Word to your mother

A couple of weeks ago, I started myself on a gluten-free diet to see if it would help my persistent back pain. So far the only difference I've noticed is an increase in my cravings for sourdough bread and beer, but I'm sticking it out til Thanksgiving. Now, giving up gluten doesn't mean that I have to give up all things fermented, thankfully, and it's actually inspired me to try out some otherwise neglected food and drink items. Hot mulled cider with bourbon, for instance, which I had a mug of at Mothership last night. Shrubs with sparkling water. And kombucha.

Readers, if you've been following this blog for awhile, you may recall the first time I tried to make kombucha. It was, shall we say, not the most delightful thing to imbibe, and I may or may not have promptly deposited that kombucha "mother" directly into the compost bin along with its putrid liquid accompaniment. Perhaps, I thought, I was just not cut out for making this tart and fizzy health drink. And yet, another opportunity presented itself at the Alexandria Food Swap a few weeks ago and I couldn't resist. Armed with a new "mother" -- a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast), if you want to get technical about it -- I'd snagged, and some instructions from the kombucha swapper, Jen (I suppose you could call her the Mother of the mother), I decided to try my hand at this fermented beverage a second time. Lord knows it couldn't possibly taste worse than the first time.

I will concede that kombucha mothers are kind of strange, somewhat akin to what you might encounter in a mad scientist's laboratory. Kenton was totally weirded out when I showed him the gelatinous floating mass in the quart jar I had tucked into my cupboard and I've noticed he hasn't gone into that particular cabinet much the past few times he's been over. He did seem intrigued by my explanation of the unusual taste and the probiotic benefits to one's digestive tract, though, so I think he may be up for trying some when it's ready. Well, after I pre-taste this second version, made with blueberry acai tea and raw sugar.

Is it just me, or does my kombucha jar have a certain Middle Eastern flair? Maybe that's what was missing the first time around: a trendy headdress.... Lord knows this second attempt tastes better. I tried my first shot of it this morning before breakfast. Delicious. Word to my mother.

I'm brewing a batch of raspberry tea for batch #3 right now. Finally, a use for the fruity teas that I seem to acquire each holiday season!

Born to be wild

I can't help but gush about my favorite moment of today's Heritage Harvest Festival: meeting Sandor Katz -- the inspired author of "Wild Fermentation." I have blathered on about this book a few times on the blog, yes. Kim chi. Sourdough. Yoghurt. Pickles. Lebneh. Sauerkraut. If there is a fermentation bible, this book is it.

[Note: I generally turn my nose up at any cookbook that markets itself as any kind of "bible." The Bread Bible. The Cake Bible. Bah. This is the real deal... and there is no "bible" in the title. Though the author could probably walk on water. Or kombucha, rather. The man knows fermented foods, and any food lover I have ever met that has heard of his book loves it. And owns it, actually.]

I was skulking about the postcard section of the Monticello museum shop for a good 20 minutes before he showed up for a book signing, unescorted and unassuming in a plaid shirt. In spite of being a celebrity of sorts, Sandorkraut was really very personable and down to earth. We had a chance to chit chat for a bit before he signed my well-marked, dog-eared copy of the manifesto on food diversity and self-reliance. On the page with the kim chi recipe, of course. And then I overcame my natural shyness -- what, I am shy! -- to ask him to take a quick picture together. (Unlike that time I stood 3 feet from Michael Pollan, tongue-tied and blushing, at the Food For Thought Festival a few years ago. See? I've come a long way.)

Boy, oh, boy. Not only did I learn that Mr. Katz has a new book coming out -- more to learn, and likely more fermentation ideas to integrate into my own food education adventures around town -- but he'll be in DC this spring for a talk. I wonder if he'd like some of that wild-caught sourdough starter that I've been nurturing for about a year now. Is it weird for a fan to show up to a book talk with a jar of fermenting local yeast?

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Lactobacillus: your friend and mine

So apparently one can ferment just about anything. In fact, experimentation was encouraged by the fermentation workshop leaders at Common Good City Farm last week and in the book they so often cited, Sandor Katz's "Wild Fermentation" (which is now officially on the ibti wishlist).

Fermentation's easy. Basically, you just stick some veggies and whatever spices you want in a jar with salt water and let the naturally occurring lactobacillus on the surface of the produce do its thing. Salt keeps other kinds of bacteria from growing, and water on top keeps mold from forming below the surface. (I do believe I've talked about mold a bit already.....) Stay away from metal or plastic equipment -- so, in other words, stick to glass and enamel storage vessels (and wooden mashing implements if you're making sauerkraut or kimchi) -- and you're good.

So when I found myself with a pile of beet greens -- left over from five bunches of beets that Mike and Boris and I'd pickled and canned a few days prior -- and a bag of fresh cucumbers from my friend Liz over at the Ft. Totten garden, I got myself some jars and heavy flower vases and got cracking.

