Herbed, garlicky kefir cheese spread makes for a lovely spring snack.

So I’m hoping your kefir fermented too quickly due to your slacker nature or the rising temperatures throwing you off your ferment game a bit.  Not because I’m a meany.  I just want you to make the kefir cheese I wrote about last week.  And then I want you to appreciate the beauty and the bounty of spring herbs, and make this garlic and fine herbs spread.  Your veggies and thin slices of sourdough toast will thank you.

There is about an inch of dirt left in this parsley container.  Even in the city, if you have so much as a patch of light, grow your own herbs! They are simple to grow, WAY cheaper than store-bought and provide tons of flavor variety to meals.

These chives have been resurrecting for several years now. Not sure how much longer they’ll live in that container, but they are slender and gorgeous.

I think I discovered Boursin in college.  In fact I’m pretty sure that’s true, because I remember being really mad at the ninja who somehow snuck in to my refrigerator and at half a container of it before I even got a cracker’s worth (even though it was clearly labeled with a magic marker A-M-A-N-D-A and all my roommates knew I wouldn’t be able to splurge on another one for weeks, at least).  Ahhh, college.  Or maybe argh, college.  I am so glad not to live in a house with tons of people and a matching amount of drama.  Had my drama-seeking, 20-year-old self been aware that I could make my own healthier, cheaper, tastier, tangier, preservative- and packaging-free version, I’m pretty sure I would have skipped a choir practice or two to track down some kefir grains.  But you need not be a poor college student to appreciate how good this tastes.   It is, as promised, my favorite way to use kefir cheese.

You can substitute any herbs you have on hand, but this is my favorite combination.

Start here. Finish satisfied.

Garlic and Herbes Fines Spreadable Kefir Cheese

Makes a hearty afternoon snack for 2, spread on cucumber slices, radish slices or toasts.  Makes a great dip for carrot sticks, too.

3 T kefir cheese, strained to solid, but spreadable thickness

3 cloves garlic, roasted whole, peeled and mashed or chopped

1 t chives, finely chopped

1.5 T parsley, finely chopped

1 T fresh oregano, finely chopped

salt to taste (I use a small pinch)

small pinch pepper

This post is part of a series on cheese.  We’ll do some how-tos for stuff you can reasonably make at home and visit some local spots around Philly for great cheese.  I’ll also share a few personal memories about cheese.  Of all the ferments I love, cheese is definitely the one to which I’m most viscerally connected.  I hope you enjoy my flights of sensory memory.  Vegan and paleo readers: do not despair!  I’ll be featuring a how-to you can love soon!

So this is kefir in cheesecloth hanging from the fig tree in my “yard.” There are lots of ways to do this. Outside in the sun isn’t the best, but it was fun to look at.

The first time I remember straining my own cheese, it was yogurt cheese intended to mimic cream cheese and I made during one of the sadly numerous phases of my early adulthood when I let a crazy book or trend dictate my diet.  In that case it was Dean Ornish’s diet that was intended to cut out just about every ounce of dietary fat.  What can I say?  I’m American.  We aren’t known for our healthy relationship to food.  While that no-fat diet went the way of many other wacky diet plans, yogurt cheese stayed with me.  I actually liked it, and not because I could make it from the grossest of the store-bought, fat-free, gum-filled yogurts.

You can totally make the yogurt cheese described above using this very process, and if that is your bag, go forth and enjoy.  My favorite strained cheese, though, is kefir cheese.  I kind of gleek every time I write the words.  This is basically the easiest possible thing you can do that can be reasonably identified as cheese.  There are several really great things about kefir cheese.  You continue to get all of the health benefits provided by the good bacteria in liquid kefir.  It takes nearly no effort to make and it’s a great way to use that kefir you let sit just a touch too long.  You know when it’s a little too bubbly and the whey has massively separated from the kefir?  It is also a very versatile creature.  By adjusting only the amount of time you let it strain, you can end up with several very different products.

A little off topic, but I’d like you to meet Grainy Smith Apple. She will fill the palm of your hand.

A few hours straining time will yeild a spoonable kefir that closely approximates thick yogurt.  A little longer, and you have something spreadable, like a cream cheese or boursin (more on that later this week), if you let it go for a 18-24 hours, you’ll end up with a crumbly texture, along the lines of a pre-crumbled, dry-packed feta.  I know that isn’t the most appetizing comparison, but it’s just a texture reference.  The flavor of this guy is tangy and complex and it is decidedly not processed in a huge, sterile factory.  I’ll share my favorite way to eat kefir cheese with you later this week.

