fermented cauliflower and carrots with garlic

I used to love oven-roasted vegetables, and cauliflower was one of my key favorites especially when heavily laden with cumin.  So, I buy it, but then I don't always get around to the roasting these days. 

I started to wonder how it is fermented and stumbled upon this recipe. It's been on my counter for six days and I just tried it and it is SO GOOD.  Excellent texture and super garlicky taste.  I'll let it finish up today and then I'll refrigerate it. 

I crammed the vegetables in pretty tight especially around the top, covered with brine, and then put a lid on it which I "burped" regularly (and asked the dogsitter to as well).  It worked great!

Ingredients:

• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and slightly crushed, but still intact
• 3 cups cauliflower florets, rinsed in cold water
• 3 large carrots, cut into thin sticks
• 2 Tbsp. sea salt
• 1 quart filtered water

Instructions:

1. Place the crushed garlic in the bottom of a clean quart jar. Follow with layers of cauliflower and carrots, making sure there is an even mixture of both inside the jar.
2. Dissolve sea salt in water. Fill up the remaining space in the jar with the salt solution. Use a wooden or plastic utensil to release any air bubbles trapped along the sides of the jar.
3. If necessary, weigh the vegetables down under the brine.
4. Cover each jar with a tight lid, airlock lid, or coffee filter secured with a rubber band.
5. Culture at room temperature (60-70°F is preferred) until desired flavor and texture are achieved. If using a tight lid, burp daily to release excess pressure.
6. Once the vegetables are finished, put a tight lid on the jar and move to cold storage. The flavor will continue to develop.

sourdough crepes

These are SO GOOD and a great way to use "discard." From here.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sourdough starter
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 tbsp. melted butter
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (to thin batter) (I will try whey for this - it should still be good) 

Instructions:

1. Heat a 10-inch skillet over medium heat. In a medium bowl combine all ingredients, slowly adding milk until the desired (thin) consistency is reached. Add some butter to the skillet once it's hot.
2. Pour 1/3 cup of the batter into the center of the pan. Pick up the pan and turn and tilt it to allow batter to spread in a circular motion. Cook for about one minute or until edges come away from pan. Flip and cook an additional minute or two.
3. Remove crepe from pan and repeat with remaining batter, adding butter to pan as needed. Serve with jam, berries, whipped cream, or syrup.  (Or savory: fermented vegetables and sour cream.)

sourdough dog treats

What to do when you've got sourdough "discard"?

Well, my dog is obsessed with all things fermented.  She would run through the Valley of Death to get to a sourdough pancake, so I figured sourdough treats would be a good high-reward treat for her.  PLus, my friend read the ingredients out loud to the Trader Joe's "Peanut Butter" dog treats, and there wasn't a lick of peanut butter in them.  Time to start making my own.

The recipe is from here, which I follow pretty closely.  I just got a pizza cutter to help make the cutting easier.  The recipe is really for big bone-shapped treats, but I get the most usage when I cut them into tiny treats.  If I cook them thoroughly enough and let them dry, they're countertop stable for a couple of weeks at least (though I tend to freeze the bulk and pull them out as necessary).  My dog loves them and they are high value, so it's a win-win.  They are rich, so she doesn't get very much at a time.  They're made from ingredients that I often have on-hand and need to use up.  It's a winning recipe!

Ingredients

• 2 eggs (or 1/2 c. yogurt)
  
• ¹⁄₂ cup pumpkin
• 1 cup sourdough starter
• ¹⁄₄ cup peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons oil or fat (I'm currently tossing in a tin of sardines in oil in lieu of this fat)
• 1 cup oats
• 2 ¹⁄₂ cups whole wheat flour (approximately 450 grams - when I look up weight for whole wheat flour, answers are all over the place.  Bob's Red Mill says theirs is 152 grams per cup)
  

Directions

1. Combine the first 5 ingredients.
2. Add the oats and as much of the flour as you can until the dough is too hard to mix.
3. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead in the remaining flour.
4. Dough should be stiff, but not crumbly.
5. Roll out dough about 1/2-inch thick and cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters, or for a quicker version just cut 1/2-inch wide strips with a pizza cutter or knife, and then cut strips to 2-inch lengths.
6. Place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 325°F for 20 minutes.
7. Turn biscuits over and bake another 20 minutes.
8. Turn off oven and open door so it's ajar to let out excess heat for a few minutes and then close door and leave biscuits in oven until all the heat is gone.
9. If there is still moisture in the biscuits, let them air-dry until they are completely hard and crisp before storing.

