Autumn Lacto-Fermentation

Last weekend's Kraut & Kimchi class is a favourite that we offer several times a year.  At this time of season the group make an autumn root-veggie inspired lacto-fermented kraut to take home.  We had lots of samples to taste and show the breadth of flavour and texture that can be done with lacto-fermentation.  Then the hands-on work began, at which point many hands made short work of a huge pile of carrots, daikon, beets, cabbage, turnip and more!

Sauerkraut & Kimchi Workshop

We are back into full swing of our workshop schedule with classes taking place most Saturdays until June.  Today's session was on lactic acid fermentation, specifically making sauerkraut and kimchi.  This workshop would be good to offer in late summer just in time to preserve/ferment all the bounty coming out of backyard gardens, local farms and CSA's.  However, in late winter we are also glad to revive our cabbage and root vegetable flavours by fermenting them, while biding our time for the fresh garden veggies that are still a few months to come.  We used organic local produce, including carrots from our favourite CSA (Fertile Ground) that we have stored since the fall buried in a large container of damp sand.  They are still perfectly crisp and juicy!

What is lactic acid fermentation?  Live cultured, probiotic, unpasteurized vegetable and fruit ferments that are health promoting foods packed with beneficial bacteria and enzymes.  The lactic acid creates the sour flavour and preserves the food, preventing spoilage. 

A few key tips:
~ shred -- salt -- submerge
~ use only good quality sea salt, filtered chlorine-free water, whey (from live cultured yogurt)
~ use top quality organic produce
~ keep fermented veggies submerged under brine 
~ salt water brine is made of 2-4 Tbsp sea salt per 1 litre water
~ season and salt to your taste - add spices, herbs, garlic, ginger, green onion, cayenne, chili, etc
~ keep ferments around 18C (65 F) during fermentation
~ check ferments often to taste for flavour and watch for mold, etc
~ when ferments are ready (at desired flavour) store in cold cellar or refrigerator
~ use ceramic crock or glass mason/gallon jars for fermentation
~ eat and enjoy your ferments often!

Right now, at the homestead

This end of week/weekend at our little homestead...
- canning the last bushel of tomatoes into sauce, ready for winter feasts and wood-fired pizza dinners
- bottling the lacto-fermented crock pickles, our favourite recipe from Wild Fermentation, that are now ready, and storing the jars in the cold cellar
- making another large batch of our favourite hemp & maple granola (recipe below)
- planning an apple picking adventure to nearby Avalon Orchards for the last fall harvestings 
- stacking firewood in growing piles for winter warmth
- observing the many bees busily foraging in the fall flowers
- preparing garden beds for the coming of first frost, possibly tomorrow night?
- planting greens in our greenhouse for fresh winter harvests, using methods from Winter Harvest Handbook
- reading: Radical Homemakers; Urban Farm Magazine; Playful Learning
- attending our first local homeschooling workshop this weekend, a daylong "living room" discussion with David Albert
-and baking vast quantities of pumpkin pies for next week's CSA pick-up!

Hemp & Maple Granola
12 cups whole oats 
3/4 cup sunflower oil
1 cup pure dark maple syrup
1/2 cup hulled hemp seeds
1/3 cup flax seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
(other nuts and/or seeds as desired)

Stir all ingredients well to combine.  Spead evenly on two lightly greased baking sheets and bake at 350F for about 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.  Bake until golden brown and slightly crispy.  Granola will firm up once it cools.  Stir in 1 cup raisins after granola has cooled.

Making kombucha - the "elixir of long life"

This past week we had guests from an urban farm in Ottawa staying with us at our bed and breakfast.  They said for them it was like "coming home", and we too thoroughly enjoyed their company and had long conversations about permaculture, cohousing, land trusts, food co-ops, and lacto-fermenting foods.  They shared their home-brewed kombucha with us and left a bottle so we could get our own batch started!  Kombucha is a wonder drink, known by some as "the elixir of long life" because it is full of antioxidants and probiotics (along the lines of kefir, live culture yogurt, kimchi, etc).  It promotes healthy intestinal flora, stimulates the immune system, boosts energy levels, and has been reputed to heal a long list of health issues by detoxifying and cleansing the blood/body. 

We had been talking about starting kombucha after reading about it in the Wild Fermentation book, so I was extremely pleased to receive this gift!  Hopefully, if all goes well, in several weeks we will have a "mother" mushroom which we can pass on to others who want to start their own brews.

Here's a recipe for making your own kombucha at home.  It's also readily available in various flavours from health food stores.  I have not found information yet about whether kombucha can successfully be made without using refined sugar - this is one down side of this drink, as it does contain a fair amount of sugar sweetener, but the sugar is needed (as in wine making) for the microbes to multiply and assist fermentation.

Kombucha
1) Get some live kombucha (e.g. if you don't have someone to give you a starter culture, they can be purchased online, or you can use 1/2 cup from a kombucha tea you buy at the health food store)
2) Steep 4-8 tea bags (black or green, not herbal) per 4 litres (aprox 1 gallon) water.  Tea can be made with cold filtered water and let tea bags steep until tea is desired strength; or make a hot tea and let it cool before adding starter culture.
3) Add 1-1/2 cups sugar, which helps fuel the kombucha microbes (the more sugar, the stronger the sour flavour will be in your finished kombucha).
4) Add kombucha starter culture, or the 1/2 cup kombucha tea from your last batch or store bought bottle. 
5) Stir well, then cover with cheese cloth - securing cover so flies can't get in, but allowing kombucha to breathe.
6) Let sit for one week (or more) on kitchen counter - if "mushroom" grows it has worked.  Save mushroom ("mother") and use to float in your next batch of kombucha.  In another week or so the mushroom will grow another small mushroom on it, which can be saved and used, or given away!
7) Bottle kombucha (siphon into glass jars) and store in the fridge.  At the point of bottling, you can add various interesting flavour additives such as chopped ginger root, raspberries, or lemon slices, into each bottle.  The finished kombucha will taste like a fizzy carbonated sour-sweet iced tea drink.  Drink 1/2 cup each day for health benefits.

