Uroe-jangajji (Melon Pickled in Sake Lees)

Variations

• Where it sits relative to the alcohol guide's four moments. Alcohol in cooking sorts the choice into early (deodorising), midway (depth), at the end (usually a mistake), and a fourth — before the heat goes on at all, which is sauerbraten sitting in wine for four days. All four eventually meet heat. Nothing here is heated at any stage. The same guide states that alcohol "does not all cook off" as a caution; in this pickle none of it comes off, and that is the design.
• It is not a fermentation, it is somebody else's enzymes. Miso explains that the koji mould manufactures enzymes and then stands aside. Sake lees is what is left after the mash those enzymes worked on is pressed, and it still carries amylase and protease. The melon is not fermenting on its own account: enzymes built to break rice down are breaking it down instead. That is why it turns amber and faintly sweet over months.
• Against takuan, the medium does a different job. Rice bran is a culture medium — it carries the sugars lactic bacteria live on, so a fermentation runs inside it. Sake lees is a preservative medium in which very little can live, and the work is done by enzymes. Both pickles start by salting the vegetable to drive water out; what they bury it in afterwards has the opposite character.
• Dishes made from what someone threw away. Brunost is boiled down from the whey a cheesemaker discards; liangpi steams and eats the ball of gluten washed out of the dough. Sake lees is what a brewery presses dry and puts out. That is also why this pickle survives in Gunsan in particular: under Japanese rule the port town was full of sake breweries, and lees came out of them every day.
• If you cannot get uroe melon. Korean cucumber or young courgette take the same treatment but are softer, so halve the times and expect less snap. Radish, ginger and aubergine are traditional in the same bed — the Imwon gyeongjeji of the early 19th century lists exactly that set.
• In gimbap. Gunsan puts it in gimbap in place of takuan. Similar colour, similar sweetness, and a smell of sake behind it.

Tips

• Do not cut the salt. Twenty-five percent is a dewatering device, not seasoning. Melon that still holds its water thins the lees from the first day, and thinned lees protects nothing. The osmosis salt and seasoning describes takes up a whole stage here.
• The lees is replaced, not topped up. The water coming out of the melon drops the alcohol and the sugar concentration together, and stirring fresh lees into a thinned bed only averages the two. Ganjang-gejang answers the same problem by boiling its soy brine down again; lees is a solid and cannot be reduced, so the only move left is to throw it out and pack fresh.
• Loosen it with soju, never with water. Stiff lees invites a splash of water, and that one cup drops the alcohol concentration far enough to open the door to mould.
• Do not rinse it before serving. Water takes the surface aroma straight off. Scrape, then slice thin — cut thick it is simply salty.
• A white bloom on the surface is the lees drying out: scrape it off and press the air out again. Blue or black growth, or a sour smell, means throw it away (fermentation basics).