Sunday 26 April 2009

Picture of Kimchi

After my very first post, my husband pointed out that I should have some photographs of Kimchi on this site. I was, of course, fully aware of that myself. The trouble was that I had no pictures of Kimchi nor any Kimchi at home to take a photo of. Luckily I had a chance to have a meal at one of my Korean friends' house the other night. I took my camera with me and took some shots. As I had not told her my ulterior motive, they seemed to look rather too natural without any cosmetic dressing and with poor lighting. But probably the main reason why it did not look great is down to my basic phtographic skills. Anyway, this is KIMCHI (김치), to be precise the CABBAGE KIMCHI (배추김치) and this will do until I could get some decent ones.


Wednesday 22 April 2009

Why Kimchi?

Like my fellow Koreans, I love Kimchi so much. There is a variety of Kimch dishes to begin with and it is also so versatile that you could use it in many Korean dishes. Unfortunately outside Korea, not many people seem to know about Kimchi at all. For those who has never tried it, Kimchi is a kind of raw vegetable dish made of mainly Chinese cabbage or radish with the seasoning of salt, chilli pepper powder, garlic, ginger, onion, spring onion and so forth. It is normally eaten after a couple of days when it starts developing unique flavour by fermentation. It is scientifically proven that it has a great deal of health benefits. It makes me feel very proud of my ancestors who came up with the recipe. How clever!

I came to the UK to study in the spring of 2002. Sadly I had to say goodbye to my beloved Kimchi because firstly, I didn't know how to make it myself. Secondly, I was just lazy and poor as I am now, so I wouldn't go and buy the relatively pricey ready-made stuff at the Korean grocery shops (not easy to find them unless you live in the central London or New Malden, Surrey). It was OK since although I loved my Kimchi very much, I was known for having a versatile palate to cope with any kinds of food (maybe greedy in other words?). No one I knew really worried about me in that matter actually. They knew I would survive as long as there was any type of form of food available. Yes, that's ME!

Apart from the occasional encounters, my life was continued without Kimchi and I was more or less happy. Then I met Rob my husband back in 2006 and fell in love and all that sort. He is originally from Edinburgh and had never met any Koreans before me. Naturally he was very curious about anything Korean including food and I dutifully tried to let him sample as much Korean food as I could (not necessarily of my cooking though). To my surprise, he instantly liked Kimchi and became a huge fan. I was lucky because he was very open about different types of food and also liked spicy foods in general.

Anyway, when I was considering the name of this blog, I was thinking about food which will also reflect my identity. I was quite tempted to call myself - the lazy cook but I am hardly a cook and besides there was somebody else using this name. Hmm... How about Kimchi? Kimchi = Korean? OK, that will do.

The thing is that I love food but I am not really a good cook nor experienced in food industry as other people might have. Therefore, I know perfectly well that I am not qualified, in any sense, to run a proper food blog if you know what I mean. I am just very envious about people who can express themselves in their blogs. There are things I like to learn more about but I always have a list of endless excuses and I never seem to achieve anything. This is my humble beginning just to motivate myself to learn a thing or two about food and some other stuff as well. Yes, I would give it a go. I cannot pretend that I am an expert or a connoisseur in anything. So, this is from someone simply interested in food. Nothing more or nothing less. I hope this would take me somewhere, ideally somewhere nice. One can dream, can't one? But hope I'm not fooling myself here.