Pa-kimchi (Scallion Kimchi)

Pa-kimchi belongs to the market days when the jjokpa are thin, clean, and sweet at the white end. Buy them when the bundles look lively and the bulbs are firm, not swollen and tired. Spring and early autumn give the best scallions, but if the bunch in front of you is good, cook the month you're standing in.

This kimchi lives or dies by restraint with a loud ingredient. Scallions are sharp. Anchovy fish sauce is sharp. Gochugaru has its own voice. If you bury the scallions under garlic and sugar, you get heat and salt with no scallion left. Let it taste like itself. The fish sauce does the seasoning work here, so we don't salt first the way we do for cabbage.

Master Seong-nyeo made me dress the white ends twice before touching the greens. I thought she was being severe. She was being correct. The thick end needs more paste, the leaf needs a lighter hand, and both have to ferment together. Write it down. Memory is a borrowed bowl.