The other benefit to making kefir cheese is the by-product.  If you start with a large amount of kefir, you may be surprised by the relatively small amount of cheese you end up with. I would say you’ll get a reduction of about 75% or more.   Don’t throw away that liquid, though!  That, my friends, is whey.  If you want a vigorous, or more vigorous, fermentation of just about anything, from pickles to carrot juice, throw a bit of that liquid into it and your ferment will be bursting with bubbles in no time!

Kefir Cheese

I’m sharing my process with you here, and an alternative below.  You can be creative and resourceful and use things you already have in your home for the straining stuff.  I guarantee you, you can find a way even if you don’t have cupboards or a handy tree branch.

Use what you got. I got a wrench, a chip clip and some cheese. Sorry about the black and white. I got too arty on Instagram and I can’t find the original.

Yields a scant 1/2 cup of kefir cheese

Equipment

• A 2 foot squared piece of butter muslin or cheesecloth that has a narrow enough weave to hold liquid (I just fold to double or quadruple if necessary)
• Twine or string or a rubberband or a clip
• A bowl to catch your whey
• Something to hang your kefir bundle from (shelf, cupboard handle, tree branch, etc.)
• A fine mesh strainer

Homogenized kefir poured into a strainer lined with cheesecloth will get things started.

If you want to remove grains and strain just in a mesh strainer, you can do it. You just need to let your kefir ferment for too long and be prepared to lose some grains. If your grains are all huge, you’re fine. If not, some of those little bits will definitely be too difficult to remove this way.

 

This post is part of a series on cheese.  We’ll do some how-tos for stuff you can reasonably make at home and visit some local spots around Philly for great cheese.  I’ll also share a few personal memories about cheese.  Of all the ferments I love, cheese is definitely the one to which I’m most viscerally connected.  I hope you enjoy my flights of sensory memory.  Vegan and paleo readers: do not despair!  I’ll be featuring a how-to you can love soon!

Our Pairings: Chiriboga Blue with stuffed cucumber kimchi, Pantaleo with water kimchi and Hudson Red with spicy kimchi. Oops, I salivated on my keyboard. Photo courtesy of Tenaya Darlington.

During the Science Festival, I had a fantastic time at Kimcheese, an event that featured some amazing cheeses paired with my homemade kimchis.  These two ferments seem to love  each other, and these particular pairings were fantastic thanks to the expertise of one Madame Fromage (whose book came out on Tuesday) and  the ever-awesome DiBruno Bros. Our event featured a packed house and a super friendly and excited group of people who consumed an ENORMOUS amount of kimchi.  I was proud.

There are few places in Philly that I love more than DiBruno Bros, and it was really exciting and special for me to be able to do an event there.  I will cop to spending too much of both my financial and caloric budgets at their Italian Market location, simply because it’s a wonderful, wonderful place, full of cheeses made with great care.   I sometimes step in to DiBruno Bros. and Claudio’s mozzarella on my way up and down the market just to inhale the powerful aroma that permeates those shops.  But my delight in cheese started long before we moved to the Italian Market.  It actually shares an origin with my first true love: France.

When I was a young’un, I spent some summers in a little town on the Garonne river, in southwestern France, not far from Toulouse.  True to stereotype, my French host mother was just about the world’s best cook.  Even better than that, my host family was of the sort that wanted to give me maximum cultural exposure.  I got to take trips around the country with them and experience many hysterical moments featuring the formerly unknown bidet and fun with false cognates such as “préservatif.”  No French cultural education is complete without literature (I learned the subjunctive with the help of my host mother and certain novels whose main character was small town life in Southern France) and most importantly, food.  They basically adopted me those summers and since they were good and wise, they knew that cheese was an essential part of my education, if I were to become a truly French child.  I’m not discounting the bread, crêpes, wine  or even the somehow superior crudités that they fed me, but since we’re talking cheese this week, that’s where I’ll start.  They brought cheeses home for tasting on a regular basis for my culture générale, of course.  They fed me breakfasts of croissants, fromage blanc, tartine au beurre and giant bowls of chocolat chaud (why are they thin again?).  They were responsible for hooking me on the chèvre chaud (dressed greens topped with broiled goat cheese on tiny toasts), still one of the first things I grab for lunch when I’m in France.  Birthday dinners outside by the pool featured the first actual cheese trays I would ever experience and on one memorable trip to French Basque Country, we were told to spread jam on slices of a hard, salty cheese.  My host family was not crazy about this combo, but as the American palate loves sweet and salty together, I ate it all up. To this day, I occasionally enjoy a touch of homemade jam on certain hard cheeses.

