Fermented food

Fermented food / Miso — 1 Comment
11
Dec 09

Just so y’all know: Local miso

South River Miso is handmade in Conway, Ma. They sell different misos (included those fermented for three years and a one made of dandelions and leeks!), and fermented goodies,  like koji, a Japanese cultured grain that people use for miso making and their own tamari. Here’s what their website says about tamari, which was news to us (always thought tamari was just soy sauce by another name):

“In Japanese, tamari means “little puddle” and refers to the savory liquid that collects in a vat of miso. Our genuine tamari is similar to its cousin, soy sauce, but much sweeter and lighter in taste. Friends who buy directly from our shop come back year after year, declaring that there is no seasoning comparable to South River Miso Tamari”

South River Miso is available in Whole Foods, and other foodie shops around Boston.

Needless to say, next time we’re taking one of our gay-cations to Northampton, we will have to call and ask if we can see the process firsthand.


Fermented food / Preserving+canning — 2 Comments
5
Oct 08

What time is it? Kraut:30

October is the proverbial kraut:30, to mix a couple of metaphors. We have made a few big jars full this summer already, but the cabbages are coming fast and furious from our CSA share.

For those of you who don’t know the conspiracy of sauerkraut, please allow me to say a few words. It might shed some light on the current banking crisis.

This is the ingredient list for a basic sauerkraut: cabbage, salt. That’s it. The stuff that you would get with some Keilbasa in some German beer hall is, traditionally, white cabbage, sea salt and caraway seeds. Kim Chi is another version of the same idea: bok choy, ginger, red chili, garlic, sea salt. The salt is the agent by which the whole thing ferments, and ultimately takes on a more and more sour taste.

German and Korean cultures are not the only ones with a fermented food. Most every culture has one. Roman soldiers* depended and survived on sauerkraut, and Rome would not have been possible without it. They had other calories, but the health benefits of sauerkraut are extraordinary. Also, British saliors used it to help ward off scurvy, but somehow limes got all the fame. Ketchup, back in the day, was a fermented fish brine (the word, according to Sally Fallon of Nourishing Traditions, comes from the Chinese ke-tsiap). English people added stuff like oysters and cucumbers to it. Americans added tomatoes.

Fermented foods are “live” foods, loaded with lactic acid and beneficial bacteria that make a healthy gut (not unlike the acidophilus in yogurt) and, therefore, a healthy person. These foods have all but disappeared from our diets or changed into stuff like Heinz brand ketchup or sauerkraut that’s been pickled with vinegar, not salt, and pasteurized to kill any bacteria. Kind of defeats the purpose.

Anyway, long story short, a basic method of preservation that is actually essential to human health and happiness is in the dust bin of history. Why is that? Because average people who have depended on the life-giving properties for millenia decided to stop one day? They liked having their teeth rot out of their heads?

I really recommend the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz for a bunch of great recipes on fermenting stuff. That guy ferments everything. Meanwhile, here is a recipe for Cortido, a Latin American sauerkraut that comes from Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. This is what is I made today.

1 cabbage (green or red) cored and sliced thin
2 carrots, grated
2 medium onions, sliced thin
dried oregano
dried red pepper
2 tablespoons sea salt

This isn’t an exact science. Just slice everything thin, toss it all in a big bowl and sprinkle on the salt. Crush it with your hands and let it sit for 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, clean out however many glass jars you’re going to need to contain all this. I recommend one big half gallon ball jar or two quarts. Stuff the stuff in tight. Then take a wooden spoon and crush is even harder. As the cell walls of the vegetables break down, they release their liquid, and, mixing with the salt, create a brine. The brine should cover the kraut. Leave it covered with only cheesecloth, or with the lid very loose, out on the counter for three days. It will bubble a bit at the fermenting begins. Cover and move it to the fridge after three days. Again, it’s not an exact science, and when it’s “done” depends on your taste, and some takes longer than others to become sour.

*I realized recently while watching some drama about Rome that Romans are always played by Anglos in general and Brits in particular. Kind of skews our collective imagination about what it was like there, or at least what the people looked like. I think I will pitch a series about Rome to HBO featuring the cast of the Sopranos.

Fermented food — 2 Comments
23
Sep 08

Pickles: The update

More than a month ago on these pages we publicly announced our first attempt to make pickles the old fashioned, fermenting-on-the-counter, then pickling-in-the-fridge way (a la Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions).

Everything looked like it was going swimmingly. The brine (just salt+water) got a little bubbly-looking at the top and the dill blossoms remained intact when we transferred our little babies too the fridge, after 3 days of room-temperature incubation.

Then, about six or seven weeks later, we popped open the lid on one of the jars and pulled out a sample. It came out solid, but as soon as we cut into it, our dear sweet pickle dissolved entirely into mush. We pulled out another. It too was mush. In fact, they were all mush. We were perplexed. Perhaps we were too eager?

This weekend, with trepidation, we tested the second jar. Healthy, solid+robust. Because we threw a few garlic cloves in the mix, there is a distinct trace of that flavor. But although the cukes have transformed their physical appearance into pickles, there is no sour pickly flavor to them.

So we come to you, friends, for some guidance and advice. Maybe a scientific explanation. Jar No 2 remains in the fridge, undisturbed. We hope it will continue to grow into the preserve we dreamed it would be.