Bubble, bubble...minus toil and trouble

Let’s first make one thing clear: I’m a big fan of the vinegar pickle.  I love the dilly bean and the pickled corn round and swear I would walk 500 miles (more, even) because I am a junkie for those grossly addictive Zuni café red onion pickles (yes, those pickles.  The good news is there’s no need to walk anywhere. Visit those links! They are a piece of cake to create at home).  Not to mention the many occasions when pickles, snacked on between shots of vodka, have no doubt inoculated against unkind mornings-after.  Mainly, it seems I can’t ever get enough vinegar.  One, let’s say, “uncommon” habit I have is to down cider vinegar mixed with molasses on occasions I’m too lazy to brew coffee, or when I’m in need of a pre-jog pick-me-up.  Probably, it goes without my saying: Any vegetable in vinegar is basically this girl’s dream come true.

Here’s the but: If there’s anything I love more than the vinegar pickle, it’s the lacto-fermented pickle.  Science projects that double as cooking have—for the past couple years—placed high among my preferred pursuits.  These include, but are by no means limited to, sourdough bread baking, kombucha brewing, and yogurt culturing.  Among these, there is nothing quite like watching cabbage bubble up in its crock into sauerkraut and kimchi—and my latest experiment, a Japanese cabbage pickle called “tsukemono.”  There’s something wondrous about lacto-fermentation.  Given a couple days, the bacteria already present on raw cabbage turns some tricks, ups the vitamin C and lactobactilli content, and emerges something greater than the sum of its parts. You shred some cabbage, add salt, and basically that’s it: it practically wants to become sauerkraut for you. It’s like Jimmy Stewart put it, once upon The Philadelphia Story: “Vinegar pickles are a slap on the back. And lacto-fermentation is a heavy mist before my eyes.”  So maybe he was talking about whiskey and champagne, respectively, but lacto-fermentation isn’t so different from bubbly: It’s magical, it’s fortifying, and it will make you giddy.

For reasons beyond understanding, store-bought sauerkraut often contains high fructose corn syrup or other dumb additives.  On top of all this, it costs a small fortune.  Why pay for the jar or refrigerated (often pasteurized! What!) bag when it’s simple—and it really is truly, truly simple—to make your own for pennies?  It’s delicious, for one thing, and ridiculously good for you: it’s rife with vitamins, highly digestible, promotes healthy intestinal flora, boosts your immune system, and can heal your broken heart.

Ways to enjoy your pickled cabbage

• There’s no shame in eating kraut straight out of the jar, but my favorite thing is a sandwich of toasted dark bread—some kind of pumpernickel or dark rye—slathered nearly to excess with mustard, topped with kimchi or sauerkraut and sardines. It is possible to buy the fish in its “skinless and boneless” manifestation, but why do that, when you’d be paying more to miss out on tasty calcium?  What I do is I remove the primary, disorienting, crunchy spine; the rest ain’t no thang.
• Sauerkraut pushed around in a pan with juniper berries and sausage
• Kimchi fried rice: If your kimchi grows “overripe”—meaning too sour for you to bear, what you do is fry it up with some day (or longer)-old rice, throw in frozen peas, cilantro, cumin, soy sauce, eggs, and white pepper.
• Make triangles of toast, top with tsukemono, a raw (if possible) or smoked oyster (recommended: Crown Prince smoked oysters in Olive Oil; steer clear of cottonseed, because it is gross) and as many drops of Tabasco on top as you can stand.
• Drink the kraut juice.  Just do it!  It’s good and good for you.

Japanese sauerkraut a.k.a. Tsukemono

Adapted from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Makes 1 quart

1 head Napa cabbage, cored and shredded
1 bunch green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons naturally fermented soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons whey (if not available, use an additional 1 teaspoon salt)

This is traditionally made with a culture derived from rice bran, but whey serves an identical purpose and is more easily obtained. (You can simply drain it off the top of your yogurt; or if you make your own cheese, you know what to do.) Place all ingredients in a bowl, mix well and pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer to release juices.  Place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the cabbage.  The top of the vegetables should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar.  Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage.

Interested in sauerkraut or kimchi? My favorite kimchi instructions come from Greg Cooks: his kimchi tutorial is excellent and simple, and the results ultra tasty.  My sauerkraut advice I get, of course, from Sandorkraut.  Check out his Wild Fermentation forums if you’re afraid of poisoning yourself, but really, you shouldn’t be.

