeling that seriously, 24hrs in a day is not enough. What more, I always have the nagging feeling that I'm being sold short on weekends. Very tempted to sit through the saturdays and sundays just staring at the clock to make sure that time is moving at the same pace and to confirm that indeed it is the same 24hrs and not a second less.

What then inspire me to start this grafitti; speaking about grafitti I have to start thinking of how to beautify my blog page in the midst of my ironing. As if writing papers at work is not enough. I was having a conversation with my hubby one evening, after dinner, in front of the tv with the history channel playing, and I'm reading some recipes on cup cakes, yes multi-tasking is second nature, it went some thing like this...

me: if I write a book on recipes on how to prepare a meal in speed of light time, do you think it will sell (ok maybe not speed of light)...
hubby: there are thousands of books on such recipes out there. Will you buy your own book?
me: of course not. Because I'm writing it.

Uh... to cut short the conversation, because if you ever sit through one of ours, you will know how we multi-task in our conversation too, hubby kind of suggested that I start writing a blog on how I survive my busy life yet making it a breeze to prepare a quick delicious meal for him in usually less than 30mins instead. If I manage long enough, then I can think about the cookbook. Ok I'm keeping the part out about him doing most of the mopping and vacuuming... because this is my blog... go start yours and you can say what you want.

Anyway... to start off the week (minusing monday's hari raya holiday), check out my recipe page for tried and tested recipes prepared in the shortest time possible.