Kimchi

So another one of my Christmas presents today! I don't think I mentioned I got food for Christmas did I? Well it certainly was a surprise! Kimchi is Korea's national dish and Koreans eat kimchi with pretty much anything. It's basically pickled vegetables, usually the main ingredient is Cabbage but there's many other varieties. Mine was a cabbage and was seasoned with radish, red pepper powder, Korean leek and fermented anchovy and fish sauce among other ingredients (full list of ingredients here) to give it a rather alarming red colour. I done a bit of research and came to the conclusion that kimchi can be cooked with pretty much anything so I just gave my dad free reign on how he wanted to present the kimchi to me. In the end I got to try it three different ways!

First: raw. It may sound silly but I read that lots of people enjoy eating their kimchi straight out of the tub and I figured this'd be the best way to fully understand the flavour! But knowing the flavour and explaining the flavour are two very different things! Well, let's start with the texture. For a start, I was surprised at how big the pieces of cabbage were. I was expecting shreds but actually there more square-like in shape and rather than a liquid like pickled vegetables are usually in it's more of a paste. It also smells really strong, probably the fermented fish sauce. It's not as such a bad smell, just knock-you-dead-powerful! But yeah, it tastes quite nice. You can taste a bit of fishiness and almost taste the radish, though it's not spicy in slightest  However, as with the smell, it's strong. I don't know why so many people eat out of the tub because it's not an over all pleasant experience!
So, next I had a tuna kimchi sandwich. Not a particularly Korean use of kimchi, just kimchi and tinned tuna mixed together then spread between two slices of bread. But it was delicious! I think you're supposed to cut the cabbage before putting it in a sandwich just because the squares are rather intrusive, oh well, trial and improvement and all that. Mixing it with tuna made both the smell and taste less concentrated and a lot more enjoyable. I love tuna sandwiches, so maybe I'm a bit biased, but I think the taste really worked, you know? I guess it's because kimchi has fish sauce in it, so it was an aquarium in bread!
Finally, it was kimchi omelette. Once again, the kimchi probably been cut up because it made the omelette fall apart a bit and while it didn't work as well as the tuna sandwich, it was nice! Uuum, I don't know how to explain it though, but trust me, it's well worth a try!
Unfortuanately the kimchi had to be bought in advance for Christmas so the best before date came all too quickly! There's still so many uses of kimchi I want to try! Also, the one's I have tried were, in general, good! Although it is a strong flavour, there's so many things you can do to fix that! Have any of you tried kimchi? I'd love to hear your experiences with kimchi!