The Summer of the Cucumbers

I have accidentally not blogged since June! Hello! How is your summer going now that it is ending? Mine was really nice and I have no reason for the lack of blogging except perhaps I was buried under a heap of cucumbers?

My family loves kosher dills/fermented cukes/sour pickles so much, and I had a hard time finding good pickling cukes, so I decided to use my raised bed space for cucumbers instead of green beans this year. I have tried cucumbers maybe once or twice before and got basically nothing: the vines wilted or the leaves got powdery or something ate everything.

Well. I planted the whole packet of Parisian Pickling Cucumbers, timing them to be ready once we got home from our big Seattle trip (there's a post!) and figuring that I'd only get a handful anyway if I was lucky.  Well no.  Turns out, this is The Summer When All the Cucumbers Grow.  All my friends who planted cucumbers are overflowing and pickling and laughing in disbelief.

As a cucumber novice, I am not very good at getting the buggers at the little pickling size I wanted. Overnight, they grew six inches into logs!  Which were bitter and seedy and tossed on the compost pile.

I made gallons and gallons of fermented cukes (method below).  I also made two batches of bread and butter pickles from the Mennonite Community Cookbook, as well as 7-Day-Sweets, a childhood favorite that involved pouring boiling water over the cukes several days in a row to make them crisp.  Why does this work?  I don't know, but it does.

I made pickle relish, fridge pickles, and salad after salad.  Because I planted so many plants close together and did not water them regularly, but regularly let some of them get too big, I had to deal with bitter cucumbers.  I tried cutting off the stem end and then rubbing it on the cut end until a bitter white foam came out.  I tried salting sliced cukes and then rinsing them.  My best success was slicing cukes and soaking them in salted ice water for about an hour, then draining and rinsing.

Last week, the cucumber plants finally showed signs of slowing down, so I yanked them out.  I still have over 1 1/2 gallons of fermented dills in the fridge, plus fridge pickles, and a crisper drawer full of cucumbers.  On my to-do list:  "decide what to do with cukes."  I guess we will eat pickles for every meal this winter?

Did you plant cucumbers this year and get a roaring crop? Or is something else bursting from your garden?

Fermented Dill Pickles

In a half gallon glass jar, combine:
1 Tbsp. fine sea salt (not iodized)
1 quart room temperature non-chlorinated water
1 Tbsp. dill seeds
1 tsp. dill weed
1-2 garlic cloves, sliced

Stir and/or set aside until salt is dissolved.

Wash and trim ends from small pickling cucumbers - I usually kept them under 4" and a thumb-size diameter. Drop them into the brine, shaking and pushing to fill up the jar but making sure they can all be submerged. May need to add a little more water and salt.   Keep the pickles submerged under brine by filling a smaller jar with water and capping it and setting it in the jar on top of the pickles.
Set jar in room temperature for 48 hours.  Should see foam and bubbling action.  Scrape off the foam before capping and storing in fridge. Keeps indefinitely in fridge. Sometimes I use a cup or so of the brine in a new jar of fermented dills. If you have fresh dill, use 2 heads or so in place of the dried stuff.

Phoebe Pounds Cabbage

My dad couldn't resist the huge heads of cabbage from Uncle Merv in Thanksgiving week.  My basement is now highly insulated as part of our new boiler installation, so I didn't know where to ferment cabbage into sauerkraut.  But with cabbage so cheap (ok, my dad wouldn't let me pay him back, but I think it was something ridiculous like $1.50) and labor so willing, I had to experiment. It's a feat to find real work for toddlers (they're not easily fobbed off with fake chores!) that is actually helpful with minimal potential for breakage, bodily harm, and disaster.

I borrowed a mandoline from a neighbor and sliced two heads.  Phoebe took up the meat mallet with proud purpose to pound the cabbage to release its juices. Another key to having a toddler helper:  act like it's normal and don't over-praise because then you will mark their helpfulness as somehow abnormal. I want to encourage all the helpers!  We all eat food in this house and by gum, we can all pitch in.

I lugged the crock up to the balcony - I'm going to try fermenting outside!  The crock is in a sheltered spot and will get strong morning sun.  So far the weather has been fairly mild, so we'll see how the bacteria like being outside in the fresh air to make sauerkraut.

