"kimchi" news and stories

If you live on either coast, or even in the Midwest in a major metropolitan area, you'll have no problem finding an Asian grocery store. Korean-specific markets are a little harder to find, and if you're somewhere where there isn't a huge population of Korean people, well, you might find yourself at a loss when a craving for kimchee strikes. You can make it yourself, or you can click over to koaMart, an online Korean food grocer.

Sure, they do the dry, non-perishable goods like ramen and rice, but they can send perishable goods like tofu and kimchee as well. I've never shopped at the store since I live in Los Angeles, but if I were in say, the mountains of Colorado (or really, really lazy) I might give them a try. Shipping isn't cheap, but hey, when you need your pickled, fermented cabbage, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Remember when the news broke out that kimchee, the stinky, spicy, fermented cabbage from Korea, might aid in fighting the bird flu? I bet half the people who read the news went out and bought a giant jar of the stuff. But unless you're Korean and you eat kimchee with every meal (even breakfast!), you probably still have more than half of that jar left, slowly ripening away in the back of your fridge. Before long, it'll be kimchee wine, which sounds absolutely...gross.

Fret not, kimchee freaks. Rachael, of the food blog Fresh Approach Cooking, has taken kimchee and made it into a pasta salad! Normally, I bristle at "fusion," but I just can't help but love any idea that incorporates one of my all time favorite foods. Fabulous!

That's right. South Korean astronauts may be taking a specially designed type of kimchi with them when they travel on a Russian spacecraft in 2008. The news comes from a recent Los Angeles Times article about kimchi's presence in the academic and scientific communities in Korea. The kimchi that the Korean astronauts will take is intended to help their digestion. Some of you may recall news about kimchi's possible ability to stave off avian flu, and the Times lists several other health claims associated with the fermented national treasure. Mice fed kimchi were apparently less stressed and had fewer wrinkles. Still, other research suggests that eating too much kimchi may be linked to increased risk of gastric cancer. According to the Times, South Koreans consume 77 pounds of kimchi annually and rates of gastric cancer are 10 times higher there than in the U.S.

[Photo: Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuters]

This is the first in a series about  pizza done with an ethnic twist in New York City, the de facto capital of straight-ahead pizza. Fuhgeddabout about whether you think my fair city's pizza is the "best." I know the answer to that one. These missives concern crosscultural pies, which I'm a little skeptical about. Nonetheless, I  like to keep an open mind and sometimes ignore the fact that I cut my teeth on home-made Calabrian square pies.

I first heard "kimchi" and "pizza" mentioned in the same sentence  on Chowhound. At the time, I was a Korean food dilettante. I gladly enjoyed gas-grilled Korean barbecue, but never imagined the splendid smoky bulgogi  that comes from a charcoal grill. Nevermind  paejun. I had little or no experience with this pancake that combines kimchi, seafood and green onion. Shapewise at least, paejun, is the closest Korean fare comes to pizza.

Kimchee bok-keum bahp is a Korean home and café food. At home, it's a way to use up kimchee before it gets too ripe to eat (at which time, it gets dumped into a big pot and turned into kimchee jji-gae). "Bok-keum" means sauteed or fried and "bahp" is steamed rice if you're only halfway through Korean 101. So essentially, kimchee bok-keum bahp is fried rice with kimchee, and yes, all those stories about Asian restaurants - today's leftover rice is tomorrow's fried rice - is totally true and totally applies here.

Here's a nasty little sercret - kimchee bokkeum bahp tastes infinitely better when cooked with chopped Spam, but since I don't ever just have Spam on hand and the point of kimchee bokkeum bahp is to use leftovers, I usually use frozen leftover galbee or bulgogi. Of course, leave all of that out and your kimchee bokeeum bahp can be vegetaarian.