Asia in a French kitchen.

    Years ago, I bought Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking on the strength of its recipe for kimchee, that incendiary Korean pickle that you either love or hate. Personally, I'm crazy about it but hadn't made it here in France because daikon (white radish) is rarely seen at local markets. PS: I've since heard that you can use the black radish that you find everywhere here.
      I reckoned ordinary radishes would do just as well so, last week, I set to with a Chinese cabbage--these occasionally show up around here--and a fat bunch of neon-pink radishes.

 Here they are soaking in heavily salted water.

 The other ingredients: sliced scallions, cayenne pepper, and indecent amounts of chopped ginger and garlic.

 Drained, the radishes and cabbage are mixed with the hot stuff.

   And then packed in a two-litre jar, topped up with the salt water, covered with a cloth and left for three or four days to turn into kimchee. The jar has now moved into the fridge and I'm imagining the pickle as a side dish, and thinking about some sort of sticky, spicy treatment for that two kilo slab of pork belly that's in the freezer with some plain rice to sop all the delicious juices up.