Archive for December, 2018

31 Dec

Fermentation VI: Lacto-fermentation

Posted by wooddogs3 in Books worth reading, cooking, fermentation, home food production, kitchen staples, mushrooms, preserving, urban homesteading. Tagged: , , , .

I can’t say enough about how The Noma Guide to Fermentation is livening up my kitchen experiments, but I was fairly sure that I wouldn’t care much for ordinary lacto-fermentation. All fermented pickles and sauerkraut are made by this method, and with the exception of kimchi I’ve never really taken to any of them. But then I bought a couple of pounds of organic cremini mushrooms because they were on sale cheap and I’m a sucker for a bargain, and had to figure out something to do with them. I tried slicing them, tossing with 4% of their weight in salt, and packing into quart mason jars under pickle weights. I set them aside loosely covered, and when I next paid attention to them a week later the mushrooms had shrunk down by half and the jars were filled with fluid. I sniffed the contents, and was surprised at the strong mushroom aroma. I tasted the fluid and it was salty and had a full mushroom flavor. So I started to experiment.

This soup also contains other recent and past experiments.  If there is one thing that I want readers of my blog to do, it is play with their food. Taste, and if the tastes go well together, it doesn’t matter  whether you ever saw a recipe quite like it before.  The flavor of mushrooms and black garlic seem made for each other, and I wanted to try the combination out. I put about a cup of dried porcini slices in hot water to soak. While they soaked, I started the cooking with two cloves of fresh garlic finely minced and eight peeled cloves of black garlic chopped very coarsely. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, and added the two garlic types and three slices of bacon sliced 1/4” wide. I sautéed these ingredients slowly over medium heat until the fresh garlic was cooked but not yet coloring, and added a quart of very good chicken broth, the soaked porcinis and their strained soaking water, half a cup of the fermented creminis and their fluid, and a tablespoon of dry sherry and two teaspoons of Red Boat fish sauce. This mixture was brought to a slow boil, and turned down to a simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I peeled another eight cloves of black garlic and pounded them to a smooth paste with a good pinch of salt. When smooth, I pounded in a tablespoon of fermented mushroom liquid, a tablespoon of boiled-down kombucha,  and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar. When the soup was served, a good dollop of this paste was put in each bowl, to be stirred in by the diner. Of course you could just add it to the soup in the pot, but the pleasure of smelling the rich, complex fragrance as the paste melts into the soup would then be lost to all but the cook.

Be aware that lacto-fermentation only preserves food up to a point. After a week fermenting on the counter, the cremini juice is at peak flavor in my opinion. If left at room temp it may go on to develop musty off-flavors. In my kitchen, at the one-week point it goes in the fridge.

I always use quart wide-mouth mason jars for lacto-fermenting. There are wonderful crocks made especially for the purpose, but I don’t want that much of any one product, so I stick with my jars. Good pickle weights will simplify your lacto-fermenting and help prevent mold. Good weights are glass, solid and heavy, smooth on the bottom, and have a handle on top so that you can get hold of them. Cheaper weights are often hollow on the bottom, creating an airspace that invites mold, and aren’t heavy enough to keep the fermenting veggies submerged. Good ones can be bought here or from other sources. I have one hand-thrown stoneware pickle weight that I love, and have also used smooth rounded rocks of the right size after putting them through the dishwasher. This last is unscientific and probably unsanitary but I bet our ancestors did it too.

 

4 Dec

Fermentation V: Water Kefir

Posted by wooddogs3 in Books worth reading, fermentation, home food production, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

I am experimenting  with kombucha and its culinary uses, but for daily drinking I prefer water kefir. It’s a fermented drink with a mildly yeasty tangy flavor and none of the vinegary overtones of kombucha. It can be flavored in a lot of ways, and it’s quick and fun to make.

It’s produced by a SCOBY, a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, but rather than form a solid mat the kefir SCOBY forms rounded globules called “grains.” I had trouble getting started because I kept buying dehydrated grains that never came to life. Finally I bought fresh grains from Florida Sun Kefir and they got off to a flying start. The substrate is water with 1/4 cup of sugar per quart of water dissolved in it. I use a mixture of white and coconut sugar, and brew about two quarts at a time. Pour the water mixture over the grains, screw the lid on loosely or cover with a dish towel tied on tightly, and let it sit at room temperature for 36-48 hours. The grains are in motion during fermentation, rising through the fluid, discharging their cargo of carbon dioxide into the air, and sinking slowly back to the bottom of the jar. They will slow down as the sugar is exhausted. I tell when it’s ready by tasting. When the sugar is fermented totally and none is detectable to taste, it’s done.  I pour off most of the fluid in the jar through a mesh strainer and refrigerate until I want to drink it. If you want yours a bit sweet, stop sooner, but I prefer to sweeten artificially before drinking. Leave the grains in enough finished kefir to cover them, add more sugar water, and the grains are off and running again.  I then add flavoring and some artificial sweetener, carbonate in my nifty Drinkmate, and enjoy. My favorite flavorings are vanilla or a little good root beer extract or a bit of grated ginger juice. There are all sorts of possibilities including adding fruit juice.`

