Category Archives: fermentation

I think I found it, Mama

We tried to find something scary to show you in the garden.  As is common throughout history, when a new culture bangs in to an existing one, the conquered people’s holidays or rites are usually the most ripe for transformation by the new guys. Christianity supplanted a pagan festival with its own, All Saints, on 1 November,  and Halloween is merely the day before (the eve of All Hallows).  The old Celtic holiday, *Samhain, or summer’s end, was a day spent in reflection and stocking up at the end of autumn/beginning of winter.  It also was a period of time for the real world to touch the unreal, so you’re to keep your eye out for the supernatural.  I guess I am glad we kept that part of it; the kid does like to dress up and scare people.

But we like these harvest-based holidays around our house; they seem much more real than something arbitrary.  And personally, I like parties, especially when they reward all my hard gardening work.

Harvesting

Voila!  “You know, I think that thing is bigger than you were when you were born,” I told her.  She paused, and stared.  “You have GOT to be kidding me,” she said, looking over her glasses.

So behold!  The 7 lb, 5 oz cylindra beet.  This nearly filled a two gallon crock once shredded.  Fermented beets are super delicious…and it’s a fair way to stock up for winter.  Every year we get at least one or two monsters, but this year’s model has set the bar pretty high, eh?

I do like the sense of community on this holiday…even if we don’t have threshing or haying festivals any longer, or we don’t gather around the big kettle to process apple butter, I will think of all these joint events as I chase my daughter down the dark streets in town as she goes begging for sweets.  Why not.  It’s the new culture, after all.

Pickle Pot covered with one of the World’s Ugliest Tea Towels

Okay, so I lied a teensy bit in my last post:  I *have* been pickling nearly everything in sight, putting away for tomorrow (well, or at least next month) that which grows abundantly today.

It’s lacto-fermentation, though, that I have been relying upon to pickle my veg, not vinegar.  As far as methods go, this is as Old School as it gets.  I’ve basically been throwing grape leaves, unripe grapes, peppercorns and mustard seeds, garlic, fennel and parsley flower heads, and any nice fleshy unripe vegetable that I can get my hands on into a crock with salted water.  Cover them up (weighted down with my lovely weights and a quart jar of water) and in a week, voila, pickles!  The salt in the water interacting with the lactobaccili on the surface of the vegetables is what makes this happen.  (I could goose the process by adding whey…but then things end up tasting like goat.  No thanks.  It works fine on its own.)

Frankly, I can’t wait for all my cukes to get to adequate pickling size, even though I am growing a lot of them this year.  And–as ever–I am way behind with my dill plantings.  No matter; I look to see what’s blossoming and indeed fennel, cilantro, celery and parsley are all bearers of significant umbrelled flowers…lovely, all, for seasoning.  Italian flat-podded green beans, radish seed pods, young peppers (hot and not), eggplant, okra, thin green paste tomatoes, leek pearls, young onions, scallions, shallots, purslane:  these are all fair game to add to the limping-along cucumber stash. Even Brett’s milkweed buds and pods get harvested and thrown in the crock.

Sandor Ellix-Katz is my guru in all of this.   Perhaps he should be yours too.  Please pick up (even at the library) a copy of his Wild Fermentation.

My veggies’ weekly trips (more or less depending on the weather) in the crock yield about 7 pints of veggies:  one for each of my CSA people and one for us.   These aren’t canned, then; they’re eaten fresh from the fridge, preferably within a month or so…it’s basically slow(er) food.  And if you do eat it all, don’t worry, more is coming soon!

More information in the comments.

More lies:  here’s the first batch of paste tomatoes en route to the masonry oven.  Sundays are Oven Days so…why not hold off on picking tomatoes for the whole week and then having a steamer pan or two of cleaned, halved paste tomatoes go in for gentle cooking overnight?  When I took the bread and the chicken out of it, the Loven was about 300*.  It holds its heat overnight, but…I go check it before bed, and if it’s reduced “enough” then I will take the pans out, put their contents in half-gallon jars for the fridge, and then tomorrow after a trip through the food mill they’ll be canned.  It’s a great way to get paste.

