Kimchi Recipe

(Korean spicy fishy sour kraut -a magic marriage of my favorite strong flavours -Garlic, Ginger, Pepper, & Onion)

There are as many variations as there are Korean families. This is the closest recipe to "standard" as possible.
Ingredients (per cabbage):
1 Sui Choi /Nappa cabbage
2-4,green/white onion
1/4 Daikon radish (long white)
1 garlic head
1 ginger hand
Handful uniodized salt
1Tbsp sugar
1/2 Cup dried chilli pepper
100 ml fish sauce
1/3 tsp salted shrimp
100 ml Kombu broth

Stage one:
Prepare Sui Choi cabbage and Kombu broth day before.
Sui Choi Cabbage: Quarter cabbage from centre up and wash removing all darker green leaves. Soak one day in brine made of a handful of salt and enough water to completely submerge the cabbage quarters. Approximately 2-3% brine solution is adequate (1Tbsp/L). Placing a plate and weight can be used.
Kombu broth: place one piece of dry seaweed into a container of hot boiling water. Approximately 100 ml per cabbage.
Stage two: SAUCE
Chop/semi puree even amounts of garlic, onion, and ginger. A food processor will work nicely. Hand cut ginger cross grain to reduce long fibres. Add chilli flakes, sugar, fish sauce, kombu broth, shrimp paste (if vegan, simply use no fish sauce and shrimp fry)

There are two ways of mixing the sauce with the cabbage, and dicon radish. The sauce can be applied between leafs of the whole quarter cabbage then rolled up to ferment. I prefer to pre chop cabbage and radish into desired sizes, and layered with sauce into jars or crock squishing as much air out as possible. Be aware that in the lacto fermentation process initially will involve much bubbling gasses. This will start within a few days and achieve a climax usually within a week to ten days. There are so many variables that change this timeframe. Temperature is a big one. Any tightly sealed jar will turn into a grenade. The object is to have the vegies submerged in sauce with enough room in jar / crock for expansion. Also to have majority of gas production phase finished before filling sealed jars and refrigerating. Follow standard procedures of fermentation keeping all the veggie matter submerged in its own brine.