Red Cabbage Kimchi

Here's a 'quick' pickled cabbage kinda garnish that I decided to whip up. The idea is to serve it with the soused mackerel dish to give an acid vinegar contrast to the oily fishiness. I am thinking it will be both a traditional pickled red cabbage recipe and a Korean kimchi which is most definitely sitting on the fence but deliberately so. I'm not going with so many ingredients as, like I say, it will be served as a component of a larger dish and don't want to overcomplicate flavours.
So, armed with one large red cabbage I stared upon my improvisations one otherwise uneventful mid-week evening. The first batch got bottled awaiting personal consumption as I decided that the cabbage rounds I cut were too thick. I guess that's what comes from being a kitchen prick. Will try to contain my excitement as much as I can contain my accumulating flatulence.

1. Sliced the cabbage with a little bit more finesse than I managed the first time around.
2. Erm, fried the sweet b'jesus out of it in a mix of veg oil and toasted sesame oil with a heavy sprinkling of my special Urfu type black chilli flakes and black sesame seeds.
   
3. After 5 mins of sauté frenzy I throw in a good slosh of vinegar. Perhaps should have used rice vinegar but I happened to have some strange rosé balsamic vinegar from Lidl that seemed to fit in both colour and flavour.
   
4. Add what could very nearly be a scary amount of salt and plain white sugar (you ain't preserving shit without salt, sugar and vinegar).
5. After a few more mins of wok shenanigans I dispense with my secret weapon, black rice flour. I'm licensed to use this as it's in some of the kimchee recipes I've seen - it serves to thicken the mixture very nicely.
6. Top up with vinegar and bottle, then off to bed with a Dutch Oven for one.