Recipe card: eleven gochu, one jar

Eleven peppers, one jar, zero regrets. Picked every one Wednesday night by phone torch, an hour before the -2 rolled in.

Sunday card, not Thursday, because a soy pickle needs three days in the fridge before you're allowed to judge it.

Gochu soy pickle, one 500 ml jar:

• 165 g gochu peppers (all 11), green and red
• 120 g soy sauce
• 120 g water
• 90 g rice vinegar
• 60 g sugar
• 8 g garlic (2 cloves), sliced
• 3 g black peppercorns

1. Poke each pepper twice with a skewer so the brine gets in. Skip this and they float like tiny life rafts.
2. Pack them standing up in the jar with the garlic.
3. Boil the soy, water, sugar and peppercorns for 2 minutes. Off the heat, stir in the vinegar.
4. Pour over hot, weigh down with a small zip bag of water, lid on once it's cool.
5. Fridge 3 days. Eat within a month.

Swap for small kitchens: no jar, use a 1 L zip bag, squeeze the air out and lay it flat on the fridge door shelf.

Tasted one last night: salty, sharp, the red ones a little sweet. Sliced over rice with a fried egg, that's dinner all day.