FIJ Challenge: Sunchoke Kraut (A Jerusalem Artichoke Experiment)

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FIJ Challenge: Sunchoke Kraut (A Jerusalem Artichoke Experiment)

I’ve signed up to do the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge! You can learn more about it here. February’s challenge was preserving with salt, which is one of my favourite things. I hope to make a few recipes before the month is through! Today, however, I decided to try out an experiment, by fermenting a kraut made from sunchokes, the tuber also known as Jerusalem artichokes. 

My inspiration came from the simple fact that these showed up in my veggie box from Saanich Organics this week! And they didn’t make it into last night’s dinner. 

While a quick search turned up a couple blogs and websites with recipes for brined sunchoke pickles, I saw nothing about turning it into a simple salt-and-shredded-tuber kraut. So, I have no idea how this will turn out. Fun!

I decided to go with a 3% salinity, for the ease of math and because my house is so cold at this time of year that I don’t worry about mold growing. If it were summer, I’d likely bump that up to 5% or so, just to reduce the chances of gross stuff growing. 

 

It didn’t look too appealing once I’d packed it into the jar, frankly… The brine that developed was an unpleasant colour. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how this goes.


Sunchoke Kraut

300 g sunchokes, shredded (2 cups)

10 g coarse pickling salt (1 1/2 teaspoons)

Mix sunchokes with salt and pack firmly into a fermentation vessel; I used a mason jar with an airlock lid. Let sit at room temperature for at least a week… Maybe more? Stay tuned!

FIJ Challenge: Orange Peach Marmalade

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I’ve signed up to do the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge! You can learn more about it here. January’s challenge was to make marmalade, and I was happy to have this excuse to stretch my skills… I haven’t made marmalade since I tried putting up a carrot and lemon type about 14 years ago! At that time, I was new to canning on my own, and the peels were tough, so I never went near the stuff again.  But! I really like marmalade. 


My local grocery store had organic oranges on sale, of unknown variety, and I combined them with some of the organic peaches I froze back in the summer. The recipe I used as a guide was Marisa’s strawberry lemon marmalade from Simple Bites. 


I used 1 pound of oranges (3 fruits), 1 pound of sliced and peeled peaches, and a pound of sugar. It took a long time to thicken up; I think next time, I shouldn’t add the two cups of water, and just let the juice from the peaches soften the orange peel. 


The set is a bit soft, but the flavour is DELICIOUS. I left the peels in rather thick slices, yet they are nice and tender. The only other thing I’d change is maybe reduce the sugar, and/or add some lemon juice for a bit of a fresher taste.

How I Make Kombucha

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How I Make Kombucha

I recently learned that my partner has been enjoying the kombucha on tap at a local holistic health clinic. She’d previously not liked my home brewed version, but has now asked that I make some for her in our kitchen. Gladly!

My kombucha is a bit neglected, as I drink it only every once in a while. I generally just let it sit on the kitchen counter, where it becomes more and more acidic. It lives in a 2 litre glass jar, with a cotton cloth cover held on by an elastic band. I was playing with cutting shapes from the SCOBY a while back, and threw all the scraps back in to the jar, so it looks a bit funny: No clear SCOBY mother and baby to be seen here!


My kombucha recipe is simple: 2 cups of boiling water, 3 bags of plain black tea, and 3 tablespoons of sugar.


I let that steep for 20 minutes or so, remove the tea bags, then stir in 3 cups of cold tap water. This goes into my 2 litre glass jar, along with at least a small layer or piece of SCOBY and 1 cup of kombucha from the previous batch. Usually I just leave the entire existing SCOBY in the jar, unless it’s grown to an inconvenient size. I once had one fill an entire 1 litre jar! 


Here is some strong sweet tea, before diluting with cold water. I’ve used this same method with green tea, honey, organic sugar, etc. All are nice variations. 


This batch, I’ll let ferment on the kitchen counter for a week, then bottle it with a little dried fruit so that it has extra flavour and carbonation. 


I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Navy Bean Miso

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I had cooked beans leftover from a class on pressure canning that I taught yesterday, so this morning I turned them into miso. I used the basic recipe from Timogarden; looking forward to trying this in a couple years! Koji rice was from my local Fujiya grocery store; easier to buy it frozen than to inoculate my own. 

Surprise! Perry, cider made from pears

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Unintentional perry! On Monday I ran a batch of overripe pears through my steam juicer, then left the full jars of juice on the counter until I had time to do something with them. I guess this one jar wasn’t as clean as was intended, because I just opened it to a delightful popping sound, and discovered I had a litre of a delicious, fizzy, lightly boozy beverage! I’d intended to throw all the juice into a small carboy with a bit of champagne yeast anyway, so it’s nice to have a preview 😉

Tomatillo time!

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Tomatillo time!


I bought several pounds of tomatillos from a farmer friend, and prepped them for preserving. Usually I’d ferment some, but I had the right amount to make a few batches of my favourite canned salsa, so they all went into that instead.


 I use Ziedrich’s recipe from The Joy of Pickling, omitting the hot peppers, using lemon juice instead of lime, and adding a bit of dried chili flakes. 


I also saved a spoonful or so of seeds, because this plant grows very well in our climate and my love for salsa verde is quite deep!


The soil in my garden is pretty poor, and my tomatoes were an utter failure this year… But hopefully I can get the ground healthy enough for at least a small crop of tomatillos next summer. 

I-hate-fennel Fennel Pickles

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I hate fennel. Love licorice, love ouzo, loooove sambuca… But an anise-flavoured vegetable? No thanks. 

As the recipient of a CSA box, however, I find myself with a couple bulbs of fennel at least once a summer, and am always looking for things to do with them. Sometimes I give them away… And sometimes, to be perfectly honest, I let them get so sad and gross that they go straight from the fridge into the compost. 

But a couple weeks ago, when faced with two small fennel bulbs and no space in the fridge to continue to hide them, I did what I often do with random veggies: Chopped them up, added other flavours and some salt, and let it ferment.

Today I tasted my concoction and am so thrilled with it! It’s a delicious savoury pickle, with a hint of anise but mostly just salty and sour.

The lime gives it a kick of summer; I’ll eat this with tortilla chips, like a salsa. 

I-hate-fennel Fennel Pickles

  • 2 cups chopped fennel
  • 3/4 cup chopped sweet onion
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons minced scapes or garlic
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons pickling salt
  • Water to cover

Combine everything expect the water and mix well. Place in fermentation vessel of your choice; I used a 500 mL glass canning jar with an airlock lid. Add water until veggies are just covered, poking with a chopstick to get out the air bubbles. Cover and let ferment at room temperature for 1-2 weeks, or until action in airlock stops. Store in a cool place.