Sauerruben! Self-Fermenting Pickled Turnips

When I got Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation almost two years ago (Christ, in the midst of finishing the diss) I got inspired by the sauerruben recipe, which is a sauerkraut style self-fermentation of turnips. I followed the recipe, which called for too much salt for my taste, and shredding the turnips (5 lb or so). I didn't realize how much carbon dioxide they were going to put off in the first day, and as you see below, one of the jars got so over-pressurized it dented the lid out. And in the end, a couple of weeks later the stuff was too salty (3 Tbsp salt / 5lb turnips) and too stringy/hashy to enjoy. It looks beautiful, with that pink color being a dilution of the purple top of the turnip. But really not much fun to eat.

I revisited this recipe after getting a bunch of turnips a few weeks back during a mammoth pickling session, and decided to go with roughly 1/2" x 1 1/2" chunks of turnip, and bought an awesome little ceramic crock to brine them in. Ceramic crock is pretty hardcore. It does for me what Chewbacca does for Han Solo: It keeps it real; it doesn't promise anything it can't deliver; and if I'm being a dumbass it will let me know but still backs me up. It is literally and figuratively solid.

I had maybe 3 lb of turnips, and decided to use about half the salt since it's less necessary in colder weather. I think it was 2 tsp or 1 Tbsp of Morton's canning/pickling salt. I coated the chunks in this and then packed them in the crock, weighing them down with a clean plate and a clean growler full of water. Then I wrapped the top with clingwrap to keep crap and flies from getting into it. After 2 days the slat had drawn out enough water to make a brine that covered (and protected) the turnips. Then I just let it go, checking a couple of times along the way and stirring it up so everything got a good brine soak. I pulled them out tonight and let them continue fermenting in jars so I could use the crock for sauerkraut tomorrow. The big shot glass on the right has the remainder of the brine, turned a beautiful pale pink. This tastes delicious, and if I can save any of the brine, I would make a dirty vodka martini with this. Maybe strong, but definitely a Russian reverberation.

Sauerruben rocks.

Impromptu Pork Medallions with Portabellas and Red Wine Sauce

I've had some epic food and drink in the last week, and it's always a good thing when you are too busy doing what you love to blog about it. Tonight, before going over to a friend's place for a lovely walnut pie and Lagavulin 16 year scotch dessert meeting, I tried to keep dinner simple. I boiled some potatoes with sage stems and a bay leaf, and seared some pork loin medallions from a giant Wegman's 4-pack I had forgotten about. Added two small portabellas, onions, garlic, fresh rosemary, and S&P to this, and after removing the meat I threw in about a 1/2 cup of red wine I was drinking and added more butter and a bit of Wondra flour and let it reduce, stirring. Then I poured this over the pork and ate as if someone who loved me cooked the meal. Which was the case.

Making Food = Making Love

That's all.

Almost. I need (knead) to make my own bread. Move closer to the equation.

Goose Breasts and a New (to me) Blog

It was a busy week of pickling, socializing, working, eating, and being weirdly emotional, but now I'm setting my sights forward for a dinner involving breasts of Canada geese on Thursday. A friend of mine has come into these via a hunter neighbor that shoots them, but doesn't really like to eat them (his relatives do eat them, so it's not like they just blast animals out of the sky and let them rot). The challenge now is to figure out how to cook them (the breasts, not the relatives).

Having French cuisine as common ground, we both envisioned some variation on a duck preparation, like a magret ... BUT these are already skinned. So without the fatty skin, you can't really sear these and get the moisture and fat you need to make a gamebird's breast palatable. A newly found blog indicates the same thing in this post:

Be sure to have breasts with skin on them. Skinless breasts are not good candidates for searing, as they are boring. Use them for something else.

What that something else is is my current preoccupation. A marination in red wine might destroy all the goose flavor. My friend has decided to defrost one tonight, and then tomorrow take a little slice and sear it both to see how it reacts and figure out exactly how gamey it is and in what way, so that we can think about spices, fruits and liquids we may add.

These breasts are the color of ox blood or liver, by the way. Very beautiful.

Rock!

Pickling Daikon with the Power of Kim Chi Madness

Oct. 28, 2013: Avid follower(s) of the blog will be aware of the half-gallon of kim chi I fermented from a 5lb head of Napa Cabbage (aka Kim Chi Madness) about a month ago. By now it is fairly sharply sour, which is really good in dishes like Yoda's Fishes the Noodles Drainings Does! soup. Pondering the extra daikon I have from Dragon Land, I flashed on the idea of pickling daikon wedges in the ~3 pints of kim chi. Just jam them in there, let the already vinegary brine soak into them for a week, and see what I get.

After some stupidity, I cut the daikon spears in half on the bias to make a pointy end that could be driven into the kim chi more easily with the butt of a wooden spoon.

Then I drove them into the salty brine! Davy Jones's Locker! But with lots of chopped cabbage! And flavor! Here are two little wedges peeking out through the glass.

I'll probably give them a week to absorb the brine and do their own fermenting, which will change the flavor of the rest of the kim chi, I expect. I put it back up on top of the fridge to let it go at room temperature for a few days to let the fermentation kick itself off again after being in the fridge for while.

Oct. 29, 2013: It was left on top of the fridge overnight for warmth, and I just cracked the lid to see what was going on. The daikon wedges are fermenting, and there's the real brassicaceae sulfurous smell coming off the kim chi now.

Which is awesome. It might be offensive to a house guest. Deeply offensive, possibly. But I have no house guests, nor even dinner guests, so I'm letting it ride. The jar of kim chi madness is in the fridge again. I'll check the daikon in a few days. The possibility of quickly fermenting daikon spears in a kimchi matrix makes me want to punch through cinder block walls and then cradle and suckle the starving little babies that I find behind them.

Y'all know what that's like.

Nov. 4, 2013: Fishes the Daikons Spawn of Endra Does! Very pungent, but delicious fermented daikon! Still cripsy and spicy. What remains of the daikon and KimChi of Madness is depicted below.

AAAGAHAHAGGAHHHHHHH!!! So fermenty!!!!!!!!11!!!!!1!