Dill Pickles, Two Ways

My green beans produced enough for us to eat as well as can!  I am so pleased.  I canned green beans as pickled dilly beans because my cucumber dills have been mushy the past few years, but dilly beans are not mushy.  I did some research on cucumber dills.  I'm going to try Pickle Crisp next year.  I'm going to possibly grow cucumbers, because apparently super-fresh cucumbers make the crispest pickles.  And instead of just scraping off a little bit of the blossom end of the cucumber, I'm going to cut off at least a half-inch.  

In the meantime, I made fermented kosher dills.  Look at that sweet pickle crock my dad found at an auction for me.  The wide crock is much easier to fill than a jar. 

However, fermented dills are tricky.  Too short of a fermentation time, and they just taste salty.  Too long, and they get mushy.  Mushy cucumbers!  The bane of my canning.

A Little Tip for Better Yogurt

Truly, such a little tip that really has made a difference to my homemade yogurt: don't stir the yogurt starter into the warm milk. Don't stir!  Just pour the warm milk over the yogurt and let it incubate.

I can't recall where I picked this method up or even if it was promised as a tip, but I like it because my yogurt has a sweeter, milder flavor and a lovely jell. Plus, it's one less step!

 Maybe I should just give you the run-down for how I currently make yogurt?  It's a little different from my 2010 instructional post and subsequent posts (using glass jars, wild starter).

1. Plug in yogurt incubator to warm up with glass jars in it.
2. Use another glass half-pint to measure the (pasteurized) milk into a saucepan.
3. Heat the milk to 180F using a candy thermometer to check.
4. Set aside milk in its pan to cool to 100-110F.
5. When milk has cooled to that temperature range, dollop a teaspoon-ful of plain yogurt from the last batch of yogurt into the bottom of each glass jar in the yogurt incubator.  I don't measure precisely!
6. Pour the milk into the jars.
7. Don't stir!!
8. Loose cover.
9. Incubate for 1-2 hours until jelled.
10. Refrigerate, making sure to put the "Belgian yogurt - save this starter" label on one of the new jar lids.

More fun to look at Granny and Phoebe than it is to look at cups of white stuff which don't change their looks over the years, unlike these cuties.

More Authentic Kimchi

I've made kimchi before and we did really like it, but I kept on buying the commercial kind at the Asian store because it tasted better.  For reasons this fall that I cannot now remember, I got really determined to make more authentic kimchi. Linda Ly's recipe convinced me that I did really need to buy the Korean pepper, gochugaru (but what I actually got was gochujang, the paste, because that's what my Asian store and the herb shop had). I resist buying specialty ingredients that I only use in one recipe, but this one is totally worth it.

Oh man, this kimchi is good! Pungent, garlicky, gingery, spicy but not too. . . we eat it straight out of the jar.   I wish I could remember to get it out and serve it as a kind of relish or salad at meals. Do you eat kimchi?  With what?

I also wish I could say kimchi kept our household entirely healthy while everyone else fell to the dreaded stomach bug over Christmas, but no, that is not the case.  But I'm not really eating it to stay healthy - it's just intensely more-ish and the kimchi breath is totally worth it.  I think we're on our third batch since November.

Kimchi (modified just slightly from Linda Ly's recipe, linked above)

Place in large bowl:
2 lbs. Napa cabbage, sliced fine
1/4 cup non-iodized salt

Stir and massage well.  Cover with water.  Stir occasionally for 2 hours.  Volume should be reduced by half and cabbage should be limp.

Strain salt-water off cabbage. Rinse and strain again.

Add to cabbage in bowl:
1/2 lb. daikon radish, julienned
1/2 lb. carrots, julienned
6 green onions, cut in 1" pieces
4 cloves garlic, minced
1" piece ginger, minced

In a blender, puree:
1 Asian pear, cored and chunked
1 small yellow onion, chunked
1 cup dechlorinated water
1/2 cup Korean chile powder (gochugaru)
2 Tbsp. fish sauce

Stir puree into vegetables.  Stir well (can use your hands if you wear gloves).  Pack into jars or a crock to ferment, leaving at least 2" headspace.  Weight the vegetables down under the liquid, pressing firmly.  Ly recommends pressing down firmly every day and fermenting for 3-7 days.  I don't always press daily, and I usually ferment a little longer.  Store kimchi in fridge when it's done fermenting.