New quick and easy crock pickle recipe

We have loads of fresh dill in the garden right now, a few cukes, and many more I bought at the farmers market on Saturday.  I just bottled a new batch of crock pickles - i.e. lacto-fermented, non pressure-canned, crunchy wonderful "raw" pickles!  Yum!  We love pickles of all sorts in the house and have been making various krauts and wild ferments for some time.  What I love about crock pickles and wild fermented foods is, that not only do they have a long list of health benefits, but making them is just so easy.  The house isn't heated up during these hot days, the flavours and textures are perfect, and it feels like tapping into an ancient tradition.

This pickle recipe is different from my usual crock pickle recipe (which comes from the amazing book by Sandor Ellix Katz called "Wild Fermentation", where the pickles are left to stand at room temperature in the crock covered with brine for several weeks to months).  This one is a variation for getting good crisp pickles very quickly, with a somewhat milder flavour.  It was actually in the latest Summer issue of the LCBO food & drink magazine - a somewhat unusual place to find recipes but actually most of their recipes I've tried have been wonderful (I imagine they have a great test kitchen).  It's not listed on their website yet so I'll do a loose summary of it here.  I doubled it, using 4 lbs (2 kg) cucumbers, which made 4 large 1 litre jars.

Pickle in Brine Recipe
1) Make a strong salt brine (1/2 cup pickling salt to 8 cups cold water),  for 2 lbs (1 kg) small cucumbers.
2) Remove a small portion of both ends of the cucumber.  Soak pickles in the salt brine, in a large crock or food grade bucket, weighing down pickles with a heavy plate so they are completely covered in brine for 12-24 hours (at room temperature).
3) Then rinse off pickling salt with several changes of water. 
4) Make a vinegar solution of 2 1/2 cups water : 2 cups white vinegar. 
5) Pack pickles into clean narrow-mouthed 1 litre mason jars. Add several cloves of garlic, 2 tsp pickling spices, a branch of dill, a grape leaf (optional), and enough vinegar water to cover to the top over the pickles. 
6) Add clean lids and store in fridge for upto 2 weeks.  Pickles can be eaten right away, but should be eaten within this 2 week timeframe.

Lacto-Fermenting Workshop!

We had our friend Jackie back again at Little City Farm this weekend, to lead her popular workshop on lacto-fermenting foods. This is the perfect season to be offering this workshop as we can still plan our gardens accordingly to include foods that are perfect for preserving as pickles by lacto-bacillus fermentation process, such as beans, garlic, carrots, cucumbers. As well, we can begin harvesting foods that are already coming to season, such as grape leaves and asparagus - both of these items were shared in the tasting portion of the workshop and were fantastic! Lacto-fermentation, or "wild fermentation", is a wonderful simple way to capture the texture, flavour and exceptional nutritional value of foods, while preserving them without use of canning, drying, cooking, freezing (all of which degrade the nutritional quality of foods). Lacto-fermented foods also offer healing properties to a wide range of health issues, so should be a staple in our diets (as they were and still are in many diverse cultures around the globe - e.g. kimchi, sourdough, sauerkraut, crock pickles, injera, miso, yogurt, wines, etc).

To learn more, books that were recommended in this workshop included:
Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz
Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon (Weston Price Foundation)

Winter Kimchi

I mentioned earlier that I've started another live cultered sauerkraut. It's actually not quite a sauerkraut as it's not just cabbage - it's more of a winter kimchi - a spicy, garlicy, health-tonic made of pickled vegetables. Kimchi can be made in a variety of styles and originates in Korea where it is a national culinary art and passion.

This recipe is loosely based on the one found in Wild Fermentation: The Flavour, Nutrition and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz, a fantastic cookbook and cultured food history. This cookbook is always close at hand in our kitchen, as we are trying to work our way through all manner of fermented foods and this wide ranging book covers everything from vegetable ferments (like sauerkraut and pickles); bean ferments (like miso and tempeh); bread ferments (like sourdough and dosas); dairy ferments (like yogurt and savoury cheeses); plus fermented grains, beverages, wines, vinegars and more!

This kimchi is extremely simple to make - the secret is just the right amount of spicing to suit your taste and then allowing enough time to ferment. The recipe is extremely adaptable, just use what vegetables you like or have at hand. Here is an aproximation of what I used:

Winter Kimchi
fresh garlic (3 whole bulbs)
onion (2 large)
ginger (1/2 inch sliced)
dried cayenne peppers (3 large including seeds)
carrots (3 large)
green cabbage (3 heads)
daikon radish (6 inches)
filtered water (14-18 cups)
sea salt (14-18 Tbsp)

First the vegetables are shredded or chopped to a desireable size, then stirred together in a large jar or ceramic crock. The container is then filled with enough brine solution to completely cover the vegetables when weighed down with a large plate and weight - to make the very strong brine solution 1 Tbsp of sea salt added to each cup of filtered water. Then the crock is covered with a clean cloth, and set on the counter to ferment. It can be tasted each day, and any mould is skimmed off. When it achieves desired taste the kimchi can be packed into jars, covered with brine, and refrigerated. True wild lacto-bacilli ferments are never canned or pasteurized, as this kills off the vital healthy bacteria. It can keep almost indefinitely in the fridge, but will likely be eaten in short order! Wild ferments like this are invaluable for building immunity and a healthy digestive system, and should be a regular part of everyone's daily meal routine. Delicious!