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.

Simple Comfort Food

I just downloaded some photos from my camera and found this shot from a few weeks ago. I think I was a bit beat and didn't feel up to going to the store, and improvised with what I had.

Luckily I had butter. These are boiled little tiny baby potatoes with butter and S&P, blanched green beans sauteed in butter with garlic and lemon juice (probably basil too), and some slices of salami. I tend to want meat with my meals, and these little morsels did the job. Overall, some simple just-north-of-Mediterranean farmhouse fare. I felt pretty good after this meal.

A Central PA Wegman's Moment

This afternoon I was shopping at Wegman's, which can be frustrating at the tail-end of some sort of "Penn Stater" type weekend where adults and children are staggering around drunk at midday and vomiting in the gutter. I remained generally calm, despite the bovine masses slumping along leaning on their carts as if they were paddling through warm molasses -- and as if that was a special privilege of theirs.

I got to the checkout line and things were moving along well. Then there's a pause and the checker (a student) holds up a bag of some round bright red objects with some leaves attached.

Checker: Gaahh... Uhn?

Me: Those are radishes.

Seriously? Radishes? Don't they use flash cards in elementary school anymore? I'll cut them some slack for, say, a turnip vs a rutabaga or even a parsnip vs a carrot. But radishes?

Poor kids. They deserve better.

Leftover Vegetable Soup of Doom!

Just before I left for Fresno for the holidays (so called) I checked the fridge and saw that I had accumulated a variety of vegetables. I envisioned two alternate futures for them:

1) I could just leave it all and let it funk out while I was gone, and then throw it all away when I returned, or

2) I could chop it all up and cook it in a big pot and then have several quarts of soup in the freezer for the coming winter months.

What hung in the balance on the purely material level, you ask? Dear reader, you should know that I had carrots, celery, a parsnip, two crowns of broccoli, and three Russet potatoes. I also had a half head of garlic and an onion that probably would last another week without much harm (they weren't in the fridge though). Luckily, I was carried along by a slowly building agitation and excitement by the idea -- and the clear prospect of mass-production awesomeness -- and I went for option 2. In the alternate PKD universe there is a very depressed person blogging his regrets about leaving good food to rot over the holidays, and probably vowing to not waste food and to not be so lazy in the future, and writing a hollow but emphatic manifesto about improving his quality of life from a behavioral perspective. But none of you have to read that blog. You are in the beneficent parallel universe thanks to my bold actions, and you can leave praises to me in the comments as is your wont.

Leftover Vegetable Soup of DOOM!
I pureed this at the end, so broad strokes in prep and cooking are all that's required. Peel as necessary/desired and chop up into more or less medium/small pieces and throw into a big old pot, mine being a cheap-ass ersatz (cf. PKD) lobster pot:

4 carrots (organic, whoop-de-doo)
6 celery stalks
9 cloves of garlic
1 big old parsnip
2 broccoli crowns (stalks were roughly peeled and the cores were chopped into the soup)
1 big yellow onion
3 Russet potatoes
Not chopped:
2 bay leaves
12 whole black peppercorns
2 Tbsp canning salt (NB: This was slightly too much. I say 1-1.5 Tbsp or salt to taste only at the end.)

Add 4 qt of water and bring to a steady boil for about 30 min.

Add (all dry):

1 Tbsp basil
1 tsp tarragon
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp dill
1/4 tsp cumin

Stir in and turn down to a simmer/low boil for 30 min or so. Remove bay leaves and puree it all in a blender in batches and remix it. Salt, etc., to taste.

This made about 5qt, which mostly I froze in ~1 qt increments. As I note above, this was a bit too salty, but not to the point of being inedible, to my taste anyway.

Frozen quanta of soup, in situ, next to quanta of Amish chicken.

I'm pretty happy with the mix of herbs here, since I always have a hard time getting the distinctive dill, sweet tarragon/basil and earthy cumin flavors to have any balance. Probably the mix of sulfurous brassicas, sweet roots, and smooth alliums make a complementary set of contrasts to them. Anyway, Rock!