Pickles and mustard, oh my

In further keeping with the theme of the summer--that is, "Oh man, I'm definitely not cooking an actual meal today,"--I've been making a slew of random condiments, garnishes, and snacks. It's AMAZING and I love it.

First, I decided to use some of the whey I got from making labneh with plain yogurt. I always want to use the whey, but I rarely find anything I actually want to make before it's turned questionable. But not this time! This time I just so happened to be reading about Phickle's lactofermented mustard. So obviously a lactofermented mustard was meant to be.

Yes, I have been staging a lot of pictures right here. It's the shelf immediately to the left of my kitchen windows, so it gets good light.

Anyway. Lactofermented mustard turns out to be super easy and VERY MUCH worth the minimal effort.

I didn't see a whole lot of active fermentation--no bubbles or anything of that nature--but the results are still pretty stunning. My mustard is spicy and complex and just the barest bit sweet. And I have enough to last for months! HOORAY.

This certainly made for some excellent sandwiches. But you know what else makes for excellent sandwiches? Pickles. So I broke out the vinegar, veg, and spices, and put together a batch of Emmy Cooks' spicy pickled peppers and one of Marisa's pickled eggplant.

I've made these pickled peppers before; they're one of the best sandwich accoutrements of all time. They're also super easy: make a simple brine, pour it over a jarful of sliced peppers, season with peppercorns and dill, and put in in the fridge. Voila! Pickled peppers for your delight & edification.

You should absolutely make some of these. I mean it. We can go through a jar in a few weeks if we're eating a lot of sandwiches. They're also really good sprinkled over salads, or even a bowl of spicy chili.

The pickled eggplant, however, was new & intriguing. So I hit the farmer's market for a handful of long thin Chinese eggplant, grabbed a bottle of vinegar, and went to work.

For the eggplant pickle, you simmer salted & drained eggplant spears in red wine vinegar and pack them into jars with basil and pepper. Then you process them in a water bath canner for ten minutes. Marisa has the full process on her post at Food in Jars.

I had to wait a week to crack one of these guys open and satisfy my curiosity.

If you like a serious red wine vinegar flavor and enjoy the soft texture of steamed eggplant, you will like these pickles. Since the flavor is so intense, it's probably a good idea to combine them with a mild or rich component. I personally have found them to be great in an open-faced sandwich with a couple slices of cheese and some crispy mild lettuce.

Pickles and mustards for all!

What garnishes and condiments have you guys made lately? Are you canning any new and interesting things?

Carrot pickle melange

So. PICKLES. I love pickles. You may have noticed me loving pickles over the past year or two as I merrily made pickled beets and refrigerator dills and curtido de repollo. If I ever form a band, it's going to be called Zesty Pickle, and the first single will be called Cronching. Okay?

This week it was time for carrot pickles, aka "the finest garnish to ever grace a taco."

I made my first-ever batch of refrigerator carrot pickles about a year and a half ago after reading about them on Budget Bytes. They were totally delicious and vanished in short order.

When I was making this batch, I realized I had a lonely half bunch of radishes sitting around unloved at the bottom of the crisper. Clearly, they needed the pickle treatment too, so I sliced them up and added them to my carrots, jalapenos, and red onion. The finished pickle is more or less a complete set of excellent taqueria-style garnishes, all crammed together into one beautiful jar. Perfect!

Side note: is it just me, or is everyone cooking their radishes lately? Roasts and braises and pan-fries and pickles...so tasteable.

Spicy carrot, red onion, and radish pickles

1 cup water
2 cups vinegar
1 tsp salt
~15 grinds black pepper
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
5 carrots
1 red onion
1-2 jalapenos, depending on your spice preference
4 radishes

Combine everything except the vegetables in a 3-quart pot. Bring the pot to a boil, covered, while you trim and chop all your vegetables into whatever shapes you prefer.

When the pot is boiling, carefully add your chopped vegetables. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the veg is all done to your preferred texture. Decant into warmed mason jars, lid, and put in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, voila! Pickle melange! This made about 3 pints.

So pretty! I especially love how bright pink the brine is. I'm guessing both the red onion and purple carrot help with that.

These guys are classic as a garnish on the taco, tostada, or burrito of your choice. They'd be great with fresh grilled corn (whenever corn makes its way into the market, that is). I have also been strewing them liberally over bowls of chili to excellent effect. Hooray for carrot pickles!

Have you been pickling anything lately?

Tempeh reuben!

I still have a good chunk of my crock of sauerkraut hanging out in the refrigerator, so today I thought I'd bust it out and make myself a tempeh reuben.

I don't think I've ever eaten a reuben sandwich I liked before! Clearly fresh sauerkraut makes all the difference. Homemade Russian dressing helps too. Also a delicious tempeh marinade. Also a pickle on the side.

I based my reuben on The V Word's tempeh reuben recipe, complete with homemade dressing. Yay!

Tempeh reuben

Tempeh reubens are pretty easy to make. Here's the general game plan:

1. Marinate tempeh.
2. Sear tempeh.
3. Make dressing.
4. Toast bread.
5. Assemble delightful sandwich.
6. Eat.

I marinated my tempeh in a mix of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, sriracha sauce, crushed garlic, liquid smoke, and vegetable broth, with a bay leaf thrown in for good measure. You can play with the proportions to see what you like. Be careful with both the soy sauce and liquid smoke--too much of either can be a disaster. Just start slowly and things should be fine.

Cut your tempeh into appropriate sandwichy slabs and marinate it for at least an hour before cooking.

When you're ready to cook, put a frying pan over medium-high heat and add in your tempeh. Sear on both sides, adjusting the heat as needed. I like to add a ladleful of my marinade most of the way through cooking, so the tempeh can absorb even more flavor.

