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I-hate-fennel Fennel Pickles

Posted by Lindsay on July 31, 2016

I hate fennel. Love licorice, love ouzo, loooove sambuca… But an anise-flavoured vegetable? No thanks.

As the recipient of a CSA box, however, I find myself with a couple bulbs of fennel at least once a summer, and am always looking for things to do with them. Sometimes I give them away… And sometimes, to be perfectly honest, I let them get so sad and gross that they go straight from the fridge into the compost.

But a couple weeks ago, when faced with two small fennel bulbs and no space in the fridge to continue to hide them, I did what I often do with random veggies: Chopped them up, added other flavours and some salt, and let it ferment.

Today I tasted my concoction and am so thrilled with it! It’s a delicious savoury pickle, with a hint of anise but mostly just salty and sour.

The lime gives it a kick of summer; I’ll eat this with tortilla chips, like a salsa.

I-hate-fennel Fennel Pickles

2 cups chopped fennel
3/4 cup chopped sweet onion
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons minced scapes or garlic
1 1/2 teaspoons pickling salt
Water to cover

Combine everything expect the water and mix well. Place in fermentation vessel of your choice; I used a 500 mL glass canning jar with an airlock lid. Add water until veggies are just covered, poking with a chopstick to get out the air bubbles. Cover and let ferment at room temperature for 1-2 weeks, or until action in airlock stops. Store in a cool place.

Simple Jalapeño Pickles with Scapes

Posted by Lindsay on June 13, 2016

A few pounds of hot peppers came in our veggie box this week… And it’s scape season! Chop, throw in jar, cover with brine, let sit. Pickles!

Canning in vintage jars

Posted by Lindsay on May 28, 2016

One of the benefits about being passionate about preserving food is that people give me things: Usually it’s extra fruit or veg that they can’t use, but sometimes… It’s canning supplies! I was lucky to be given a hundred or so of these vintage gem jars, which have a mouth size of 78mm. That’s between the more common mouth sizes of 70mm (small or regular mouth) and 85mm (wide mouth). The jars are no longer manufactured, but you can still buy metal lids and rings at large retailers such as Canadian Tire. Along with the jars came several dozen original glass lids, deep zinc threaded rings, and brand new, in box, rubber gaskets… In short, everything needed to can!

So, of course I had to do this.

Catsup, or tomato ketchup… I use the recipe from the Joy of Cooking.

Glad I can give these old jars new life.

Canning Black-Eyed Peas with Veggies and Spices

Posted by Lindsay on May 22, 2016

I rehydrated black-eyed peas yesterday, and chopped up some onions and peppers while making dinner last night. Today, I am dividing it all among some pint jars, along with salt and spices, filling them 2/3 full… Then top with water to 1″ from the top, adding lids, and pressure canning for 80 minutes at 11lb. These will be great to open for dinner on a busy weeknight: We’ll heat and eat with rice and salsa and tortillas.

Fermented Fennel and Lemon Pickle

Posted by Lindsay on November 8, 2015

I love our weekly delivery of local fruits and vegetables from Saanich Organics, through their box program. As a consumer, I love that it’s an easy way to access healthy food… And I appreciate being able to support regional agriculture and contribute to the both the environmental and economic health of my community. I’m also a former employee of a couple of the farms involved, so I know from first hand experience that I’m buying high quality produce.

What don’t I like about receiving the box? Well, the way it works, I get what I get (and I don’t get upset). And frankly, I just am not a huge fan of some veg. I’ll eat them anyway, because most things can taste okay when roasted with a bit of olive oil, salt, and garlic (or scape salt!)… But would likely never go out of my way to buy endive or escarole.

Or, for that matter, fennel.

So sometimes, there are bits that linger in the fridge for a week or three. And if more of that vegetable shows up in the next box, it joins its friends, and eventually I have four wilting fennel bulbs.

What to do? Fermentation experimentation, of course! I liked the look of the first recipe that I found when searching online for what others have done with fermenting fennel, from MoonBrine Pickles in Portland, Oregon… So that’s what I’ve played with here. I didn’t have any celery or “nice” onions, but this pickle still tasted great when I was mixing it up… I can’t wait to see how it is in several weeks.

Fermented Fennel and Lemon Pickle

yields ~ 1.5 litres

473 g fennel bulbs (I had 2 small, 2 tiny)
273 g onion (1 medium)
1 lemon (medium, organic)
5 small garlic cloves
230 g carrots (3 medium)
1 tbsp black peppercorns
50 g coarse pickling salt*
approx. 2 cups water

Thinly slice the fennel, onion, lemon, and garlic. For the carrot, I decided to try out the wavy blade on a kitchen tool my parents brought me back from Vietnam; you could just thinly slice that too.

Add the salt and stir to combine. You’ll see that the salt dissolves a bit, and pulls juices out of the vegetables… Neat!

Pack loosely into a large jar or crock. I’m using a 1.9 L wide mouth canning jar.

Add water just to cover, put a solid lid on jar, and shake to distribute water and help the remaining salt to dissolve to make the brine. Turn upright and tap jar gently on a surface so that the vegetables settle.

Replace solid lid with airlock lid, or follow your preferred fermentation set-up.

I ended up needing 2 cups of water; you may need more or less, to ensure your vegetables are submerged. This isn’t as crucial if you’re using an airlock lid or fermenting in a Fido-style container, as the jar is sealed from outside bacteria/yeasts/air. However, if you’re doing a open ferment (ie. not sealed), it’s crucial you have enough brine so that when you add a weight, the vegetables are submerged below the surface.