Clam pizza

Once upon a time on this here blog, yours truly sang the praises of the annual birthday tradition. But a confession must be made: Rituals are, for me, too excellent to be reserved for once yearly. When life feels like too much of a mess—which, let’s be honest, is always—it’s nice to have routines to rely on: morning tea, afternoon coffee. Breakfast is always cinnamony oatmeal with molasses. (The oats I soak the night before, in a bath of water and whey, which—if you’ve never tried before—is awesome! You drain the whey off the top of your yogurt.)

And Wednesdays, every week, without fail—after the downtown Gainesville farmers’ market—is pizza with the gentleman. Because really, there are few better ways to put fresh produce to use than with pizza, and really, the ideal moment to eat salad is ASAP after harvest. This week, beautiful yellow tomatoes (this is Florida, remember?) went into a pungent caper-laden sauce, topped off with peppers, spinach, green olives, and fresh(ish) mozzarella. Last week was a “New Haven-style” clam pizza with lots of clams, parmesan, and oregano (see above).

This week's pizza

The best thing about pizza, of course, is how adaptable it is. In poorer, colder times we use the cheapest mozzarella blocks we shred ourselves and canned tomatoes to still-pleasant results.

Pizza on a budget

There’ve been white pizzas on nights we can’t be bothered with sauce. When leafy salad greens aren’t available, a salad of kohlrabi or fennel or beets or cabbage slaw can be just as delightful.  Which is all to say: pizza is cheap, easy, and will never let you down.  Interested in implementing your own weekly pizza habit? Here’s some help to start.

Recommended pizza-making tools:

-If you bake bread or work with any kind of dough, one of these plastic scraper devices will be your best—and lowest maintenance!—friends.

-Pizza stone (or marble tile). Again, good for bread-bakers too. You’ll get the best possible crust this way. I found mine at a thrift store, for a dollar. Then I broke it. Then I got another one at a mega-mart that will not be named. It was under ten bucks and still works.

-Parchment paper, for easy sliding. Parchment paper reduces the risk of mangled pizza by A LOT.

-Mini herb garden. Will save you time, money, and contribute to tasty pizza sauce.

Pizza Dough (For Two)

Ingredients

½ cup wrist-temperature water
1 tsp instant yeast
¼ cup rye or wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
glug of olive oil

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in water. Add ¼ cup rye flour and ¼ cup all-purpose flour. Let sit for a half hour, until bubbly. Add the remaining cup of flour, the salt, and a good glug of oil. Combine. Let it sit until roughly doubled in size. How long this takes always depends. I check after two hours or so. Anyway, it’s very forgiving.

An hour before you plan on baking, preheat oven to 500ºF with pizza stone inside. Flip a cookie sheet over to the wrong side, and spread parchment paper over. Pull or smush the risen dough with olive-oiled hands to as thin or thick as you like, in whatever shape you like. Top with whatever toppings you like.  Slide onto the hot stone, paper and all, being careful to be quick and also not to burn yourself. Wait ten minutes before checking. Is the crust brown and the cheese gooey and perfect? Use the paper to pull the pizza out onto your cookie sheet.

Tip: if you’re making a white pizza, with no sauce, a good trick is to chop or mash up a couple cloves of garlic, let it soak in olive oil, then spread the raw garlic/oil combo onto your dough before topping. The time in the oven is enough to mellow the garlic and transform everything into deliciousness.

Not a tip, but question: what are YOUR favorite pizza toppings? Clearly I have many weeks before me (knock on wood) of many more pizzas, and am forever interested in recommendations.

Ready for a second rise

After years of resistance, I finally joined epicurious.com.  You have to be a member to review recipes, and forever I had stubbornly refused, until now.  I desperately needed to give four forks to a magical cookie recipe.  I won’t tell you which, out of embarrassment, but here’s a hint: It includes crystallized ginger and ground cloves, and I am “A Cook from Gainesville, FL.”

If you are at all familiar with Epicurious, you probably know how great it can be.  Each recipe on the database is accompanied by a rating of zero to four forks (zero being inedible; four being unstoppably edible), as well as notes and modifications from real live people that will tell you what those perfect magazine and cookbook photos won’t.  It’s like an ancient cookbook that’s been dog-eared and scribbled on by generations of disgruntled cooks…on the internet.  Nice!