I find the Drinkmate to be the easiest and most exact method of carbonation. I have found the “natural” method to produce erratic and undependable results, but if you want to try it, try out these directions: http://www.resetyourweightbasics.com/healthy-kefir-soda/.

I can’t explain this, but water kefir really does seem to decrease appetite. I don’t vouch for this effect because I do not find any scientific literature on it except the one animal-model reference below,  but try it for yourself and see what you think.

Your grains will multiply steadily and always need food. If you want to store them for awhile, put the jar in the refrigerator immediately after adding fresh sugar water and they will keep about two weeks. For longer storage, drain them every two weeks and add fresh sugar water. You’ll soon have plenty of grains to give to friends.  Internet sources tell you to add dried fruit and eggshells for minerals, but I have never done that and my grains multiply  just fine. It might be that the coconut sugar I use provides the grains with any minerals that they need. My grains are tan rather than white after several generations in coconut sugar.

In the picture below, what looks like a film on the surface is actually a haze of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide bursting.

One caveat: I can’t find reliable data on this but judging from its effect on me I think that my homebrew kefir has substantially more alcohol that most SCOBY-brewed products, maybe as much as 2-3%. This might not sound like much, but you don’t want to work or drive on the amount of alcohol in a standard 12oz glass. I keep this for evening enjoyment. But I may be incorrect about this,or brewing conditions may affect the ethanol content. Here’s a marvelously nerdy article analyzing the components of water kefir: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3993195/pdf/zam2564.pdf

I can’t stop talking about the marvelous Noma Guide to Fermentation. It doesn’t address water kefir specifically, but I’m curious about the possibilities of cooked-down kefir essence used in the way that the Noma people use kombucha essence. It might also be possible to grow out water kefir grains in other fluids such as juices. After making a few batches of standard water kefir, you will have plenty of grains with which to experiment.

Many internet sources that discuss water kefir give references for its health benefits. However, I spent a cold gray afternoon indoors looking up those references and found that, as I had suspected, nearly all of them actually refer to milk kefir. I don’t find a lot of data on whether water kefir contains the same microorganisms as the milk product, and certainly its nutrient content is different. Here are a few references on water kefir specifically.

Inhibition of metastasis of breast cancer cells in vitro and in vivo in a mouse model:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27230756

Isolation of a novel bifidabacterium strain with probiotic potential from water kefir:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26739269

Analysis of organisms from water kefir, showing that its biotic complexity is higher than previously realized: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23289707

Evaluation of Lactobacilli strains found in water kefir for probiotic potential:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30319846

Anti-obesity effects in an animal model of water-soluble polysaccharides found in the matrix of kefir grains:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29084388

This last one is particularly interesting because the mice given kefir matrix exopolysaccharides showed anti-obesity effects on an excessive diet and also showed higher levels of Akkermansia bacteria in their feces. Other data (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3670398/ ) indicates that the presence of Akkermansia species in both rats and humans inversely correlates with obesity, probably via interactions with the gut epithelium. Please don’t try to make too much of this: the science of the biome is in its infancy and we know very little about how to impact it for specific effects. So I can only say that water kefir won’t hurt you and may have some beneficial effect.

 

 

2 Dec

Fermentation IV: The Wine at Your Table.

Posted by wooddogs3 in Books worth reading, fermentation, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

For the previous decades of my adulthood I had little or no interest in winemaking because I’m fond of good red wines and suspected that it would cost plenty to make wine at home and not produce a great result because I don’t have the right facilities for aging. But over the last year I’ve started fermenting lower-alcohol wines, meads, and cyzers meant to be consumed within their first year. They are not made to be fussed over but to be quaffed casually and with immediate pleasure. They are made as casually as they are consumed, without all the tedious sterilization, measuring, and worrying that so often saps the fun out of home brewing.

My bible for fermenting for fun is the delightful Make Mead Like a Viking, by Jerome Zimmerman. It’s a fun read and offers a few explicit recipes and lots of general information and assurance that your distant ancestors did this without making a big deal about it and so can you. Don’t invest in a lot of sterilization equipment because soap-and-water clean is fine. Don’t worry about exact recipes because it’s part of the fun to try something different every time.  I will not be giving any explicit instructions here, just a general idea of what I do, because if you are an experienced fermenter you will be familiar with these principles and if you aren’t you need the book.