Notes:
1. I did use a Bartlett pear once and didn't notice any difference.
2. I halve the water since I'm using the chile paste instead of the powder; well, once I forgot, but I just had more delicious liquid so it seemed fine.
3. Use organic ingredients when possible for fermentation because they are more likely to have happy bacteria on/in them already, which assists fermentation.
4. On my previous kimchi post, I explain the methods of fermentation much more fully (but used cayenne! wouldn't do that now).  But if you're still confused, please ask.  I think fermentation is a strange process until you've done it a few times and know what to expect.
5. Kimchi is not like baking chemistry, so you can probably add or subtract ingredients up and down the line.  We love the flavor of this recipe because it's similar to what I used to buy.

Four Heads for the Crock

I got five enormous heads of cabbage from market - I think the farmer charged me $1.50 a head.  I shredded and shredded and shredded cabbage on the mandoline slicer I borrowed from a church friend. (My shoulders and arms were sore the next day and I couldn't figure out why at first!)

So yes, the crock took four heads of shredded cabbage, pounded down with my meat mallet, to get filled up. I salted the layers as I went.

I put a plate on top, weighted it with a quart jar filled with water, and covered the whole business with a tea towel.  My husband carried it down to the basement and it will ferment for several weeks before we start tasting and enjoying.  I'm curious to see what Phoebe thinks of sauerkraut!

The 3-Gallon Sauerkraut Crock

I can't believe it has taken me this long to tell you about my favorite Christmas present:  my dad got me a 3-gallon crock to make sauerkraut and about 8 huge heads of cabbage from my uncle's farm.  Dad definitely gets the dad-of-the-year award for this one!

On December 26, Dad dropped off the cabbages and the Amish-made slicer he had borrowed from my uncle for me.  My husband and I shredded and shredded until we had enough cabbage to mostly fill the crock.  He even got out the food processor to see if it was faster than the hand shredder (which looked something like this).  Nope, the shredder was faster; I need to cast around for a shredder to borrow or buy next fall.  I can't recall how many heads of cabbage we used to fill the crock, but I know we gave several heads away to church friends.

Then, in four weeks, we tasted the sauerkraut.  It was absolutely delicious, better than any storebought stuff or even my previous batches of homemade.  I think it was better because I used my meat mallet to really pound the cabbage into the crock.

In earlier batches, I was using a glass jar for the fermentation, so I was much gentler in the pounding and pushing because the mouth of the jar restricted my movement and also I didn't want to break the jar.  With the crock, I didn't need to add any extra liquid because I so successfully pounded the cabbage that it was covered with its own liquid by the time I put the plate and the heavy water-filled jar on top.

So I've been fetching the sauerkraut up to the fridge, a half-gallon jar at a time.  We often eat it just straight, it's so delicious, but I've also done the typical pork-and-sauerkraut, a slaw, and lots of vegetarian Reubens.

Next winter, I'm definitely starting the process in the fall so we have all winter to eat our way through the crock; the cool basement preserves it well.  We've got about a half-gallon left yet, but spring is starting to nose its way in, and sauerkraut is winter food in my opinion, so we've got some eating to do.

Kitchen Pets

I have gradually developed a real zoo of bacteria in my kitchen.

The yogurt.  The kefir.  The kombucha. The sourdough starter.

I usually have one fermented vegetable mix in the fridge.  This is a mix of root veggies and ginger with leeks.

Then I'm growing sprouts in the little niche above the oven hood.  I have to remind myself to look in on them several times a day when they're growing.  This jar is sitting in a sunny windowsill to develop the green in the sprouts.

I like tending to these things as I wait for a child to finish a meal, wait for the coffee to perk, or just keep house as the snow falls outside.  I'm not a very successful gardener outside, but inside, my houseplants and kitchen pets are doing just fine.  What about you?

Yogurt for Infinity

I have been making yogurt for years.  I used to refresh the starter every few batches with some freeze-dried yogurt starter or a new cup of plain yogurt from the store.