In my corner of the world, farmer’s markets and fruit markets (yes, we have a lot of the latter:  either they’re the market for a large fruit farm or a collaborative of a few smaller farms) are winding down.  This means I should get bags and boxes ready, and go shopping!

Even *I* cannot resist the pull of these markets on their last weekend, their last day.  I tell myself I can find the need for such slash-priced fruits and veg…why not?  (“Why not” might be because I have plenty of my own stuff already…plus, I didn’t need to pay for my harvest.)  Considering nearly nothing I purchased could be stored for long, I spent Saturday morning  in what only could be called a Ferment-A-Thon.

The last batch of sauerkraut took only 10 days thanks to a few warm fall afternoons so the pickle crock was fortuitously empty.  My routine had been kraut then kimchi then kraut with the pickle crock, so my mind was on putting together the next batch of hot/spicy kimchi.  (Kimchi also only takes about a week, sometimes less time if it’s kept in a warm room.  Sauerkraut can take a week or a month, both depending on how much you have as well as ambient temperature.)  Besides the makings of  kimchi, though, there were those large beets I picked up at the market…time for more pickled beets with roasted, crushed caraway seeds.

There’s no real magic involved with simple veggie ferments.  (If you want great step by step instructions, go see Sandor Ellix Katz’ website.)  It’s a three part process, really.  The chopped veg are salted and left for a time to release their internal water.  The veg are then are fermented in brine, and, after a time, eaten!  (Kimchi has one more middle step in there, where more veg, a spicy pepper mix, and a watery brine is added to cover.)  The only difference I impart to my own ferments from what I read in books and online recipes is that I stir. the. ferment. every. single. day.  I also taste it to see how it’s doing…therefore I rely on my tastebuds and not some recipe to tell me what’s going on in the crock.

Day One contents for the kimchi crock:  leafy cabbages and crisp carrots, radishes and kohlrabi.  Perhaps not completely kosher (i.e., more than just nappa cabbage, no daikon radishes, no fish paste, and who ever heard of kohlrabi in kimchi?) it points to the fact that most anything goes…especially when the garden needs pre-snow tidying.

It is helpful to weigh the chopped contents to best gauge the salt that will be needed.  Rule of thumb is 3 tablespoons salt per 5 pounds produce, in 1/2 gallon of water.  Submerge contents to sit overnight and soften:  you can use a plate, but a bowl is the nearest thing I have that works.  Glass/ceramic is best.  Drain, reserving water, and taste veg for saltiness:  if obnoxious, then you won’t be adding all the salted water back in.

Day Two:  add a mash of hot fresh peppers/garlic/grated gingerroot; add more veggies as you choose (I added green peppers and the last of the fall peas, and a fist-sized bundle of chopped scallion, and a leek for kicks.).  Toss well, then add liquid to cover it just enough when submerged.  Cover crock with a clean cloth, stir and taste daily, adjusting seasoning as required.  Kimchi is ready in 5-8 days.  My five pounds of veg makes about 3 quarts.

Sour beets leaching their water:  Same salt/water rule applies (3 tablespoons salt per five pounds veg, submerged, etc.) but here I added roasted, ground caraway seeds to the freshly shredded beets, and am letting it pickle in between two nested glass bowls.  I added a bit of whey (2T) to speed up the process of lactic fermentation.  Step One is I let the shredded beets osmose for 12 hours before adding the water/whey mixture; Step Two is adding the liquid and letting it do its thing.   Because beets are so sweet, I don’t want this to turn alcoholic on me…so I will only give it up to 4 days before it goes in the fridge.  Sour beets in borscht, yumza!

Next up in the pickle crock will be a green drumhead cabbage sauerkraut with shredded apples and onions added on Day 5.

Read what you can about the fermentation process, and have fun with it all.  And, as ever, trust your instincts.  If it smells/tastes truly horrid, well, something has gone awry.  Kimchi, in my humble opinion, smells fabulous when it’s cooking, though!