My host mother was kind of awesome.  She was highly educated (both host parents were trained as dental surgeons) in the rigorous French school system and vivacious, but the bulk of the days I spent with her  were in the kitchen.  I’ve tried unsuccessfully for years to recreate her plum clafoutis, made with plums freshly plucked from the tree near the river on the far side of the yard.  I think I finally nailed her roasted sweet peppers after nearly two decades trying but there is no way I could ever recreate the vast majority of the amazing flavors she provided in every meal, every day.

To get to the kitchen, we first had to hit the shops.  They had a giant Carrefour grocery store, where we did a lot of shopping (sorry I can’t be more romantic there).  It was the trips to the butcher, the cheesemonger and the bread bakery that awed me.  Perhaps awed isn’t the right way to describe the butcher trips.  SUPER FREAKED OUT is more like it.  I can remember being 14, already a vegetarian for five years and staring up at a ceiling hung with plucked, whole chickens, their creepy dinosaur fingers pointed skyward, and what was probably some extremely pricey and flavorful cured sausage, hung low enough to hit this tall American in the forehead.  Let’s be honest: I now know that room temperature sausage and whole chickens are much preferable to styrofoam packages of select chicken parts and Oscar Meyer wieners.  Then, however, it was really gross and scary and made me glad I wasn’t partaking.  I felt no disgust at the cheese counter, however.  I can’t remember every cheese I tried during those summers, but I do remember my host family trying to explain the concept of AOC to me while we ate some Roquefort or Ossau-Iraty.  They scoffed at American sanitary insanity while explaining that if I wanted to take home one of my beloved raw milk cheeses, I’d have to surround them in sanitary napkins to deter the customs agents. This was done on more than one trip.  In retrospect it is hilarious that, as a young teen, I was being incited to break the law by some very upstanding French citizens.  Of course, they had it right.  When the law is idiotic, citizens must rebel!

I was only there during summers, and we had every meal outdoors, under a giant (mimosa?) tree feet from the refreshing swimming pool and yards from the gurgling river.  I’m sure the weather must have been bad enough to eat inside at some point, but I can only remember the sunny days and they joy of being in France.  Often times, after lunch, my host mom would sit with me by the pool and talk me through the novels of Marcel Pagnol.  Occasionally, if my dream-worthy host brother was going windsurfing or my dear host sister was taking a scuba-diving exam, we would head a few hours away, to Biarritz or the Mediterranean, passing the incredibly impressive, reconstructed Carcassone castle on the way.

These memories are dear to me.  Despite (and I’m generalizing) an unhappy attitude towards vegetarians in France, I’ve eaten many of the best meals of my life in there, and most of those Chez Zilberman.  It is impossible for me to experience those memories any way but very fondly, and it is impossible disconnect my memories of those summers in France from the food.

Returning to the States at the end of those summers, I experienced a pattern that would repeat itself upon arrival from Europe in subsequent years; the cheeses in my parents’ fridge just didn’t taste like anything. Suddenly, the Kraft mac ‘n’ cheese I had so adored making with my sister on half days felt slippery and flavorless on my tongue.  Kraft singles were merely rubber and the pre-shredded cheddar and “Mexican” cheeses I would throw on flour tortillas for a favorite and thoroughly unhealthy snack were bland as can be.  There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it in metro Detroit in the early 90s.  Undoubtedly someone in the area was importing and selling the cheeses I desired, but it wasn’t anywhere my family shopped.   The re-dulling of my taste buds happened naturally and slowly over time, the way memory fades, until a touch of parmesan from the shaker on top of my mac ‘n’ cheese was good enough again.

For the next several posts, I’m going to be focusing on cheese!  We’ll do some how-tos for stuff you can reasonably make at home and visit some local spots around Philly for great cheese.  I’ll also share a few personal memories about my attachment to cheese.  Of all the ferments I love, cheese is definitely the one to which I’m most viscerally connected.  I hope you enjoy my flights of sensory memory.  Vegan and paleo readers: do not despair!  I’ll be featuring a how-to you can love soon!

Can you say Mother’s Day points?

Here in Philly it is glorious outside.  The cherry blossoms are blooming, my seedlings are measurable in inches rather than centimeters and my neighbors have once again set up their lawn chairs on our tiny street, glaring at cars that dare to drive past; all sure signs that spring is truly, finally upon us.

Now normally, when I think spring, I admit I am not the first to think flowers.  I’m just not an aesthetics person, and despite my best efforts, I doubt I ever will be.  Also, living in the city and having a garden compromised solely of containers mean that real eastate is at a premium.  If you give me the choice of using my limited space for fermentables or prettifiers, I will always choose the former.  At least I would have.  Reading Gayla Trail’s books and discovering just how many flowers I could grow and then eat, I got more excited.  Then I heard about a cookbook that is centered around cooking with flowers (it’s actually called Cooking With Flowers, written by Miche Bacher) and I decided to spend a decent portion of this year’s seed budget on edible flowers.

