A Smoked Ham Shank in Sauerkraut

I saw a group of smoked ham shanks (these were from the pigs' shins in this case) sitting there at Wegman's a few weeks back while I was more or less suicidally depressed and having gut troubles -- which one was contributing to the other I still haven't fathomed out, but both have thankfully passed -- and began to get mildly interested. I figured: ham shanks, ham hocks, ox tails. You use them to make a good meaty-tasting soup or stew without paying a lot of money*. So I bought a pair, 2.87lb at $2.99/lb.

One I boiled away in a dutch oven with onions, some potatoes, and threw in cabbage wedges towards the end, similar to how I do a corned beef. Small meat returns, but nice.

Last night I took the other one intending to do a bean stew thing with cannelini beans, and later checked in with The Joy of Cooking and found their recipe for Ham Hocks with Sauerkraut calling for smoked hocks and got to thinking. I had a quart of self-fermented sauerkraut in the fridge. The recipe calls for celery seeds and the kraut is full of them plus garlic and parsnips. Also the recipe's first line is:

"A tasty dish rather heavy in fat."

All doubts dispelled. I reduced the recipe, and started sauteeing (rather than boiling) half an onion in a 3qt pot -- IN DUCK FAT! Yes. I didn't see much fat on these shanks. I added about four garlic cloves towards the end of the onion browning, and started trying to sear the shank sort of. Before it all burned up I added cold water to about 3/4 cover the shank, and then stirred and let it on a highish simmer, turning every so often for about 2 hours with the lid on. In the last half hour I added about 2 cups of drained awesome sauerkraut and a few random Dutch yellow potatoes and let it simmer/boil for a while.

Nice peasant food for a cold night.
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*Though ox tail is stupidly expensive in the US. For something that is constantly covered in shit, it should be far cheaper.

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.

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!

Kim Chi Madness

A few years back I got somewhat obsessed with making kim chi. I'm not sure what triggered this since I wasn't eating a lot of Korean food back then ... but now that I think of it I was watching many Korean films at the time like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and some other one with two girls at a lake house and a mean step-mother. The latter film I associate with giant jars of kim chi, fermenting underground for years. The idea of home-based mass production fills me with a particular lust. Perhaps this was the trigger.

I found a basic kim chi recipe on the website of a certain Dr. Ben Kim*. It's a simple recipe, and kim chi is an easy self-fermenting DIY type of pickle that is delicious and therefore awesome. Obsessed as I was, over the next several years I recorded the variations and results of many batches in a text file and the proportions used in an Excel spreadsheet (called Kim Chi Quest), so I could eventually standardize and replicate my ideal standard kim chi. Here's my version adapted from that recipe:

A Napa cabbage - about two pounds
Brine of 2 tsp salt (not iodized) per quart of cold water, at least 4 quarts for starters
5-6 cloves fresh garlic, minced or pressed
A thumb of fresh ginger, minced
8-10 fresh scallions, moderately chopped (incl. greens)
2 tsp dried red chili pepper flakes
2 Tbsp paprika
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt or to taste

Assume a 2 lb cabbage will fit into a quart jar and a pint jar, and a 1.5 lb cabbage may go into a quart jar. I put ~5lbs into a half-gallon jar recently.

Half gallon of Kim Chi next to a quart jar for scale.
This is how you deal with a 5lb Napa cabbage.

Separate, wash, and chop cabbage leaves as desired. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons salt evenly on this in a non-reactive (glass or ceramic) bowl and add water to cover. Weigh this down with a CLEAN plate or similar to keep the cabbage submerged. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

The next day throw all this in a colander and rinse well. Back in the bowl or whatever, add the other ingredients and mix this together to coat evenly. I typically use a slotted spoon for this -- I have one that fits into a wide-mouth Mason/Kerr jar and is very convenient for packing the mix into the CLEAN jars: which you will now do. Pack that stuff in there with force to get out any air pockets and add any liquid from the bowl as well. Ideally there's a layer of liquid submerging the kim chi.

Give yourself an inch or two of headspace, close the lid (tight but not white-knuckling tight), and let it sit in a room-temperature place for 3-4 days. Each day I check this and use the CLEAN slotted spoon to compress it and expel CO2. If it's hot and/or the lid is too tight and/or there's not enough headspace and/or you've forgotten to vent it for a few days, expect it to erupt like a warm carbonated beverage: i.e., take it to the sink FIRST and vent it slowly. I've cleaned trails of kim chi brine off my counters, cabinets and floor enough to now take this precaution seriously.

Kim chi stores well in the fridge, becoming more sour over several weeks, and the rate of fermentation slows to non-catastrophic levels. That's it. You have your own basic kim chi. I like adding kim chi to noodle soups, and I wrote a good deal of my dissertation eating ramen with a dashi stock and this kim chi on top. I have been thinking about a cabbage salad with sesame oil/rice vinegar dressing that includes a ton of kim chi as well. Kim chi is down-home, good stuff. It will probably make you happy when you make it yourself and eat it.

Rock!

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*I don't wholeheartedly endorse his site because he's always going on about superfoods and Omega-3 fatty acids and this sort of crap that I hate.