First up Kombucha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha), which can be traced back centuries to ancient China (250 BC) but my involvement with it can be traced back to an organic food store (starts with a "W", means complete and ends in "foods"-not sure I want to infringe here) where Euni tried a free sample which I loved to a week later when I traced a link back from Teds blog to another blog (pending approval) on the actual making of Kombucha from a store bought sample. Because it is not pasteurized and thus packed "raw", meaning live culture is included in the bottle fermented product, you can easily "BYO" (brew your own :) at home! I have one more week of culturing the mushroom (that's what the mass is called-not actually a fungus) while the daughter colony splits off, which I will gladly pass on to anyone who wants to make their own Kombucha, before I add the colony to a fresh pot of black tea and sugar to ferment, then a week later I'm bottling Kombucha baby! Now consider the costs here: $4 per bottle at the above reference store, to under 50 cents bottled here at home-AND I made it myself! Again I give credit to reading more about Kombucha on Teds blog as I would have taken years (if at all) to look into making my own.
Next we are on to Kimchi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi), which is the national food of Korea and obviously a staple of the everyday diet there. Kimchi, when googled, will return article upon article of being oneof the worlds healthiest foods so I will not go into it now..but do me a favor and look it up! Essentially we are looking at fermented vegetables, preserved and loaded with vitamins, nutrients, and beneficial bacteria! My first batches were put together a few weeks ago and are being enjoyed to this day, however I will say my Daikon Radish Kimchi takes the cake thus far..and this was an extremely simple recipe of:
-Daikon Radish (1 large)
-Crushed Red Chili Peppers (from your local Asian grocer..or make your own with you choice of hot chili!)
-Garlic (full bulb-1/2 pressed, 1/2 full)
-Leeks (hand full..or however many you like)
-Brine Solution of chunky sea salt to brine the veggies in.
Process is really simple, but first let me tell you how I fuck#d it up....
Basically you brine the veggies in a salt/water mixture for a few hours to prep them for the fermentation process, then you mix them all together with the chili pepper and crushed garlic (keeping the brine solution..by the way do not do this :) and use a food grade container which will let the by products of fermentation easily escape..which I did not!
What I did was use a sealed glass jar, which luckily for me, was not airtight but rather let the gasses escape, but this also included the brine escaping as well. You see the salt in the brine is going to suck out all the moisture from the veggies..which is why you do not need to include the introduced brine water to the fermentation vessel (in this case being the sealed glass jar). What all this equals is more liquid present than expected and the elimination of some of that liquid while fermenting..and eventually...the mass exit of this liquid when the seal is broken..
I wish I had a pick to back this up but just try to picture me in a fresh pressed shirt, ready to go to work, but covered in red kimchi juice (also our kitchen wall...blender..scale..and ceiling) and cussing up a storm while lamenting the fermentation of cabbage!
Okay okay so I know what your thinking..what am I doing even messing with that stuff right before going to work....well I was impatient of course!
Anyhow I recently was able to work from home and thought I would really enjoy a break from fielding emails by hitting up theDaikon Kimchi with a new recipe, which can be found on this blog (http://www.desertmodernism.com/blog/)
Great success!
Okay so lets round this huge posting off with the batch of GravLax I just put together this afternoon in about 10 minutes, if your unfamiliar with this item please take a quick peak at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravlax) this one is border line when it comes to if I actually am utilizing a fermentation process to ready the item..I'll let you be the judge. I really like this picture, not only does it include a great lighting but also includes a fossil rock given to my by my dad, who had found it years ago in the New Mexico area (waiting on specific mountain range)..you can see the impressions of some ancient shells in there!
Starting with 1/2 cup of sea salt, 1/2 cup of fine cane sugar, 2 tbsp of ground pepper, 1 cup of dillweed, and 1 lb of fresh copper river Sockeye Salmon. This has long been one of my favorite ways of enjoying this amazing animal and am eager to see if I can pull off making it at home in a satisfactory way..if I can this is another case of an extremely simple recipe and shaving 80% off of a bill by making it here at home.
Process was very simple, mixed the salt, sugar, and pepper together, crusted it onto the fish (one fillet cut in 1/2). Using a pyrex bowl I put down a layer of fresh dillweed, then 1/2 salmon fillet (skin down), with a layer of the salt mixture and dillweed on top, then putting the remaining 1/2 salmon fillet on top of that (meat side down, or skin up..basically a salmon sandwich) with a little dill and alot more salt mixture in between the pieces and topped off with some more dill and weighted down (using the flexible lid and jar of Kimchi) for 24 hours.
And that almost catches us all up! I need to post on my Belgium Wit soon but will be traveling some of this week so please don't expect any updates until later in this week...but I promise to make it an interesting post..how could I go wrong-fellow home brewer Ted (http://www.tedbrews.com/) initial reaction to tasting this brew was "oh wow..there is some funk there..."
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5 comments:
hi! i was browsing evil jungle prince's web site and saw your post. i had made kombucha in the past.. but never got the timing quite right. i haven't been able to make another batch for over a year now.. so i was curious to start up again. any ideas?
also, on another note, have you tried to make kefir yet? that stuff is GREAT. except someone killed my culture :(
kimchi though.. is something i'd like to learn to make. i have yet to understand how to make it.. i would like to know though.. the best way to make the tastiest one around!!
anyways, keep up the great work!
Ah this is wonderful. You are making a great contribution to the fine pastime of home made fermented foods. I will soon be making krauts and kimchis and tempehs. As far as my kombucha goes, it either tases kindof sweet, or kindof vinegar-like. I gotta find the happy medium.
Thanks guys!
Deborah I actually learned how to start the kombucha mushroom back up by reading on www.tedbrews.com and following the link to the "Mad Fermenter's" blog. Essentially if you pick up a bottle of Kombucha from Whole Foods you can utilize that (it's raw) by letting it heat up to room temp, then pitching it into a cup of cooled black tea with a few tablespoons of suger to feed, every week or so feed it a little more fresh suger/tea mixture as it grows and you'll be in business in no time. The quickest route is to order it online which is expensive. Thanks for reading!
Ted-I'm finding my kombucha is very vinagary right now, even after feeding it but starting next week I will be pitching the daughter into a fresh jug of tea/suger and then its off to carbonation my friend!
I haven't been continually feeding it, which is probably the way to get it to grow thicker and thicker. As long as the layer isn't disturbed and caused to fall into the solution. Hmmm.
It's also very easy to forget about it in the closet until the closet starts emitting a strong vinegar odor.
Usually when I feed it I take a little care (okay not that much) in adding the tea mix, which ends up dunking the colony a bit as in the picture within the post, but the end result is hours later it is back on top sealing the liquid away from the atmosphere.
I've got high hopes for it, since I will essentially be the only one in our household drinking it :)
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