I was watching Treme when I planted these last fall, thus the color selection, I guess.

Nothing is really flowering yet, except for the pansies that I planted in my four-seasons container last fall, which survived the winter and came back looking beautifully prolific.  Lucky for me, Cooking With Flowers has a whole pansy chapter for me to explore before my dianthus, calendula, lavender, violets and other edible blooms start growing faces.   The first recipe that caught my eye there were Bacher’s pansy pancakes.  They are actually crêpes and I’ve been looking for an occasion to give you guys my sourdough almost-crêpe recipe, so you can find my take on flower crêpes below.

I think this book is fabulous.  It is gorgeously photographed by Brooklyn photographer Miana Jun.  I am prone to hyperbolic adjectives, but it is no exaggeration to call this book beautiful (make sure you take off the book jacket for an unexpected eyeful of pretty).  The instructions are very clear and the breakdown of info on each type of flower and the ways to use it are very useful.  I think you’ll be surprised and excited by all the flowers you never knew you could eat.  If you’re looking to impress your friends at a dinner party, I promise you’ll find some serious stunners in this book (lavender ice cream served in a tulip cup, anyone?).  There are also great resources for finding seeds to plant your own flowers or fresh flowers suitable for eating.  I got my flower seeds here and here.  Be aware that many you’ll find at the florist are sprayed with pesticides that render them unsuitable for consumption.  Generally speaking, you want organic flowers.

The first time I cracked the spine of this book, I found myself looking at a ferment recipe (more on that soon) so it’s basically fate for me to have this one in my hands.  You, too, could have this one in your hands, since the publisher Quirk Books kindly gave me two copies of this book: one for me and one for you.  All you have to do to get flower and flour on your hands is to leave a comment, telling me what you’ve planted in your garden this year or what you want to plant.

Rinse your petals thoroughly. And don’t forget to buy or grow organic!

Recipe – Whole Wheat Flowerdough Crêpes

Adapted from the Pansy Petal Pancakes in Miche Bacher’s Cooking With Flowers

All you sourdough makers know that inevitably you are left with extra starter.  I usually keep mine in the fridge until I have enough to make a double or triple batch of these or my cardamom waffles.  Crêpe batter is typically made the night before and given time to rest (a very brief fridge fermentation which is less necessary when you’re using starter), and mine are no exception.  Yes, they work perfectly fine when made immediately, if you prefer to do it that way.  I like to rest the batter because then I can wake up to a clean kitchen and start pouring right into the pan for those times when guests might be giving my kitchen the white glove test (aka Mother’s Day).  Also, note that I am using dormant starter.  You can use active starter if you prefer, but I find this to be a great way to use up excess, dormant starter.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sourdough starter
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/4 cups milk (I use unsweetened almond, you can use whatever you like, from dairy to soy)
• 3 tablespoons melted butter (you can sub oil)
• 3 large eggs
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup of sugar (optional)
• 20 pansy flowers, divided.  Your best bet is to harvest these in the morning when they’ll be at their dewy peak.
• Oil or butter for cooking

Pansy Pan

I freeze these between sheets of wax paper, then stick them in a plastic ziploc bag or large, flat pyrex.  They keep very well for up to 3 months and are always appreciated by my husband when he can toss one in the toaster oven just before leaving the house.

Quirk Books kindly provided me with two books.  One for me and one for the winner of this contest.  Although I got these for free, the opinions are my own!

1. Contest is open to residents of the continental United States.
2. To enter, leave a comment with what you’re growing or what you want to grow in your garden this year.
3. Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Tuesday, May 7, 2013.
4. One comment per person, please.
5. For an additional entry, tweet a link to this post (with your own comment) and the hash tag #phickleflowers

Bubbling up to the top. What happens when kimchi leaks out and then dries up overnight. We needed to paint anyway, I guess. The goods before they betrayed me.

I think a lot about why I ferment, and why I really want other people to at least try it.  The science is pretty compelling.  Don’t take my word for it, though, buy The Art of Fermentation.  Although there is much more to be studied in the realm of the benefits of fermentation, Sandor Katz does an excellent job of combing through the data that is there and breaking it down for non-scienctist readers.  There’s no question that health was the thing that first got me interested in fermentation.  But there are other things that have kept me going and those are the things that incited me to write this blog, hoping to get other people interested or at least to give them guidance and support during their fermentation exploration.

