On 10/16/2010 10:08 PM, Roy wrote:
> On Oct 16, 3:54 pm, (Victor Sack) wrote:
>> Rising Cost of Kimchi Alarms Koreans
>>
>> By MARK McDONALD
>>
>> International Herald Tribune
>>
>> SEOUL, South Korea -- Even in the middle of a loud and bustling outdoor
>> market, her voice drops to a whisper when she agrees to reveal the two
>> secret ingredients that make her kimchi so popular with her customers.
>> "Fermented-anchovy paste and pickled-prune sauce," says Kim Gil-soo,
>> looking warily, both ways, down the alley in front of her store, called
>> Prosperity.
>>
>> "I special-order the sauce from a certain place in the countryside," she
>> said, still whispering. "I'm quite well known for my kimchi."
>>
>> But recent sales have been disappointing, Mrs. Kim said, because of an
>> unavoidable spike in the price of her kimchi, the fiery and pungent
>> Korean national dish that typically combines cabbage, radishes, red
>> chili peppers, garlic and salt. The price for one head of long-leafed
>> Napa cabbage grown in Korea has skyrocketed in the past month, to as
>> much as $14, from about $2.50. Domestic radishes have tripled in price,
>> to more than $5 apiece, and the price of garlic has more than doubled.
>>
>> Kimchi has become so expensive that some restaurants in the capital no
>> longer offer it free as a banchan, or side dish, a situation akin to
>> having an American burger joint charge for ketchup, although decidedly
>> more calamitous here. The politics editor of a major South Korean
>> newspaper called the kimchi situation "a national tragedy," and an
>> editorial in Dong-a Ilbo termed it "a once in a century crisis."
>>
>> Wholesalers and economists have blamed overly rainy weather for the
>> cabbage shortage, as well as fewer acres having been planted after a
>> bumper crop and low prices in 2009. The average price for a head of Napa
>> cabbage last year was $1.40, according to food industry figures.
>>
>> The opposition Democratic Party also has laid blame for the shortages on
>> a large river-reclamation project, saying it destroyed farmland that
>> would have been used for cabbages and other vegetables, a charge the
>> government has denied.
>>
>> Meanwhile, there have been reports of cabbage rustling in rural areas,
>> and the government has suspended tariffs on imported cabbage and
>> radishes from China, beginning Thursday. The president of South Korea,
>> Lee Myung-bak, has said that until the crisis eases he will eat only the
>> cheap and inferior kind of cabbage -- the round-headed variety commonly
>> found in Europe and the United States.
>>
>> "There is no reason for regular folks to have to buy items integral to
>> daily life at higher prices than international prices," Mr. Lee said at
>> a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, while instructing his economists to more
>> closely monitor commodity prices that have sent the South Korean
>> consumer price index to a 17-month high.
>>
>> The price increases have caused many middle- and lower-income homemakers
>> to cancel the making of kimchi at home this year, a traditional rite of
>> autumn that typically brings together mothers, daughters, aunts,
>> grannies and neighbors. Some families can go through a couple of hundred
>> heads of cabbage, and it's not unusual for all the bathtubs and sinks in
>> a house to be filled with bobbing cabbages as they are washed, soaked
>> and brined.
>>
>> "I'm probably not going to do it at home this year," said Roh Eun-ja, a
>> Seoul restaurant owner. "Even if the price of cabbage comes down and I
>> do make kimchi, I'll be downsizing. Not so much this year."
>>
>> Mrs. Roh has two daughters, both in their 30s, and she said they learned
>> to make kimchi "by looking over my shoulder, by tasting and doing, like
>> all Korean girls are supposed to."
>>
>> One daughter works at an Outback steakhouse, the other at an upscale
>> department store, and they have little time to make kimchi on their own,
>> Mrs. Roh said, lamenting the loss of another tradition to the "ppali
>> ppali" or "hurry hurry" lifestyle of modern South Korea.
>>
>> "It's also more expensive to make it on your own," Mrs. Roh said, "so
>> more and more people buy it ready-made now. That's what my daughters
>> do."
>>
>> Supermarkets have reportedly had difficulty keeping packaged kimchi in
>> stock. A pouch of the popular Chongga Jip brand, made solely from Korean
>> ingredients, sold this week for $4.05 a pound -- about half the price of
>> homemade.
>>
>> Some Koreans are taking the kimchi crisis in stride, saying it is a blip
>> in the market. At her food stall in the sprawling Mo Rae Ne market in
>> western Seoul, Lee Young-ae still serves free kimchi to the vendors and
>> laborers who come by for a $5 plate of roasted pig cheeks, blood sausage
>> and her famous soondae soup.
>>
>> "The prices will go down," she said. "Sometimes they're high, sometimes
>> they're low. Easy come, easy go. That's life."
>>
>> The making of kimchi is more art than science, more a craft than a
>> repeatable recipe. There are hundreds of variations, with varying
>> ingredients, colorations, textures and levels of heat. As well as a
>> condiment, kimchi is eaten in Korea as a main dish, in soups, stews or
>> with fried rice. There are kimchi burgers, kimchi bacon rolls and kimchi
>> pizza.
>>
>> "Even if it's pickled and fermented, if it's your national dish and
>> you're in Asia, believe me, they'll find a way to make it special," said
>> the celebrity chef Bobby Chinn, the host of World Café Asia, a travel
>> and cooking television show. "For Asians it's a popular alternative to
>> salads."
>>
>> The cabbages are not usually shredded or dismembered, and the salted
>> leaves are slathered with spices, sauces and pastes. The intact cabbages
>> are then placed in earthenware jars and buried in the ground. (Apartment
>> dwellers and urbanites now use stainless steel containers or special
>> kimchi refrigerators.) The cabbages then pickle and ferment into the
>> eye-watering dish served year-round in Korea, at breakfast, lunch and
>> dinner.
>>
>> Most Koreans see kimchi as a staple food, even a daily necessity, a kind
>> of health food. During the SARS panic in Asia in 2003, the rumor spread
>> widely that kimchi was an effective antidote.
>>
>> For most Westerners, however, kimchi remains an unacquired taste. It can
>> offend not only with its taste but also with its odor, which can linger
>> on a person for hours. And for those unused to its fire and fury, even a
>> small dish of kimchi can appear less as a delicacy than as a kind of
>> incendiary device.
>>
>> "To a Western palate, with all the other options out there, kimchi won't
>> rank very high," Mr. Chinn said.
>>
>> A gathering was held in Seoul last week to promote Korean food, with
>> European master chefs coming in for panels and demonstrations. Michel
>> Troisgros, the renowned French chef from Roanne, listened to a Korean
>> official hold forth on the wonders of fermentation and an ambitious
>> project to export Korean foods like kimchi.
>>
>> "I think you have to stop talking about fermentation," Mr. Troisgros
>> told the man. "It's not sexy."
>
> ==
> There is nothing sexy about rotten cabbage. Kimchi is over-rated IMHO.
> Leave it for the peasants.
> ==

Rotten cabbage no but fermented cabbage as in kimchi or sauerkraut is
good eating.