While you're standing around, make your dressing. I followed the exact method from the link, although I did use the non-vegan versions of the ingredients. It turns out that mayo spiked with ketchup, worcestershire sauce, sriracha, and horseradish is pretty good! Who would have thought? (Probably a lot of people who like mayo more than I do.)

When your tempeh is closing in on done, toast yourself some rye bread.

It's time to assemble! Spread your toasted bread with as much dressing as you desire. Add tempeh and sauerkraut. Sandwich everything together, making a marginal attempt to keep all the ingredients from falling all over the place.

Now eat it.

The sauerkraut and sauce are really the highlight of this sandwich. Every time I got a kick of spicy horseradish or tangy kraut, I wanted more. I could have put three times the amount of sauerkraut on this sandwich, and that would have made it three times as good. I'm very happy I followed my instinct to slosh on about twice as much sauce as I would on any other sandwich.

The reuben is substantially different from most sandwiches I eat on a regular basis. Most sandwiches I eat have no mayo anywhere near them, unless they happen to be egg salad sandwiches. Most sandwiches I eat are filled with fresh vegetables instead of fermented. Most sandwiches I eat don't make me want to have an additional bowl of sauerkraut with horseradish sauce for dessert.

So it took me a minute to really get into this sandwich, but once I did, I liked it quite a bit.

Hooray for palate expansion!

Sausage, sourdough, & sauerkraut

So after you've fermented a batch of homemade sauerkraut, what do you do with it?

Well. You can always go for the straight up reuben sandwich--corned beef, sauerkraut, and gruyere on rye with Russian dressing--or go the vegetarian route and use tempeh instead of corned beef. You can mix it with chopped mushrooms and make a batch of pierogies. You can mix it with mashed potatoes and fry it into delicious pancakes. You can layer sauerkraut in a baking dish, slap a salted, peppered, and possibly mustarded pork chop or roast on top, and bake until awesome. Or you can go for arguably the most classic preparation of all: sausage and sauerkraut.

For excellent sausage and sauerkraut, you only need to put forth the most minor of effort. Slice up one sausage per person. Any kind of sausage you like should work; I used a precooked chicken sausage. Sear until browned on both sides. Mix with sauerkraut, either on the heat (if you want to warm your sauerkraut) or off. Voila!

I went one more step and slathered my finished sausage and sauerkraut all over a toasted sourdough roll with mustard. This was obviously an excellent choice. Crispy fragrant sourdough along with crunchy fermented cabbage and chewy, savory slices of sausage? Yes, please.

The sauerkraut was inclined to fall all over the place while I was eating. But hey, that's the mark of a really great sandwich, right? You should always have to use a fork to finish cleaning your plate.

It was delicious.

Adventures in sauerkrauting

Why is fermenting food so intimidating?

I've been meaning to ferment something or other for a good three years at least. I love all kinds of fermented foods, from miso to sourdough to kimchi to tempeh, so it's not as though I had no reason to make them myself. But somehow the only fermented or cultured food I'd ever tried to make was yogurt, and that only once, due to lack-of-candy-thermometer fail.

Clearly the lack of an everyday fermentation tradition is the problem. So. Let's fix that by making a start, shall we?

Two weeks ago, I decided to take on a fermentation challenge and make a batch of sauerkraut. I followed the classic sauerkraut recipe from Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation.

These instructions sound very easy. You do need appropriate equipment and a place to put everything during the fermentation process--but the process is clearly doable. It goes like this.

1. Shred cabbage.
2. Mix with salt.
3. Pack into crock.
4. Weight down/ensure things are covered with brine.
5. Let sit around for two weeks or until delicious.

That doesn't sound so hard, right? So I acquired a crock and a cabbage and got to work.

I cored and shredded a green cabbage. This particular one was pretty small. I don't have a scale, but I'd estimate it weighed about two pounds.

Shredding a cabbage by hand is not that big a deal, in case you were wondering. It's not a sufficient reason to get a food processor. (Cashew cheese and its ilk might be, however.)

I mixed the cabbage with salt and packed it into a large glass jar. Since the rim of the jar was a bit narrower than the body, I couldn't fit a plate inside to weigh down the cabbage. So instead I found an empty ziploc bag, washed it, filled it with water, and weighed the whole shebang down with a smaller jar of water. I hear that if you use this weighting method you're supposed to use salt water in your plastic bag, just in case it bursts. I didn't, but then my bag didn't burst, so that turned out okay.

After about 12 hours my cabbage and salt had produced enough brine to cover itself, so I didn't need to add any additional salt water.

Then I just left the entire deal on my kitchen counter, out of the sun and covered with a dishcloth, for two weeks. I checked on it every few days, and shifted my weights a bit to let the bubbling gases escape. The gas from the bubbles smelled sort of milky or whey-like. However! The fermenting sauerkraut didn't smell of anything at all at any other time. We'd been worried that fermenting would really stink up the house, but it totally did not do so in any way whatever. Qualms overcome!

After two weeks, the bubbles had largely subsided, and it was time to try out the finished product. The result was a tangy mass of slightly crunchy sauerkraut, with a young but distinctly correct kraut flavor. It's a far cry from the slimy, translucent, and overpowering mass-produced sauerkraut you get at the grocery store. I'm going to let it keep fermenting for another week or so to get a stronger finished flavor before putting it in the fridge. And then! I will eat it over chili, and with seared sausage, and maybe I'll make up a batch of sauerkraut and mushroom pierogies to stick in the freezer for future dinner application.

Hooray for sauerkraut!

Have you guys ever made fermented food? How did it go?