Tonight, though, it is the sounds of fermentation that have me enamored.  I’m prepping inordinate amounts of kimchi for a few different Science Festival events, which means I have gallon-sized, swingtop jars, half-gallon Ball jars and my crock all full to capacity and sitting on my table.  The smells (wonderful, in my view) are for another post.  The sounds tonight are honestly reminding me of a night spent under a mosquito net in primary Amazon rainforest.  In the pitch black, it was clear that there was life all around me.  Now, laying on my couch in the heart of the city, I can hear my ginger bug bubbling in its bowl, like the slow sizzle of a frying pan. Something, I can’t figure out what, sounds exactly like a game of space invaders being played by a neighbor a few doors down. My crock evokes a lone fish, breathing just underneath the surface of the water, its breath breaking the surface in a small “bloop” every few minutes as the gases created during fermentation are gently expelled  through the water seal.  Even my mistakes and shortcomings as a fermenter result in gorgeous sounds.  I filled my Fido and LeParfait jars too full, so in these early days of vigorous fermentation they hiss and glub like a snake near a stream as the excess liquid is pushed from beneath the gaskets onto the plates below the jars and sadly, one night, also onto my floors and walls.  I never intended to make a kimchi slip ‘n’ slide, but I can now claim to have invented it, maybe.

Fermentation is a sensory experience.  The smells, the sounds, the feel, the look and certainly the taste are all comforting and habit-forming.  These are the things that connect us to our food; the things that, to me, make those foods that are processed and manufactured and perfectly assembled by machines in legally sterilized environments so much less enticing.  Big stainless steel vats can never make a product that will compare to the drip, drop, hiss and bloop that makes my home sound like home.

Don’t throw up on me for waxing poetic.  I’m tired and covered in gochugaru and my fermentation love is real.

Note: I wrote this last week, during the wonderful Science Festival.  The festival ended on Sunday.  It was a great time!

The blood of the kimchi forcibly taken will resurrect your brunch

April is festival month in Philly, so much so that you want to scream (if all that event-going has left you with functioning vocal chords) at riches so abundant, you can only attend 1/15th of the events you’d like to attend.  We are currently in the midst of PIFA, Philly Tech Week, the Philadelphia Science Festival and the Free Library’s Book Festival just ended.  Since all of these festivals surround particular areas of interest to me, I tend to get overwhelmed this time of year.  Add to that my ridiculously busy work period and a large number of (lovely, wonderful, beloved) houseguests and you have brain mayhem.  So what I’m saying is, I’m really sorry I didn’t post last week.  I was just barely keeping my nostrils and eyeballs above the ever-rising water level. But I’m back!

Last Thursday night was the kickoff of the Philadelphia Science Festival.  It was a pretty incredible night.  It took place at the giant, maker, coworking space called NextFab, and it was loaded with awesome.  I didn’t have a whole lot of time to wander since I was frantically pouring and gabbing, but my initial glance around revealed Little Baby’s slingin’ cream, a table where one could give herself dragon smoke breath (better than the kind I wake up with), 3D printers galore, virtual reality simulators, an insane honey tasting, machines that used high pressure water to cut steel (I think), lots and lots of food and drink and SO many more things.  It was aptly named a carnival for adults.

My voice was gone the whole weekend, a result of me yelling about lactic acid bacteria over speakers playing the awesome jams of Chipocrite.  I poured two cocktails, my Bloody Carrie and a new addition, the Bloody Kim (recipe follows).  Turns out booze is a draw for Philadelphians.  Who knew?  I had long lines at my table all night, and if it hadn’t been for the help of my husband and a dear, old friend who was visiting, I would have seen the oft-discussed forest of weeds shoot up around me almost immediately.  So thanks to those folks, because it was pretty kickass to talk ferments in such a bustling environment to such an enthusiastic (see also: buzzed) crowd of young people.

A crowd of people observe the bizarre hand motions of some bacteria-obsessed lady

Both of the cocktails I poured are intended to mimic the Bloody Mary, in the sense that they are pickled liquids added to booze.  The Bloody Kim was far more popular than the Bloody Carrie. This was slightly depressing, since it took me basically a whole day to juice the 7 gallons of carrot juice I fermented for this event.  Nonetheless, it was a great time with great people!

If you missed the Carnival After Dark, there are still plenty of food and fermentation events you can attend at the Science Festival.  Among those events is Kimcheese, in which the illustrious author, writer and cheese expert, Madame Fromage, and I pair some of our favorite ferments for your tasting delight.  These cheeses are knockouts, and I promise you a unique and delicious flavor experience and a mini kimchi-making demo!  The event will take place at DiBruno Bros. Rittenhouse location and it starts at 6pm.  Tickets are available through the Kimcheese link above.

The Bloody Kim Cocktail

Completely scalable to your number of guests, I just made it for 500

You can use leftover juice from store bought kimchi, if that’s your bag, but I find that homemade kimchi produces a lot more juice than you ever get at the store.