Pizza with goat cheese, green garlic coins, herbs and asparagus

Today’s Friday, one of my work-at-the-office days, but we’ll still manage to eat dinner at the usual time.  How do I do this?  While making toast this morning, my daughter and I mixed up pizza dough to rise all day is how.  In other words, “forethought.”

I made two batches of pressed cheese this week. What the heck is that?  It’s like chevre with more rennet and all the liquid squeezed out.  Think “cheese curd squeak” with a mild, firm, unaged cheese, and you’re almost there.  The first batch was herb-laden (chives, garlic, marjoram, thyme) and the second plain (just salt).  Half of this latter batch went to school with my daughter for her to share with her class in the look-what-we-can-do category of school eats…it was mostly a hit.  It’s goat’s milk cheese, after all, and thus it’s different than the bovine variety; I don’t expect children raised on the commercial kind to leap quickly into the homemade camp.  But the bowl came home empty, so what do I know.

The other half melts well on the home-made pizza!  I shredded it on my daughter’s pizza and left it chunky on mine.  Asparagus, green garlic, some pepper…what could be better.  (Oh yeah:  outdoor masonry-oven pizza would be better.   (Soon.))

Feta’s next!

Just because I am brave, I decided to make a pressed, aged cheese for my third attempt at home cheese making.

I had help with the selection, though.  When asked, my daughter said “Either feta or cheddah,” laughing.  I told her the cheddar had “delayed gratification” written all over it, as it should age at least 4 weeks before cutting into it.  And I chose to make cheddar because, unlike feta, I had all necessary ingredients.

A pressed cheese requires a press, of course.  I have a somewhat thrown-together setup made mostly with things found around the house, including weights from Tom’s fitness area and some pans from the kitchen.  The mold itself is entirely easy to make at home except for the small fact that PVC pipe (which is what mine is made from) is sold in 10′ lengths and there is no way I would ever need that much.  Of course you can use anything else, too:  an empty BPA-free can, say, with both ends cut out.  The follower is simply a piece of maple 1x wood cut to fit inside the pipe.  (I purchased both this press and a larger one from Caprine Supply as even I am known to throw the rare dollar at convenience.)  And I punched a pie tin (downward, no sharp ends inside) to drain the resultant whey.  There’s another pie tin below it that holds the punched tin aloft by four mason jar rings.

I told you it looks thrown together:  the drainage system, left, and the final pressing, right, w/ 30 lbs. in the pot.  That’s another mason jar acting as a plunger.  The white thing is the mold, and you can’t see the follower, and yes, those are washcloths soaking up the resultant whey.

You won’t need the jar rings after the first pressing.  Towels will do.  And:  anything you can do to stabilize the weights is helpful.  I did the first pressings on the floor in case the darned thing wanted to tip over (and it did) but…now that we’re on the last pressing the weights are safe in their pot atop the counter.

This cheese did take a good part of my day to make, but it was more busy work (checking temperatures, etc.) than active work.  It gets pressed under different weights for a total of 28 hours, then it gets to dry (covering the outside with salt), then waxed, then aged in the cellar.  Sounds like a lot of work but…good things take time.

Yard weeds?  I say “revenge.”

My husband is the kind of neat freak who, when not otherwise occupied, loves to do things like change the furniture arrangements.  (Can you tell I hate having furniture moved.)  He’s also one to neaten cabinets and go through closets and tidy books on their shelves.  Hey: I am all for clean, but please leave my pantry and kitchen alone!  And mostly he listens, but sometimes he can’t help himself.  He tidied my pantry this week and I am truly going mad trying to find things.

(Please, someone send him a commission soon so he gets out of my hair.)

So it’s with a little hidden mirth that I know I am driving him bonkers by having two types of cheese starter and one batch of cheese doing their microbial thing on the kitchen counter.  And next to the cheese stuff is a bowl of a new sourdough starter.  Oh, and there’s the yogurt brewing in its cooler on the floor, and the kombucha perched on the butcher block:  say “SCOBY” and just watch him squirm!

But my own version of marital spat?  Stinky dandelions steeping in the pantry!  It’s for my first batch of dandelion wine.  muahhahah!