The equipment to get started is Mr. Zimmerman’s book, a couple of 2-gallon plastic brewing buckets and fermentation locks, a 6-foot or so length of food-grade plastic tubing for siphoning, some clean gallon bottles for the finished wine, and ingredients. Sugar, honey, or fruit juice provide the food for the yeast. A packet of commercial wine yeast gets you off to a good start, although wild yeast isn’t that hard to use. Personally I don’t go in for the equipment that allows you to calculate your finished alcohol level precisely. I rely on the following general proportions: a pound of honey or about 1.5 pounds of sugar per gallon of water ferments out to 4.5 or 5% alcohol. Double the sweetener per  per gallon and it ends up at about 10%. Once you’re up to triple sweetener per gallon, your yeast is likely to be killed off at some point and leave you with residual sugar, unless you used champagne yeast, which tolerates a lot of alcohol. But then your drink is “hotter” and higher alcohol than I’m looking for. Quadruple sweetener will in my opinion leave you with syrup, although some people love the effect. Apple juice will ferment out to about 4% alcohol, more if you add sweetener or sweeter juices. For the most part, I plan to finish at about 7.5% alcohol, 10% at absolute maximum.

Flavoring depends on what you’re in the mood for. Don’t be afraid to experiment. One of my favorite late-summer wines was made by juicing three cantaloupes and adding the juice to a gallon of apple juice, along with half a pound of sugar dissolved in 3 cups of water. Another remarkable wine was made with a dozen juiced prickly pears, the juice of two blood oranges, and a gallon of water sweetened with honey and sugar in equal parts, with one of the squeezed blood orange halves thrown in to ferment in the liquid for the first two weeks.  Prickly pears have little flavor but exquisite color, and this wine, which can be seen above and in the picture at the top of this post, is one of my favorites.  So far I’ve used juice from my own grapevine, blackcurrant juice, juiced aronia berries, juiced blackberries, and juiced dark cherries. I always prefer honey as the sweetener, but some people don’t care for its earthy undertone, so sugar is easier on some palates.

Apple-strawberry cyzer, shown above, is another surprise favorite with a subtle note of strawberry that makes for delicate, delicious sipping.

Blackcurrant mead is musky-sweet on the palate.

Although  I may make 5 gallon batches of things that came out well if I can get the materials, I always start with between a gallon and gallon and a half, which fits neatly into a 2 gallon fermentation bucket. Make up the mixture of your choice, put it in a clean bucket, snap the lid on, and fit a fermentation lock. Make sure you have put fluid in the lock to the right level.  I use vodka instead of water in the fermentation lock, to make sure that no intrepid fruit flies get through and turn the wine to vinegar.  Then, wait at least three weeks. Sometimes you will hear the must making surprising noises, and when it starts to ferment actively the fermentation lock will make an attractive gurgling sound.  After 3 to 4 weeks, open the bucket making sure not to shake it around and disturb the sediment, and siphon the fluid off the yeast and other sediment into a second clean bucket.  Cover it, put a fermentation lock on, and let it sit for another 3 to 4 weeks. Again siphon the wine or mead or cyzer off the sediment,  this time putting it in a gallon bottle and put any of that won’t fit into clean wine bottles or canning jars. Of course you could put it all in bottles, but I prefer to avoid the fuss of cleaning and storing all those bottles.   At this point, taste it. Generally it will be fermented out dry, and many fruit mixtures taste better when a little sweetness is added back.  If I feel that it needs some sweetness, I sweeten very cautiously with pure liquid sucralose, stirring  and tasting  after each drop so that I don’t overdo it.  If you prefer you can use sugar, but remember that it must be stored in the refrigerator after that, and even so, the yeast will slowly ferment away your added sugar and produce pressure inside the bottle that can lead to a minor but messy explosion.

You can filter repeatedly if you want a sparkling clear product, but I do think you lose flavor in the process and I generally don’t.

Store in the refrigerator. Often these ferments taste better cold, and if you do want to drink them at room temperature just get them out of the refrigerator an hour before wanted.  They do not have a high alcohol content to preserve them, and so cold storage serves this function. Plan to drink them within a few months. I have made higher alcohol meads that I kept for much longer times, and they certainly improved with keeping, but if the alcohol content is low they aren’t likely to hold in good condition.

If you really start enjoying yourself and want to get wilder, you will want to own Pascal Bauder’s The Wildcrafting Brewer, in which wildcrafted ingredients and wild yeasts are used to produce drinks that are the essence of a particular bit of earth at a particular time.