*****
I vary this a lot based on what I have on hand.  Today I mixed it in food processor.

Ingredients:
-salmon (1 half pint jar plus skin & juice from a pint)
-2 eggs
-1 cup oats
-1 tsp. bacon drippings
-1 cup red lentils, ground into flour
-1 1/2 or so cup whole wheat, ground into flour

Followed baking directions above.  I think I'll take some to share with coworkers' dogs. 

fermented butternut squash

I used this recipe for some butternut squash.  Hopefully I'll be able to report back here that it goes well!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds butternut squash
• 1 tablespoon salt, dissolved into 2 cups of room temperature, filtered water (I used a locally made blueberry salt)

How-To

1. Peel the raw squash. Leave a small section of squash unpeeled so that you can include it at the top of your ferment (see above).  Peeling hard squash is a pain in the ass, so please be careful not to get impatient and slice off a finger.  I normally peel squash by roasting it for a few minutes and then peeling, but you do not want to heat your squash in this instance.
2. Cut the peeled squash into pieces.  My favorite of the 3 sizes I’ve tried was thin strips.  I made them with the mandoline last time and they’re great! You can cut them that way or into chunks or strips or whatever you like best. Cutting the pieces with peel on them into different sized/shaped pieces will help you find and remove them after fermentation.  (I made them into fairly thin chunks.)
3. Place peeled, chopped squash into a one quart vessel. Add the unpeeled pieces of squash to the top and pour brine over the whole shebang.
4. Submerge the squash using the cheapo jar method, pickle weights or your preferred method and cover it.
5. After five to ten days of fermentation, your squash will be ready. remove any weights, put the proper lid on the jar and store in the fridge. They won’t last long.

sauerkraut in a big crock

Some friends wanted to make sauerkraut, and she said that she's a great cabbage-juice-eliciter.  She was not exaggerating! Plus, it was more fun to make it together.

I have a three-gallon crock.  Shortly after I got it I made about 2.5 gallons, and it felt like forever of giving away sauerkraut.  But then I shared with people who were very excited about it (the kind of people who sit down with a jar and just eat the whole damn thing in a sitting), so I got close to running out.  And my dog would be unhappy about that. 

So, the friends came over and we used about six heads of cabbage, about 13# (after outer leaves removed; about 16# bought at store).  I didn't have a scale yet so I"m not certain.  I shredded about six carrots to add in, and I used locally sourced sea salt. 

It's now been just over two weeks and ... the cabbage is still crunchy and salty.  There's definitely some fermentation going on, as I see bubbles, but it didn't give off the intense smell as last time (when I think I undersalted it). 

Thirteen pounds was too little; the crock is only about halfway full.  I think adding another six pounds would fit nicely.  So for next purchase: buy about 22# of cabbage, I think.  Or less if I use much daikon or other vegetables.  The daikon were pretty limp and unexciting, so I skipped that this time. 

I was hoping that this batch would be slower than the last batch, and so far it is.  I'll keep tasting it every week, and I'm guessing around 5-6 weeks will be a good time to jar it up.

While it's always nice to finish these projects and get my counterspace back (my kitchen is small), it's also fun to see all these fermentations bubbling away.  It's like magic!  And homemade sauerkraut is so tasty.

canning beans

So, a month or two ago, I bought a small electric pressure canner (a Carey or Chard). It was on sale and I can't pressure can on my stovetop (it's flat-top and temperature doesn't stay constant, plus I already cracked it so can't stress it more).  I bought it for a few reasons, including that I can can many leftovers.  Make a big pot of red beans and rice?  Eat a bit and can the rest.  Meatloaf.  That sort of thing.  It's pretty great. 

But also, because I want to can beans.  Because I prefer glass to metal, and the quality of the beans that I can buy, and no salt.  I want to control my food, and it's considerably less expensive than buying canned. 

