kimchi and a korean seafood pancake

When Drew and I moved in together a few years ago, we made a peculiar discovery. This discovery, however, was not about one another, but rather, about our former roommates. Both moved out of our respective apartments before us, and both left behind a box of rubber gloves (to be fair, both left behind things that were not so odd and of immediate use to us, like a table and chairs). We had no idea what they did with rubber gloves, and we concluded that for whatever reason, hard science students must have to have them, as this was the only commonality between the two (my roommate was in chemistry, and Drew's was in biology). But that explanation didn't really make much sense because it's not as though my roommate was conducting science experiments in our apartment, at least to my knowledge. Anyway, we didn't really know what we'd do with the rubber gloves, but after one too many incidents involving jalapeno peppers and contact lenses, I figured they'd come in handy. 

Fast forward.

I began making sauerkraut a year or two ago, inspired by The Homemade Pantry. This naturally led to making kimchi and finally having a use for the rubber gloves. Making sauerkraut and kimchi are more or less the same process, except that when you make kimchi, you add things like shredded carrots, scallions, ginger, garlic, and gochujang to the cabbage. Gochujang (don't ask me how to pronounce it) is a Korean red pepper. It's hot and spicy, and when you're mixing everything together, you certainly don't want to handle the mixture with your bare hands (fortunately, I didn't learn this lesson the hard way--the internet warned me). So every time I make kimchi, I put on the rubber gloves and silently thank our former roommates and apologize for ever questioning why they ever had them.   

(I have no picture of the kimchi. As I was mixing it, it occurred to me to take one, but my hands were messy and I wasn't going to deglove, get my phone, and reglove. And now that the kimchi has fermented, it's a big mess and not very photogenic. My apologies.)

I do have this picture of a Korean seafood pancake for you:

I have had Korean seafood pancakes twice in my life. The first time was at this restaurant in this Korean spa in Irvine and the second time was in Seoul. I had a craving last weekend, and instead of hunting down a restaurant and paying Orange County prices, I decided that it would be much cheaper and probably just as tasty if I made them at home. I don't regret my decision.