Ingredients:

• 1 part kimchi liquid
• 1 part vodka, chilled
• 5 parts tomato juice

Optional Garnish:

• A scallion, skewered vertically and a clove of lactofermented garlic on top

How to:

1. Thoroughly mix together all ingredients
2. Add garnish
3. Drink up

Complex sunshine in a jar

When I was working on another preserved citrus recipe recently, I was trying to find the right words to describe the flavor of these complex little packets of sunshine.  My brain stumbled on “a salty lemon curd without the texture.”  Super eloquent and succinct, I know.  My faulty wordsmithing notwithstanding, I did really think it hit the nail on the head.  And then I thought how much preserved lemon curd would hit the spot.  And then I thought about the fact that I also have preserved limes.  And then I ran into my kitchen.

I am not a big baker, but I do make macarons every so often and I bake myself and my husband birthday cakes most years, so lemon curd is kind of a necessary recipe for me.

Your final product will have caramelic, salty citrus taste, with a touch of the complexity of preserved lemons. It will, therefore, be utterly addictive.  Be sure your dessert is ready for it, otherwise it might just get eaten before you’re ready to use it.  Keep in mind that you won’t necessarily get the same bright hue of a fresh lemon or lime curd, but it is still pretty.  No reason

I took a couple jars of this curd to the most recent Philly Food Swap.  It was on Monday and it was fabulous with a capital “ph.”   Thanks to Alex Jones of the phenomenal Fair Food and the generosity of the fantastic Reading Terminal Market, we had our largest swap ever.  It was pretty inspiring to see all of the makers from around Philadelphia showing off their wares.  There were jams, marmalades, pickles, misos, crackers, dog treats, fruit ketchups, vegan cheeses, sausages, sriracha caramel corns and SO much more, all made from scratch.  It was overwhelming in the best possible way.  As always, I felt very proud of our Philly community of makers. If you’d like more information on the Food Swap, you can follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

Shiny, happy people swapping food

Preserved Lemon Curd

Adapted from this Epicurious lemon curd recipe (from the April 2001 issue of Gourmet)

If you’d like to make preserved lime curd, just substitute lime anywhere you see the word lemon. This is fantastic on pound cake or for an extremely decadent Mother’s Day French Toast!

Straining out those larger preserved lemon bits. You can skip straining if you want some texture in your curd.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon grated fresh lemon zest
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup preserved lemon pulp and liquid
• 1 preserved lemon, pulp and peel
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 5 large egg yolks, lightly whisked
• 1 3/4 sticks (3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces

PS- My Fermentation Basics class for Greensgrow on Saturday has a larger capacity than usual and there  still 5 spots remaining!  Get your tickets here!

One of the kimchis you’ll taste if you join Madame Fromage and me for Kimcheese at the Philadelphia Science Festival

It feels like spring is here in Philly.  All that fall bulb-planting I did in my container garden is starting to pay off as those beautiful colors come in to full bloom and fill me with energy and joy.

I don’t think it’s any secret that despite my conspicuous lack of Korean-ness, I am extremely obsessed with kimchi.  You other kimchi fans will know that what we typically refer to as kimchi is just one of dozens of traditional kimchis and likely thousands of kimchis made in Korean homes and kimchi markets.  There is a traditional summer kimchi that I adore, and when this warm weather starts to roll in I start to crave it.  Technically speaking, it’s too early for this kimchi.  It’s a summer kimchi and I personally have nothing resembling a cucumber growing in my city garden yet.  Nonetheless, the glowing sunshine prodded me and I gave in and bought some hothouse English cukes for the chance to satisfy my craving for a first taste of summer.

This kimchi can get as hot as you want to make it with the addition of more gochugaru in the paste or fresh hot peppers mixed in to the onion puree.  My recipe was inspired by this YouTube video and from the Oi Sobagi recipe in The Kimchi Cookbook by Lauryn Chun and Olga Massov.

I highly recommend serving this kimchi as a first course at a dinner party.  It is SIMPLE to make and the presentation of the finished product is impressive.  If your cukes get too floppy, you can tie a chive around them for some extra Martha points.  It’s worth noting that my preparation isn’t the most traditional.  Generally you would not put rice gruel on this type of kimchi, but I’ve found it ferments better and stays prettier that way than with brine.  And of course, even though some don’t ferment cucumber kimchi, I don’t see the point in not fermenting anything that could be made tastier and healthier through fermentation.