Another great epicurious feature is the sidebar that lets you see what others are searching:

In general, I don’t like to be bothered with anything less than a four-fork recipe.  3.5 is acceptable, and three can be just fine in the hands of a competent chef.  But four forks is what I like to see.  In my experience, a four-fork rating will never let you down.  Case in point:

When my friend Tony asked if I could bake some bread to accompany his meaty dinner — a menu he’d been forebodingly referring to as “night of German death” — my first thought was: Now? You’re asking me now?  It was noon, people were scheduled to arrive at 6:30, and my idea of good bread involves days-long risings and days-long fretting about temperature.  You never start bread in the PM!  The night’s bread would have to be store-bought.

Then I remembered I could not do this.  Firstly, because I am cheap/ frugal/ poor/ a bread scrooge.  Secondly because — especially in my town — purchased bread is nearly always a disappointment.  Baguettes aren’t airy enough; loaves from the nearby café are packaged in plastic, rather than paper, resulting in crusts that are soft and annoying.  It is my firm belief that freshly baked bread — however strange and lumpy — always beats anything you can buy in the store.  (Unless you live in the San Francisco bay area.  I miss you, Acme bread!)

So I would be making bread.  German bread, if possible.  German bread that was also fast and easy, if possible.  Thus befuddled, I turned to my trusted friend, Epicurious, entered a search for “German bread,” and found “Pretzel rolls,” from a January 1994 issue of Bon Appetit. According to the description, they were “a cinch to prepare,” with “superb texture.”  The recipe also boasted four forks and seventeen reviews.  Given these promising numbers, and the fact that I had the ingredients on hand (minus celery seeds, which I simply omitted), and there was nothing NOT to love.

Food action photography: more difficult than you'd think

In the end, it was all true: a cinch, superb texture, all of that.  If you have made pretzels before, you will know that they are not that difficult.  Eliminate the pretzel-twisting step and they become a piece of figurative cake: A few risings, some boiling, some glazing, some baking and suddenly it’s a thing you can dunk deliciously into mustard.

Pretzel rolls
Adapted from a January, 1994 Bon Appétit

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups bread flour
1 envelope quick-rising yeast (I had part of a packet in my refrigerator, and that worked fine; a little yeast will go a long way)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (about) hot water (125°F to 130°F)

Cornmeal
8 cups water
1/4 cup baking soda
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg white, beaten to blend (glaze)
Coarse salt

1. Combine bread flour, 1 envelope yeast, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar .  Mix with hot water to form smooth elastic dough. Process 1 minute to knead. Grease medium bowl. Add dough to bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, then towel; let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 35 minutes.

2. Flour baking sheet. Punch dough down and knead on lightly floured surface until smooth. Divide into 8 pieces. Form each dough piece into ball. Place dough balls on prepared sheet, flattening each slightly. Using serrated knife, cut X in top center of each dough ball.  (Rachel’s note: I found that a knife, wetted slightly with hot water, worked best for this step)  Cover with towel and let dough balls rise until almost doubled in volume, about 20 minutes.

3. Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease another baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Bring 8 cups water to boil in large saucepan. Add baking soda and 2 tablespoons sugar (water will foam up). Add 4 rolls and cook 30 seconds per side. Using slotted spoon, transfer rolls to prepared sheet, arranging X side up. Repeat with remaining rolls.

4. Brush rolls with egg white glaze. Sprinkle rolls generously with coarse salt. Bake rolls until brown, about 25 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool 10 minutes. Serve rolls warm or room temperature. (Can be prepared 6 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature. Rewarm in 375°F oven 10 minutes.)

Wash down your bretzel with a nice, refreshing German beer!

Bretzels also pair nicely with crossword puzzles!

If you are wondering what “night of German death” means, see this? –

German death, atop a life raft of kraut

-Multiply by 100.  There were four of us.  Not pictured: potatoes, salt pork, bratwurst, veal sausages, kraut, more pork, donuts and semifreddo from the French Laundry cookbook, death.