Let ferment at room temperature for a few weeks. It’s pretty cold in my house most the time right now, so I’ll probably taste this in 3 weeks.

* I weighed all the vegetables and it came to around 1000 g. As I’ve problems with lemons turning mouldy in the past, I decided I’d like a stronger salt brine than I usually use, and went with 5%. Multiplying 1000 g by 0.05 gives me 50g of salt… And when I used a teaspoon to measure this out onto the scale, it turned out to be 8 teaspoons, which is exactly what the original MoonBrine recipe called for! Go figure.

Les fleurs d’ail salées (Salted Garlic Scapes)

Posted by Lindsay on June 10, 2015

I had heard of herbes salées, but never made it until last summer, when a recipe for this salted herb and vegetable condiment showed up in my email, as one to be tested for a cook book. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but diligently followed the instructions and then filled out my feedback form. I was working at a local organic farm a few days a week, so had access to plenty of extra imperfect produce… Grinding it up and mixing with salt seemed like as good an idea as any, for making use of what couldn’t be sold at the market.

That jar sat on the counter for a few days, then went into the fridge, and after a month or so I remembered it and sprinkled a bit of the mixture onto some mushrooms frying in olive oil, in place of regular salt.

Well.

Wow.

It was delicious. The flavours of the different herbs and vegetables had all melded, into a smooth but vibrant seasoning that complimented the mushrooms perfectly. I soon found that herbes salées was a fantastic addition to just about every savoury dish, especially the vegetarian fare that we eat most of the time at our house: Roasted vegetables, egg dishes, beans and rice, hearty soups. Even my spouse, who is often very (judiciously) wary of the jars of experimental foods that crowd our fridge, was seeking it out… That’s a win.

Unfortunately, I can’t share that recipe with you, as it’s not mine… Though of course I’ll tell you when the cookbook it’s in is published.

However! Since that first jar, I’ve made many versions of herbes salées, using a general rule of a 2:1 ratio by weight, of herbs/vegetables to salt.

Here is my latest, a tribute to one of my favourite seasonal treats, garlic scapes.

Les fleurs d’ail salées (Salted Garlic Scapes)

Yields ~3/4 cup

100g garlic scapes (I used 5 scapes)

50g coarse pickling salt

Slice scapes roughly, then run through a meat grinder or pulse in a food processor until finely minced.

Combine with salt and mix thoroughly with a spoon.

Pack into a clean jar, and cover with clean lid.

If your home is relatively cool, this will last a month or more on the counter; I keep mine in the fridge, as my place is rather hot these days. This recipe is simple to scale up! When I make larger batches, I store the jars in the basement, on the cold concrete floor.

What’s that jar? This is a Le Parfait brand, wire bail jar with a rubber seal (style/size: Terrine 200). I was lucky to find it a thrift store for a dollar, in like-new condition!

Miso: Delicious.

Posted by Lindsay on May 30, 2015

I can’t believe I managed to wait over a year! And also that I didn’t make more batches during those months of waiting… If I’d known how good this would be, I would have.

This is the jar that I topped with a thick layer of salt, which has turned into a crust; the other jar has instead a smaller jar tucked inside the lid, pushing down on the miso. I have yet to open that one, but it looks much the same as this.

Carrots with lemon update: Foul!

Posted by Lindsay on December 1, 2014

I noticed a strange slimy film sort of growth on the surface of the carrots… And opened it today to check it out:

There’s something opaque and thick on the surface… I actually thought it may somehow have been a kombucha SCOBY or vinegar-type mother

It’s almost fibrous in consistency

So,

The carrots underneath look great, though… Sadly, they taste utterly vile!

So, lesson learned: Carrots plus lemon plus salt isn’t the yummy idea I thought it’d be… Or if it is, I did it wrong! Glad I only tried this out with a micro-batch; the compost will do well with this donation of some extra active bacteria.

Micro-Batch Mustard Ruby Kraut: Recipe & Photo Tutorial

Posted by Lindsay on November 28, 2014

Look at the layers in this head of red cabbage! Like contour lines on a map… So perfect… Almost as perfect as a good kraut!

Micro-Batch Mustard Ruby Kraut

2 Cups finely sliced red cabbage (I used about 1⁄8 of a head)

1 teaspoon pickling salt

1 teaspoon red mustard seeds

A few splashes of dechlorinated water

Finely sliced red cabbage – If you have a mandolin or other cabbage shredding device, use that! I made do with a sharp knife.

Two cups of sliced cabbage, ready to go

The cabbage in a large bowl, with room for mixing

Add 1 teaspoon of coarse pickling salt

Add a teaspoon of red mustard seeds

Now mix with a clean hand…

Mixing…

Still mixing…

The cabbage is releasing juice!

Pack the mixture into a clean, 500 mL glass canning jar

Don`t forget the juice

Press it down, to see if there`s enough liquid to cover the cabbage… Not quite enough

This is dechlorinated water: Tap water that was boiled and left to cool on the counter… It works well for fermenting, though it likely still contains chloramine

Pour in a little bit of the water, just to cover cabbage

Just enough liquid to cover the cabbage!

Fermentation lid, ready to go: 3-piece airlock, plastic lid with grommet, rubber ring, metal ring

Fit the 3-piece airlock snugly into the grommet in the plastic lid

Place the rubber ring on the lip of the jar

The lid fits onto the jar next

Then the metal ring screws down and holds the lid securely on the jar

Remove the cap from the airlock, and add water up to the fill line, then replace cap

Don`t forget to label your ferment! Name and date, please

Now the hard part… Waiting. Maybe a week, probably four!