I cooked some white beans and canned them, and they turned to mush.  Black beans were somewhat better. 

But then I discovered: I can can uncooked beans!  I just rinse and sort them, then put about 1/2 cup in a pint jar and fill up with water (leaving appropriate headspace), and can for 75 minutes pints, 90 quarts.  (I do pints.  Though maybe if I were really into making hummus I'd do garbanzos in quarts.) 

So, for the garbanzos that my friend sent me when I'd requested soybeans - they are right now in the canner. 

I'm thrilled!  My top three beans are garbanzos, black beans, and white beans.  I'll keep a stash on hand for easy tossing into food. 

I use Tattler lids which are a bit more fussy than the "regular" Ball or Kerr lids, but they are reusable many times.  In the event a lid doesn't seal, I put the jar into the fridge to use up quickly, or the freezer for longer storage.  I rotate through canned goods pretty quickly, but I just didn't have the freezer space to keep storing broth and beans and so many other things like that.  So, I'm stoked!

black bean tempeh

I made my first batch of tempeh and it turned out pretty good.

I got my starter from Cultures for Health.  If I like it enough to keep making it, I'll probably order from a place with larger volume for less cost.

I asked my friend to send me some dry soybeans in a package she was already sending, as they aren't available in stores here and to order them is pretty expensive and a larger quantity than I wanted.  So she did ... except that she's not much of a bean person, and she though that garbanzo beans and soybeans are the same thing.  (I'm now canning a pound of garbanzos ...)

Sigh.

Garbanzo beans have pretty tough hulls that require an extra labor-intensive step, which I was not feeling up to, and so I reached for the black beans.  I use a lot of black beans in a lot of things.  Their hulls are soft and don't require the dehulling step.

I followed the seller's directions, along with some info on-line.  The big issue is incubation.  Tempeh wants to be kept at 87 degrees Fahrenheit for an extended period of time. My kitchen is generally 59 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's a big difference.

I followed one person's advice to use an Instant Pot.  I had been testing this method for awhile and found that it will hold temps at about that with some water in the bottom.   So, after soaking the beans for about 20 hours and then cooking them for about an hour and 15 minutes, I mixed in the vinegar and starter.  Stir it well.  Disperse it.

The instant pot is small and it was frustrating to figure out how to put all those beans in there.  I used two plastic ziploc sandwich bags with some holes poked in with a knife.  I had to rig up two shelves, and the bottom bag was considerably warmer, so I'd switch them every so often.

After 12 hours, the tempeh is to be making much of its own heat.  I didn't see that happen then, but at  18 hours the bottom bag was up to 98 degrees so I turned off the heat.  Three and a half hours later they were below the temp range so I turned it back on.  Then I got frustrated and rigged up a friend's clamp lamp in my oven, but that wasn't great either.  Just the oven light on with the door closed was too cool.  The lamp on made it too hot and one bag kept getting hotter than the other.  (It's a 60 watt incandescent bulb; a 40 might have worked better.)  

It was a lot of babysitting and adjusting temperatures and propping doors and all that, but then I finally saw some mycellium action which was a little exciting.  OK, super exciting.

At 46 hours, the tempeh was formed into blocks, the mycellium pretty solid.  I was keeping a close eye for sporulation, wanting that to start to let me know for sure it was done.  But, I needed to use my oven for something else, so I called time.  I let it cool to room temperature and into the fridge.

The next day I took it out to take to work to share with co-workers, and I noticed there was some light gray around the holes, telling me that I had actually pulled it at the right time and that the incubation had worked pretty well despite the temperatures ranging pretty far outside the optimal range.

I fried it in some butter and my co-workers called it fabulous.  

And then I looked up a better incubation method, and I ordered a proofer.  I don't really need it for baking bread (sourdough seems to rise fine in my cold kitchen), but I can also make yogurt in it which will be considerably nicer than the cooler method I'm using now (which always ends up in me splashing water all over).  And it folds up, so not much kitchen space taken, which is nice.


It started at 7 pm on Friday and I ended it at about 5 pm on Sunday.  A weekend of babysitting fungus.  At least it was pretty tasty.  Fresh tempeh is SO much better than store-bought, there's no comparison.