The thing about New Years is this: If you are anything like me, you wake up belligerent, bent on denying the day any sort of special treatment, because the Gregorian year is just a dumb unit developed by somebody (Gregory?) to manipulate us into watching our lives fly by. Who cares about year-end lists! Who cares who you will or won’t kiss! Who cares!

But new years are cakewalks compared to birthday morns, when you feel—albeit selfishly and irrationally—that not only are you alone and growing old, but that you are the only one to be doing so. This is egocentric and obviously untrue, but it’s your birthday and if there is one thing you are allowed, it is to not make any sense. During younger, foolisher times you woke still full of Miller High Life, having slipped into the bar on the eve of your birth, fake ID undetected. But today your boobs look droopier! You can’t even enjoy Miller High Life anymore! (Tell yourself that at least you have grown wiser in this way.)

Hence the necessity of the “birthday breakfast tradition.” Last February, a dear friend and housemate celebrated the morning of his twenty-third with champagne and oysters. When I noticed him, before work, in his tiny, tattered bathrobe, he appeared to have successfully averted the apocryphal AM birthday despair. Though I can’t know for sure, I’m pretty positive there was no way he was thinking, “I am so old and alone.” Chances are, he was thinking something along the lines of, “Oysters are tasty,” or “Hey, cheers to me!”

Unless you’ve opted for the birthday Dunkin’ Donut (in which case, I robustly urge you to reconsider), selecting a birthday breakfast tradition is tricky business. There are lots of things to take into account: seasonal availability, for one. (Whereas my friend had the good fortune of being birthed in nippy times of chilly seas, yours truly entered the world during oyster-inappropriate climes.)

Another important thing is sustainability. At least for the next, oh, hundred plus years. Nothing endangered, guys! You wouldn’t want to implement a birthday breakfast of swordfish-eating, say, because what would become of you one swordfish-less year? It may also be wise to steer clear of specialty items: The components to your birthday breakfast tradition should be readily accessible, because who knows where the grand and exciting road of life will transport you five/ten/fifty years down the line? I surely don’t.

All else considered (Could I eat an entire melon? Is it possible to chew steak with dentures? Answers: no and basically no.), my own decision made itself: Seaweed soup.

According to Dr. Ben Kim of drbenkim.com, pregnant Korean women enjoy this soup. This soup is all about birth! It stimulates healthy milk production. Babies enjoy this soup. It supports “optimal brain function.” Truly, it is a soup for all—and for the ages. I am not Korean. I am neither pregnant nor a baby. Yet I enjoyed this soup. All twenty-three years of me. I will be making it again next year, and—God willing—for many July 9ths to come.

Birthday seaweed soup
A gentle yet compulsory warning: this soup is not a looker. It will never in one thousand birthdays grace the cover of Gourmet magazine. If you want to be technical, it looks kind of gross. It is slimy, and of the sea. If you think these are cons, guess again! Sipped in solitude, there is no pleasure more slippery or more delicious.

Editor’s Note: You can find the seaweed for the soup, the Korean pepper, and the ponzu at any Korean market (or probably any Asian market). You can also probably find them in the ethnic foods aisle of most cosmopolitan supermarkets, and almost certainly in most Whole Foods (ubiquitous as they are). Otherwise, as Rachel herself says: The internet is boundless.

4 cups water
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
1/3 cups rice vinegar
3 cloves garlic, peeled and smushed slightly, but not chopped
½ tablespoon Korean red pepper
Handful of dried soup seaweed (this expands ridiculously)
More salt
More vinegar
More sugar
Cucumber, cut into matchsticks
Sesame seeds

Bring the water to a boil and add the sugar to dissolve. Add the salt, garlic, red pepper, and vinegar. Let cool. Meanwhile, rehydrate the seaweed by submerging it in cold water for five to fifteen minutes. Once rehydrated, squeeze out the excess water and place in a bowl. Add a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, and a splash of vinegar, and massage into seaweed. Refrigerate the soup and the seaweed in separate containers. Once ready to serve, combine these, add the cucumber, and top with a sprinkling of sesame seeds. The soup is meant to be consumed cold, and thus ideal for summer birthdays.

(This recipe makes enough for one giant bowl, and leftovers. I think it actually gets better the more it sits in the fridge. If you have it, ponzu, a.k.a. citrus flavored soy sauce, can be a nice addition.)