This is one of three kimchis that will be served at an awesome event at the Philadelphia Science Festival: Fun With Fermentation: Kimcheese.  If you don’t know the work of the amazing Madame Fromage (aka Tenaya Darlington), you are missing out!  She writes beautifully and takes amazing photos of what is undoubtedly the best ferment in the West: cheese!  She and I worked with the mongers (what up, Rocco?) at DiBruno Bros. to find the perfect  pairings of a few of my homemade kimchis and a selection of addictive cheeses from DiBruno Bros.  I’m not saying that every ferment pairs perfectly with every other ferment, but believe me when I say these do.  Or better yet, don’t take my word for it.  Come taste with us and chat about what binds these two foods together (hint: it’s fermentation) on April 25 at 6pm.  Tickets are available here.  This is bound to be a fun and uniquely delicious event and I hope to see you there!What’s up, doc? Oh nothing, just delicious, homemade probiotics.

Fermented Oi Sobaegi

Makes 5, medium-low spice appetizer-sized portions

Ingredients

1 long, thin-skinned cucumber (English works great)

2 T salt, or more

for filling

1/2 cup gochugaru (Korean red pepper), divided

1 bunch scallions

1 large carrot, cut into long, thin strips

3 cloves garlic

for paste

1 c water

2 T  rice flour

1 t salt

You want your cuke cut enough that there’s space to stuff it, but not so much that when you put anything in the space it breaks apart.

Process

1. Chop cucumbers horizontally into 3-4 inch sections
2. Slice each section vertically, nearly into quarters, but leave it attached at the bottom (about 3/4 of the way down works great)
3. Place colander over a large bowl
4. Salt cucumbers generously, rubbing salt over all cut surfaces, being careful not to break them apart
5. Place cucumbers in colander, cut end down, and allow them to drain into the bowl (reserve drained liquid), until soft, about 45 minutes
6. While cucumbers are draining make the paste and the stuffing
7. Place water and rice flour into a pot, stirring constantly over medium low heat until thickened, 3-4 minutes
8. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature
9. Combine coarsely chopped scallions place them in the food processor with the garlic to make a fine, slightly wet mixture
10. When cucumbers have softened and released some water, give them a good (but careful) squeeze (over the colander) and a very quick rinse to remove excess salt.  Towel them dry
11. Pour any cucumber liquid from your bowl into rice paste and stir to combine.  Stir in salt and 1/4 c gochugaru
12. Place onion mince into a bowl and mix in gochugaru using your hands or a large spoon. Once it’s well-combined mix in carrots
13. Take  carrot mixture rub it over all surfaces of the cuke.  Stuff some in, and reform cucumber as much as possible.
14. Repeat with all cucumber pieces until the carrot-allium-pepper mixture is used up
15. Place stuffed cukes in a container (shallow and flat-bottomed works best) and gently mix the rice paste into and over them. Pat it down gently and tap the container against a hard surface, allowing the paste to settle in as much as possible
16. Cover with a fitted lid and let sit at room temperature for 1-2 days
17. Because the fermentation period is so short, you don’t need to worry about mold, but you might want to give them a gentle surface mix after day one, just in case
18. As the vegetables continue to release their juices, the paste with become more liquid.  This is normal and good.  Your cucumbers need to be submerged for fermentation to occur
19. This should be eaten rather quickly (within 3 days or so), as the cukes will continue to soften and will eventually be mushy.

This is plastic. Judge if you will. I tap the bottom so some paste seeps down. As the cukes release more juice, the paste will mix in and completely submerge the cukes. That is desirable.

Nice stems, girl!

Spring is a fickle mistress, is she not?  I was tempted to use harsher words to describe her, but alas, I don’t want her to stay away any longer than she already has.  I think it’s been two weeks since my bulbs started poking out of the ground.  One warm, rainy afternoon, I had the rush of seeing anemones, daffodils and tulips all forming tight buds in the containers I planted them in last fall.  Now they do not look so good.  A few nights of frost and some freaking snow have closed them all back up tight, and some are even laying their heads down in the soil.  Grrrrrrr.

While I can not say enough horrible things about the weather ruining my autumn efforts there is one benefit to the continued cold weather: cold tolerant vegetables.  I love them so much.  Cabbage, kale, collards, chard, whatever you got, I’m buying (or growing, as the case may be).  While cabbage ferments beautifully (see also: sauerkraut and kimchi) some of those thinner-leaved friends tend to break down pretty quickly in the fermentation process.  However, if you’re using the leaves for another purpose (like kale chips) or making a salad for a fussy eater and decide to cut out the ribs, there is no need to add those ribs to your compost pile.  The ribs ferment like champs and happily, pickling them can be a weapon in your arsenal against our abysmal food waste rate.  You can pair these pickles with whatever seasonings you would eat the finished product with.  I’m pretty mustard seed happy with my pickles, and I think those work particularly well with kale and collard ribs, but let your tongue decide.

