I (heart) PAT Kimchi

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but Geoff introduced me to this little place downtown called Joons and I’ve been hooked on kimchi ever since. Nom nom nom.

Now, as awesome as Joons is, I can’t really trek down there all the time. This is probably a good thing. If they were in Etobicoke, I’d just live there all the time. It finally dawned on me, with this whole ‘it’s about damn time you started seriously cooking for yourself (as opposed to making eggs once in a while and calling it a win)’ thing, that I could try and find or make my own kimchi and go from there. Thus, I promptly looked up a few kimchi recipes and, just as promptly, decided that this was not going to be done by me at this stage. PAT TO THE RESCUE! I’ve been by the downtown PAT location a bunch, and I knew they had their own storemade stuff, but imagine my surprise when I found they have a location in ‘sauga! That’s way easier to get to and, after visiting my godmother, great aunt, and grandma, I took in the awesomeness that is PAT Mississauga. Had they sold nothing but their kimchi, I still would have been happy, but I’m definitely going back for some other stuff later. I can’t say their fruit selection was all that peachy (it was also sunday, so I reserve judgement), but tons and tons and rows and rows of Korean and Japanese food products. Woooo. Anyway, back to this:

It’s not as spicy as Joons’, but perfect for me! I desperately wanted some kimchi fried rice, even though I’m going downtown to Joons on Thursday, so that was the goal. I mostly followed The Amateur Gourmet’s steps, and I was rewarded with:

It was freakin’ delicious. I used calrose rice and didn’t add anything to the kimchi other than some oil in the pan (had no garlic and not sure it needed any). I let parts of it caramalize more than I wanted, but even those parts were more than edible. I not-so-finely chopped — had to resort to hand tearing, actually — the kimchi because my knives really have something against doing their jobs. Replacements are definitely coming up. That’s the whole tub of kimchi in there and I divided it up into two servings:

Those are two different Mega Bloks gryphons I’ve had since forever, back when they made neat castle and viking sets. Dunno why they decided to keep me company while cooking, but I appreciate it :)

Next time I’ll be splitting it into three servings. Good thing I was hungry last night!