One can make kimchi from cabbage, so why not beet greens? (Also, I had to figure out what to do with the pile of greens before leaving for Chicago, and with no basil around and a shortage of walnuts, pesto was right out.) Into my sadly underutilized flower vase went some minced ginger and garlic, a few chopped scallions, and the chopped up greens from about 10 or 12 beets, some salt, a hot chili pepper from cousin Caroline (which reminds me: I need to do a little write-up on the Labor Day weekend trip to visit my dear cousin and help out at the Poconos garlic festival), and lots of sea salt. About 10 minutes of mashing with a wooden spoon and viola: Beet green kimchi! (Isn't it beautiful? I almost want to keep it out on the dinner table to impress friends and loved ones with my eye-pleasing culinary prowess.)

Phase 2 resulted in three jars of fermented cucumbers, featuring garlic (of course), scallions, whole peppercorns, salt water (roughly 1 tablespoon per 2 cups), dried dill weed (still unsuccessfully trying to locate dill *seed*), and some fresh parsley I was also needing to use up.

The key to crunchy pickles, I'd heard, was including a few leaves containing tannins. Yep, like the stuff in red wine. The best things to use are apparently grape leaves, but after a jaunt around Columbia Heights with Ollie, scouring my neighbors' yards for any sign of a grapevine, I returned home defeated. Actually, cherry, horseradish, oak, or currant leaves would also work, but I didn't read this until I got back with a handful of what I thought were perhaps some form of maple leaf and which I thought looked innocuous but potentially tannin laden. Don't worry, in the end I was too scared of accidentally poisoning someone to integrate them into the pickle mix. In fact, I discovered a grapevine in my friend Alicia's yard later that evening during a garden consultation and made my way giddily home with a mittful of leaves to crisp up my pickles.

My fermenting beet greens and cucumbers only had a day on the counter before they were tossed in the fridge yesterday morning -- I had to leave for a friend's wedding in Chicago this weekend (and, no, I didn't bike here this time, sadly) -- but I'm looking forward to some taste testing when I get back in about a week and a half. After a little detour to check out the burgeoning urban food scene in Detroit.

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Aw, just scrape the mold off, it'll be fine

I admit that I have myself uttered these very words (to myself, under my breath), usually in relation to a nice cheese that I'd lost track of in the fridge that I couldn't bear to throw out or, depending on how flat broke I was, stale bread that I would run under some water and then toast. (Now I just stick the hunk of stale bread at the bottom of a bowl of hot soup and pretend I'm French. Scraping any mold off first, of course. I mean, I have some standards.) The mold scraping is something I would only do in the privacy -- okay, the secrecy -- of my own kitchen, as mold on things is generally frowned upon and not something to admit to in public. (I would never serve mold-scraped food items to others, mind you.) But last week I attended my first workshop on fermenting foods at Common Good City Farm and wouldn't you know it, mold scraping one's food came up. Turns out it's nothing to be embarrassed about. (Whew!)

Now, in the case of homebrewing -- which I hope to undertake as soon as I get my hands on the remaining materials -- mold getting into things is cause for concern. But for fermented fruits and veggies, it seems, mold growth is quite common, especially in warmer temperatures, and its presence is no big deal. The key to mold prevention is to keep the fermenting produce under a layer of liquid -- usually brine (aka saltwater) -- "But if mold appears on the surface," our workshop leader, Bradley, smiled, "simply scrape it off and dig in. Everything's fine." Yep, skim off the mold and keep eating. Sounds kind of, I dunno, contrary to our modern, shiny, germaphobe culture. But who am I to judge? (The Ledroit Park folks likely already have us pegged as a bunch of dirt-loving, food-obsessed, activist hippies, which is not entirely off the mark.)

Bradley, and her capable co-leader, Dave, talked a group of us through the basics of fermentation: ingredients (produce + salt + water), equipment (glass or ceramic vase/jar + mashing implement), techniques (mashing + submerging + covering), things to watch out for (smells like dead rodent; otherwise ok). Then, after having us taste and discern between canned vs. fermented pickles, the pair demonstrated the process of making cucumber pickles and kimchi. The workshop concluded with the fermentation newbies making our own little take-home batches of kimchi using chinese cabbage, scallions, chili pepper, and minced garlic and ginger. And lots of salt and elbow grease. Mash, mash, mash, add salt, mash, add salt, mash.... If you mashed hard enough, and the produce was fresh enough, you wouldn't even need to add water. (Sounds like good stress relief to me!)

Ollie and I brought our first fermented food back to the apartment and I checked my little jar on the counter regularly for the next two days. (I think the worms were glad to be out of the spotlight for a couple of days, frankly.) When Mike and I tried the inaugural kimchi as part of yet another eclectic what's-in-ibti's-fridge dinner we agreed that it was pretty good. Hooray!

With this early success, you'd better believe I promptly got things together for my own lactobacillus experiments. Stay tuned for part two of fermentation madness....

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