Posts Tagged ‘lacto-fermentation’

1 Jan

Fermentation VII: Umami Sauce

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, fermentation, home food production, recipe, Uncategorized, urban homesteading. Tagged: , , , .

At the beginning of the year I like to look back on what worked last year and what is still with me. My major category of experiments this fall and winter was fermentation, and this rich dark meaty sauce paste which incorporates multiple fermented ingredients is one of the clear winners. I try to keep some in the fridge at all times because it’s really useful stuff.

The foundation is black garlic.  I have come to love black garlic with passionate intensity, and have also had to sadly admit that my own homemade version is not nearly as good as what I can get commercially.  I think the difference is the evenness of heat that can be kept in a commercial fermentation chamber, and a rigged rice cooker or slow cooker just doesn’t work as well.  One day, no doubt, I will find a safe way to build a fermentation chamber that holds 140°. In the meantime, I buy it from the sources mentioned in my black garlic post.

To make the sauce paste pound three of the large Korean style single cloves of garlic or the peeled cloves from one head of regular black garlic with a generous pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle. This supposes that you have one of the big Thai ones meant for ingredients, not the tiny things meant for spices. Keep pounding until the paste is smooth. Pound in a tablespoon of butter, avocado oil, or olive oil. When this is smoothly incorporated, pound in a couple of tablespoons of of lacto-fermented cremini mushrooms and their juice (read more here.) When the paste is smooth again, stir in a tease of colatura or Red Boat fish sauce (I use t teaspoons,) a tablespoon of good red wine vinegar and one tablespoon of your own best balsamic-type vinegar (I use my Concord-must vinegar) or high-quality commercial balsamic vinegar (no grocery-store stuff.) Taste for salt and for acid balance, and adjust as needed. You can double or triple the recipe as long as your mortar is big enough.

Now you have a number of possibilities. The paste can be used as is, making sure it’s brought to room temp if you used butter, and can be stirred into soup or eggs or spread on buttered toast or grilled polenta for a tasty side. A spoonful lends distinction to a mug of hot sipping broth. A fewspoonfools are really good tossed into greens at the last minute of cooking. Just don’t be timid with it. The flavors are rich but surprisingly understated. It keeps in the refrigerator for at least a week if tightly covered.

 

It can be thinned to a more sauce-like consistency with a little broth or a little more oil and poured over hot or cold sliced meat.

My favorite elaboration is, when pounding in the butter, to keep pounding in more, up to four or five tablespoons instead of just one. If you pound enough this creates a smooth mousse, into which the rest of the ingredients can be stirred. It’s superb as steak butter, wonderful on sourdough bread, great spread on a thick slice of Manchego cheese, and I can easily imagine it dolloped  over a plate of hot pan-grilled shrimp. I think it would be great as a topping for broiled salmon, and can imagine it lending a deep meaty flavor to roasted or grilled vegetables.

It has become one of the things that I have to have around, and I’m always thrilled when I find things like that.

Happy 2019!

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.

 

25 Nov

For Love of Fermentation

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

I have often read that restaurant Noma in Copenhagen is the best restaurant in the world now that El Bulli has closed. These all-time-best commendations always annoy me because I always suspect that the real best restaurant in the world is some Thai or Indonesian street stand that makes something out of nearly nothing and does it perfectly. That said, having read Noma’s new guide to fermentation, I am willing to believe that Noma might be the best restaurant in the world, because they have certainly expanded the age-old art of fermentation beyond anything I have previously encountered. The book covers all forms of fermentation except the purely alcoholic ones that produce wines and beers. There are detailed sections on lactic fermentation, kombucha, vinegars, kogi, miso, shoyu, garum, and the enzymatic blackening that produces black garlic and much more if you let it. There are fascinating asides on how to use the resulting liquids and solids in dishes and as seasonings. They observe that, to their own surprise, the variety and depth of flavor produced is so profound that they may become a largely vegetarian restaurant.

Many people think of fermented products largely in health terms, a “gut shot” of probiotics. But playing with the Noma ideas, I’m experimenting with the essences that result when fermented products are cooked down. They are no longer live, but they’ Delicious. I love to keep chicken and beef glacé in the freezer to add depth, body, and a suave finish to even the simplest sauces, and cooked-down ferments may fill a similar role.

There is commentary on things that I will never intentionally try, such as the culinary use of insects. I’m well aware of all the arguments in favor, but I’m too acculturated against it to approach it with an open mind. So, their cricket garum isn’t going to be an item in my diet anytime soon. But less rigid cooks may want to experiment.

Under Noma’s influence, the large insulated but unheated shed that I use for painting has become a busy fermentation facility.  I have so many experiments going that I will never have time to write about most of them, so buy the book.  I don’t accept review copies, and when I review a book, I paid the same price for it that you will pay. There is no other way that I can realistically assess the value/money ratio.  About this one, I can only say that it is very hard to put a price on a book that can invigorate your entire daily cooking routine and open up a new range of flavors.