Then I read in Sandor Katz' book that these are commercially controlled starters, and it's possible to acquire wilder starters that are self-regenerating if properly fed.

Consequently, I bought a Bulgarian yogurt starter online (here) this summer.  As long as I remember to save a little yogurt and make a fresh batch every week or so, I will never need to "refresh" my starter by buying something again.  I love this independence (which comes with the caution to keep the Bulgarian starter alive!).

The Rest of the Summer Preserving

Here are the final summer preserving projects I did.  I did not blog about them at the time (for various boring reasons), but I want them on The Record.

All summer long, I made and froze batches of pesto.  I mostly used my happy, huge purple basil plant in the front porch pot.  Today, I pulled the whole plant out in preparation for winter and the children picked all the leaves off the stems - the stems were thick and strong like twigs! I made 4 more batches of pesto.  I freeze it in ice cube trays and then we can put hot pasta on a cube of frozen pesto and presto (ha), there's a meal!  I also use pesto on pizza instead of tomato sauce.

 

And speaking of pizza, here's one of several more batches of pizza sauce I made in September.  I couldn't bear the idea of using my home-canned jars of pizza sauce when there were still tomatoes on market, so I simply made more sauce when I made baked ziti, spaghetti, and pizza.

 

 

I also made several trays of roasted tomatoes, following Jennifer's directions.  I didn't take any photos -this may have been over the time that I was struggling with a virus.  In my defense, it was an elusive virus and I would feel hale and hearty for hours at a time and then, boom, weak and achey and wishing I had not hung up 4 loads of laundry and started a vat of pizza sauce.

I chopped and froze a lot of bell peppers.  I could get them 3 or 4 for a dollar at market. 

 

Several times this summer I made fermented dill pickles, following directions in Sandor Katz's book.  They were tricky to get right.  The first batch was crisp and sour and my husband could not stop eating them.  The final batch, shown here at the beginning of its fermentation, was only fine in my opinion, but my husband still stood in front of the fridge with the jar and a fork.

 

 

I got a half bushel of Concord grapes and made grape juice - only because I borrowed Rebecca's fantastic steamer that made it easy.  This will be great with popcorn on Sunday nights.

 

 

 

And finally, here is chicken stock seen from my kitchen window as it cools.  I included it here in the preserving round up because I needed to get that chicken out of the freezer to make way for the local beef that we're getting soon.

 

 

I think I preserved more this summer than I ever have before.  Wow! That was not really my plan, but I just kept finding projects I could not resist.  How did your summer preserving go?

The Beginning of a Summer Kitchen

Our old gas grill was really feeble, so we replaced it this year with a Big Camp Chef III grill.  It has three propane burners and a grill box that can be placed on two of the burners.  It is fabulous.  I called several places and searched multiple websites over several weeks until we found the best price (amazon, a few months ago when we bought it).

Next year, we're hoping to launch our grand plans for our summer kitchen (see my Pinterest board for some of my ideas!), but this year, we are getting used to the grill and seeing what it's like to cook and can outside.

grill box on, pot of boiling water on the available burner

 

I love boiling corn - the burners are 30,000 BTUs which means I can get a huge pot of water boiling in what feels like minutes (I should time it one of these days).

now our butter will stay this way all summer

Last week, I did my first canning project:  dill pickles.  Inside, I would have heated the jars in the oven.  Outside, I heated them in hot water in the canner.  I boiled the pickle brine on another burner.  I kept the lids and rings hot in my slow cooker.  Everything worked beautifully (except that I ran out of salt, vinegar, and garlic mid-project - seems like the first canning project of the season must always be ill-supplied).  

grill box off, three burners available

This year, I added a grape leaf to each jar; supposedly, the tannic acid in the leaves will help to keep the pickles crisp.  I also carefully sliced off each end of the cucumber, which also supposedly makes crips pickles.  I'll report back.

I also made a half-gallon of fermented dill pickles following the loose directions in The Art of Fermentation.  They are in the fridge now after their 3-day ferment, puckery and crisp, but not vinegary which is what I think of for a pickle.  We like them a lot.

Have you thought of setting up a summer kitchen?  Do tell!