Recipes Archives -

FIJ Challenge: Sunchoke Kraut (A Jerusalem Artichoke Experiment)

Posted by Lindsay on February 12, 2017

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!

How I Make Kombucha

Posted by Lindsay on November 2, 2016

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.

Fermented Fennel and Lemon Pickle

Posted by Lindsay on November 8, 2015

I love our weekly delivery of local fruits and vegetables from Saanich Organics, through their box program. As a consumer, I love that it’s an easy way to access healthy food… And I appreciate being able to support regional agriculture and contribute to the both the environmental and economic health of my community. I’m also a former employee of a couple of the farms involved, so I know from first hand experience that I’m buying high quality produce.

What don’t I like about receiving the box? Well, the way it works, I get what I get (and I don’t get upset). And frankly, I just am not a huge fan of some veg. I’ll eat them anyway, because most things can taste okay when roasted with a bit of olive oil, salt, and garlic (or scape salt!)… But would likely never go out of my way to buy endive or escarole.

Or, for that matter, fennel.

So sometimes, there are bits that linger in the fridge for a week or three. And if more of that vegetable shows up in the next box, it joins its friends, and eventually I have four wilting fennel bulbs.

What to do? Fermentation experimentation, of course! I liked the look of the first recipe that I found when searching online for what others have done with fermenting fennel, from MoonBrine Pickles in Portland, Oregon… So that’s what I’ve played with here. I didn’t have any celery or “nice” onions, but this pickle still tasted great when I was mixing it up… I can’t wait to see how it is in several weeks.

Fermented Fennel and Lemon Pickle

yields ~ 1.5 litres

473 g fennel bulbs (I had 2 small, 2 tiny)
273 g onion (1 medium)
1 lemon (medium, organic)
5 small garlic cloves
230 g carrots (3 medium)
1 tbsp black peppercorns
50 g coarse pickling salt*
approx. 2 cups water

Thinly slice the fennel, onion, lemon, and garlic. For the carrot, I decided to try out the wavy blade on a kitchen tool my parents brought me back from Vietnam; you could just thinly slice that too.

Add the salt and stir to combine. You’ll see that the salt dissolves a bit, and pulls juices out of the vegetables… Neat!

Pack loosely into a large jar or crock. I’m using a 1.9 L wide mouth canning jar.

Add water just to cover, put a solid lid on jar, and shake to distribute water and help the remaining salt to dissolve to make the brine. Turn upright and tap jar gently on a surface so that the vegetables settle.

Replace solid lid with airlock lid, or follow your preferred fermentation set-up.

I ended up needing 2 cups of water; you may need more or less, to ensure your vegetables are submerged. This isn’t as crucial if you’re using an airlock lid or fermenting in a Fido-style container, as the jar is sealed from outside bacteria/yeasts/air. However, if you’re doing a open ferment (ie. not sealed), it’s crucial you have enough brine so that when you add a weight, the vegetables are submerged below the surface.

Let ferment at room temperature for a few weeks. It’s pretty cold in my house most the time right now, so I’ll probably taste this in 3 weeks.

* I weighed all the vegetables and it came to around 1000 g. As I’ve problems with lemons turning mouldy in the past, I decided I’d like a stronger salt brine than I usually use, and went with 5%. Multiplying 1000 g by 0.05 gives me 50g of salt… And when I used a teaspoon to measure this out onto the scale, it turned out to be 8 teaspoons, which is exactly what the original MoonBrine recipe called for! Go figure.

Les fleurs d’ail salées (Salted Garlic Scapes)

Posted by Lindsay on June 10, 2015

I had heard of herbes salées, but never made it until last summer, when a recipe for this salted herb and vegetable condiment showed up in my email, as one to be tested for a cook book. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but diligently followed the instructions and then filled out my feedback form. I was working at a local organic farm a few days a week, so had access to plenty of extra imperfect produce… Grinding it up and mixing with salt seemed like as good an idea as any, for making use of what couldn’t be sold at the market.

That jar sat on the counter for a few days, then went into the fridge, and after a month or so I remembered it and sprinkled a bit of the mixture onto some mushrooms frying in olive oil, in place of regular salt.

Well.

Wow.

It was delicious. The flavours of the different herbs and vegetables had all melded, into a smooth but vibrant seasoning that complimented the mushrooms perfectly. I soon found that herbes salées was a fantastic addition to just about every savoury dish, especially the vegetarian fare that we eat most of the time at our house: Roasted vegetables, egg dishes, beans and rice, hearty soups. Even my spouse, who is often very (judiciously) wary of the jars of experimental foods that crowd our fridge, was seeking it out… That’s a win.

Unfortunately, I can’t share that recipe with you, as it’s not mine… Though of course I’ll tell you when the cookbook it’s in is published.

However! Since that first jar, I’ve made many versions of herbes salées, using a general rule of a 2:1 ratio by weight, of herbs/vegetables to salt.

Here is my latest, a tribute to one of my favourite seasonal treats, garlic scapes.

Les fleurs d’ail salées (Salted Garlic Scapes)

Yields ~3/4 cup

100g garlic scapes (I used 5 scapes)

50g coarse pickling salt

Slice scapes roughly, then run through a meat grinder or pulse in a food processor until finely minced.

Combine with salt and mix thoroughly with a spoon.

Pack into a clean jar, and cover with clean lid.

If your home is relatively cool, this will last a month or more on the counter; I keep mine in the fridge, as my place is rather hot these days. This recipe is simple to scale up! When I make larger batches, I store the jars in the basement, on the cold concrete floor.

What’s that jar? This is a Le Parfait brand, wire bail jar with a rubber seal (style/size: Terrine 200). I was lucky to find it a thrift store for a dollar, in like-new condition!

Micro-Batch Mustard Ruby Kraut: Recipe & Photo Tutorial

Posted by Lindsay on November 28, 2014

Look at the layers in this head of red cabbage! Like contour lines on a map… So perfect… Almost as perfect as a good kraut!

Micro-Batch Mustard Ruby Kraut

2 Cups finely sliced red cabbage (I used about 1⁄8 of a head)

1 teaspoon pickling salt

1 teaspoon red mustard seeds

A few splashes of dechlorinated water

Finely sliced red cabbage – If you have a mandolin or other cabbage shredding device, use that! I made do with a sharp knife.

Two cups of sliced cabbage, ready to go

The cabbage in a large bowl, with room for mixing

Add 1 teaspoon of coarse pickling salt

Add a teaspoon of red mustard seeds

Now mix with a clean hand…

Mixing…

Still mixing…

The cabbage is releasing juice!

Pack the mixture into a clean, 500 mL glass canning jar

Don`t forget the juice

Press it down, to see if there`s enough liquid to cover the cabbage… Not quite enough

This is dechlorinated water: Tap water that was boiled and left to cool on the counter… It works well for fermenting, though it likely still contains chloramine

Pour in a little bit of the water, just to cover cabbage

Just enough liquid to cover the cabbage!

Fermentation lid, ready to go: 3-piece airlock, plastic lid with grommet, rubber ring, metal ring

Fit the 3-piece airlock snugly into the grommet in the plastic lid

Place the rubber ring on the lip of the jar

The lid fits onto the jar next

Then the metal ring screws down and holds the lid securely on the jar

Remove the cap from the airlock, and add water up to the fill line, then replace cap

Don`t forget to label your ferment! Name and date, please

Now the hard part… Waiting. Maybe a week, probably four!