are somewhat similar. Chachae kimchees are fermented in salt and rice, while chochae kimchees are made with fermented fish or shrimp paste, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and vinegar for a salty, sour and spicy-hot flavor.
The design and special characteristics of crocks for storing kimchee vary from region to region. In such regions as Pyongan Province and Hamgyong Province, where the winters are long and cold, kimchee crocks are very large but shorter and fatter than those of the south. Those of the Hoeryong district of Hamgyong Province are known for their peculiar blueish-black color from lye added to the black glaze.
The crocks of the southern regions are generally smaller. Those of the central part of the country (Kyonggi and Chungchong provinces) are tall and slender. In Kyongsang Province (the southeastern part of the peninsula) the crocks are small and of coarse design. The crocks of southern Chungchong Province have a pleasing oval shape and a narrow mouth, while those of the Cholla provinces are short and pot-bellied.
Garlic on sale at a mid-20th-century marketplace.
In about 1934, Pang Shin-Yong, professor of home economics at Ewha Women's College, wrote Choson Yori Chepop (The Choson Cookery Book), which was revised and reissued in 1952 under the new title Uri Nara Umsik Mandunun Bop (How to Make Korean Food). The author presents modern methods of reproducing the Korean cuisine she learned from her mother, categorizing the recipes into 'winter kimchees' and 'ordinary kimchees.' This was the first book to cover kimchee-making thoroughly.
An example of a chabaegi, a broad, round ceramic bowl used for salting vegetables and mixing spices for seasoning kimchee. This multi-purpose vessel usually had handles and was also used to convey foods from one place to another in the kitchen or for washing dishes.
All these types of kimchee could be thought of as different kinds of cho, but the book sets aside a special chochae category for kimchees peculiar to Korea. Chochae and omjangchae are distinguished by the fact that chochae is eaten as is after fermenting while omjangchae is reprocessed either by washing it in water first or by adding it to another dish. In chechae the vegetables are cut up, while in chochae they are generally used whole. Chochae kimchees are meant to be kept for a long period of time and are regarded as the mainstream kimchees of Korea.
The book is fairly comprehensive and the recipes are arranged systematically by vegetable and type. Among the many radish kimchees described is tamjo, the precursor of today's tongchimi, and hwangajo, a kimchee made of radish greens. There is also a cabbage kimchee produced by the tamjopop or bland method, and a recipe for muyomji made without salt. Another useful book was Tongguk Sesigi, compiled by Hong Song-Mo in 1849; it describes the preparation of winter kimchi very clearly.
By the early 20th century, many of today's kimchees had come into existence, albeit some with minor alterations. Pang Sin-Yong's 1935 Korean cookbook, Choson Yori Chepop (The Choson Cookery Book) is the first book that gives detailed explanations, in modern terminology, of how to make kimchee. The types of kimchee identified in Chungbo Sallim Kyongje as being common are represented as mainstream varieties in this modern cookbook.
Kimchee was traditionally stored in different places depending on how long it needed to be fermented and how soon it was to be eaten. A pot of kimchee to be eaten fairly soon would be kept in the shade of the changtoktae, an outdoor raised platform. Kimchee to be eaten later in winter was kept inside a specially built storeroom, while crocks of kimchee that were expected to last till spring would be buried in the ground. The storeroom was built of a thick thatch of straw, which allowed proper ventilation while maintaining the temperature and humidity at a fairly constant level. The conical storeroom (known as a kimcheegwang or sometimes an ogari) in the picture is reminiscent of a yurt.
Chilies originally come from central Mexico and were first introduced to Europe by the Portuguese. In kimchee, chili powder helps suppress the propagation of unwanted micro-organisms. Korean chilies are only about one-third as hot as those commonly grown in other countries, but they contain about twice the amount of vitamin C and have 1.2 to 1.5 times as much sweet flavor as they do spicy-hotness.
Cultural Context
As we have seen, the overriding factor in the development of various types of kimchee is this so-called extra taste: pungency. However, it is not only the taste that counts. Koreans were - and still are - very much concerned with the visual and symbolic aspects of food.
In Korean cosmology, the Five Colors of yellow, white, black, red and green are associated with the Five Directions: blues and greens are associated with the east, reds with the south, white with the west, black with the north and yellows and browns with the center. Therefore the Five Colors are associated not only with the directions, but with the four seasons and the change of seasons; in other words, they are symbols of time as well as space. The Five Colors are rooted in the northeast Asian theory of Yin and Yang and the Five Modes of Action (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water), elements thought to compose all natural and human phenomena.
However, it is not just the sense of color that follows the principles of the Five Modes of Action; the sense of taste does too, with the corresponding flavors being spicy-hot, sweet, sour, salty and bitter. By applying the Five Modes of Action to everyday culinary matters, Koreans created a code of visual and gustatory symbols that mirrored Korean cosmology. Korean food brings together the whole spectrum of colors, shapes and tastes in a balanced harmony or a 'symphony of flavors.'
Of all traditional Korean foods, the one that exhibits this symbolism the most clearly is ohunch'ae, a vegetable dish. The o part of the name means five, and the humch'ae stands for strong herbs such as scallions, garlic and chives, plants that Korean folk tradition regards as possessing cosmic power of harmonizing and blending. At the vernal equinox, the king would grant his retainers gifts of ohunch'ae: the herbs would be arranged with the yellow one in the middle and the green, white, red and black ones placed around it in the order corresponding to east, west, south and north. The act of mixing these together and eating them represented the political concept of all the various factions on the outside being united under the king (the yellow center). Similarly, in ordinary middle-class households, ohunch'ae was eaten during the spring equinox. Here, the Five Colors and Five Flavors had a different significance: green stood for the virtue of benevolence, red for politeness, yellow for fidelity, white for righteousness and black for wisdom (the Five Cardinal Virtues), while green signified the spleen, red the lungs, yellow the heart, white the liver and black the kidneys. Thus, if one ate ohunch'ae on the day of the equinox one would acquire all Five Cardinal Virtues and enjoy good health through the balanced and harmonious functioning of all the organs of the body.
Crocks of a type called haeju dok, dating from the latter part of the Choson Dynasty. Though the shapes and other characteristics of kimchee crocks vary from region to region, they are all generally made of earthenware, mostly brown-glazed. The haeju dok,