Collard Rib Pickles:

The yield here is pretty small, unless you are intentionally deboning your leafy greens for this purpose.  A wide-mouthed pint jar is more than adequate for a the ribs of a couple large bunches of kale, collards or dandelion greens.  My prefered brine is made with 1T salt to 2 c water.  You may like yours more or less salty, and you should feel free to adjust to your liking.

Ingredients:

• Ribs from 2 heads of kale/collards/chard or other green.  You can definitely mix and match
• 1 c of brine or more if needed
• 1/2 t whole spices of choice (optional)
• 2 cloves garlic (optional)

How To:

1. Completely remove leaves from ribs.  Reserve leaves for another purpose.  I recommend this salad or my friend Alexis’ use: mash hummus and avocado together, roll some into a raw collard leaf.  Thank your lucky stars for allowing you to eat so well
2. Chop ribs into 1-2 inch segments and place them in your fermentation vessel
3. Cover ribs with brine
4. Use the ghetto jar method (or your preferred method) to ensure that your pickles stay submerged in brine
5. Allow 2 weeks or more for room-temperature fermentation.  When they reach your desired acidity, eat them or stick them in the fridge

These are great served as pickles, but I love putting them in a salad.  They blend in, so that crunchy tang is very unexpected.

After the ball is over, you can make vinegar with what’s left in the bottle!

Calling all booze hounds!  Or not.  You could be a teetotaler who entertains and this would still be a kickass thing for you to make.  Why?  Because it takes a bowl, some stuff you were going to throw away and a touch of living vinegar (homemade or Bragg’s will do) to make something that will give your food a ton of flavor.  Also, it’s not necessarily cheap to buy decent red wine vinegar, and this is virtually free to make.

We entertain a lot.  Or we did, in the period between crazy and über-crazy (aka parts of the last two years).  These days our gatherings consist of having a couple friends over for dinner when we can scrape together the collective energy to mop our floors and vacuum our couch.  But our favorite kind of party is the kind that I used to blog about.  We call it Brunch ‘Til Dawn.  Although the title is somewhat self-explanatory, I’ll explain.  We have a brunch to celebrate something, but we make enough food to feed 20-25 people two to three times because typically we start at noon and go to the wee hours.  There is likely be some form of Kinect dancing, along with some karaoke, if I have my druthers.   There could be jai alai in the street, depending on the hour and the mood of the crowd.  There will definitely be copious amounts of food and drink.  And inevitably, my husband and I will be too tired to do all the party clean-up before we crash out for the night/morning.

Surface area is good for vinegar making! This is aerobic fermentation!

This lazy practice has led to more than one quarter-full bottle of decent or (*sobs*) excellent wine ending its life open on the counter for too many hours.   But I’m nothing if not optimistic.  When life (or my own bad habit) gives me wine that’s been exposed to too much oxygen, I make vinegar.  I think you should too.

Wine Vinegar

Yields ~1 cup vinegar (expect some evaporation).  Can be scaled for any amount of leftover (or even just-opened) wine.

Contrary to what I’ve read in several places, you in no way need a mother of vinegar to make your own batch.  Real, living (not pastuerized) vinegar will definitely do the trick as a starter.  For my first batch I used Bragg’s, but ever since then I’ve used my own.  I eventually made a batch of vinegar that spontaneously grew its own mother and now I get a new mother forming on the surface of my vinegar every so often, whether I use one to kick off a new batch or not.  I like to make small quantities of this with whatever I have left after a fête.  Give it a mix whenever you think of it.  Air is your friend.  The acetobacter (not a typo) responsible for vinegar fermentation are abundant in the air, and they need oxygen to survive, so mix those guys in and enjoy the tasty, tasty product.

Add vinegar that has not been heat-treated, such as Bragg’s, to your unwanted wine to get this going. No mother needed.

Ingredients:

• 1 c wine
• 3 T starter vineagar, use a living variety.  Homemade if you can get it.  Bragg’s is good too!

Do It:

1. Pour your leftover (not from people’s glasses) wine into a vessel with a large surface area, such as a bowl
2. Add starter vinegar
3. Stir it all up
4. Cover with a towel and let it sit, stirring when you think of it, for a month.  With small amounts like this, I start tasting it at 3 weeks.  It can take longer than a month, though.
5. Once it tastes like vinegar and not like wine, move it to an airtight container, with very little surface area exposed.  Swingtops and sealable wine bottles of the appropriate size work great.  Although air is critical to the process of vinegar fermentation, continued exposure to air once you have your vinegar is a good way to ruin it/make it not be vinegar any more.  (I have been storing my vinegar wrong for ages.  I learned this in The Art of Fermentation.  Which you should buy.  Today.)