The Death of my Soya Sauce

The death of my soya sauce provides a wonderful opportunity to both grieve and celebrate experimenting with food.  Yes, you read that correctly, my soya sauce is dead.  There will be no beautifully aged, complex tasting, umami-full soya sauce in my pantry, or in the pantry of any of my family members and friends.  However, I learned a bit more about the varied and rich processes found in Asian cuisine, and that is the purpose of experimentation.

As my loyal blog readers may remember, my experience thus far with my homemade soya sauce was a bit unsettling and traumatic.  It started out innocently enough, got a little bit creepy, and then turned downright Lord of the Flies.  I was seeing it through though, putting up with its stank, settling in for the long haul.

Like a new relationship when you discover that your beau has obscenely stinky feet, but enough potential to make it seem not that bad.  Until you discover that he is also full of bugs.  And you just can't put up with a man who is full of bugs.

Picture this.  I was allowing my sauce precious house time.  It sat there stankin' up my living room, smelling like death.  Seriously, it smelled like death.  But the time came.  I decided to peer in, pulling the cheesecloth aside for the last, fatal time.  If I hadn't looked closely, been willing to get down and dirty with my soya sauce, I never would have seen the awful truth - there were many tiny, tiny, tiny white crawlies using my fermenting soya sauce as a home.


It had to go.  That was the final straw.

And my fantastically rustic ceramic pot that I bartered to get?  The pot that looked as if it were made to brew soya sauce in?

It's now a new home for my curly fern.

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Homemade Soy Sauce: Part 2

The second stage of making soya sauce is done and part three is well underway.  The second stage, as documented, involved growing plentiful amounts of mold and then drying the mold cakes in the sun.  I found the latter part of the second stage almost unbearable.  Like a little puppy with her favorite toy, every afternoon I carried my tray of soy cakes out into the hot sun so that they would get nice and dry and crusty.  However, they spent the morning in my living room window where the sun is hottest.  The quality of my soya sauce took precedence over everything else, chiefly my ability to spend any amount of time in the living room.  Drying soy cakes are stinky.  I think they are so stinky because they are basically naked, with only cheesecloth to keep away the flies.  The cheesecloth does nothing to contain the smell and even as I write this, about a week after the stage ended, I shudder a little on the inside.

Why am I doing this?  And I don't think I like soya sauce anymore.

Anyways, once the cakes were nice and dry into my beautiful ceramic pot they went!  With a whole lot of salt and water.  To be specific:

• 1 cup of sea salt
• 6 litres of purified water

Yeah, I am making a lot of soya sauce.

Then the lid went on and into the hot sunny window the giant pot went.  Of course I am never one to leave things alone so I started looking around online a little and I started to worry that sealing my sauce in would ruin it.  I became obsessed with the need for the sun to touch my fermenting brew and so I decided to, gasp, open the lid.

For those who don't understand why this horrifies me, I should mention that I opened the lid a few days after closing it and the experience wasn't pleasant.  It smelled like rotting so the idea of keeping the lid open for an extended amount of time in my living room wasn't something I thought I could handle.  But as I mentioned earlier, what the sauce wants, the sauce gets.  And so the lid came off and the cheesecloth went back on, damn you cheesecloth.

Then I had another traumatic experience, reminiscent of Lord of the Flies.

After I opened the pot, I left the house.  I was out for the whole day and entering my place at the end of the day I noticed there was little smell.  Quite pleased I strode over to my window and whipped open the curtain to check on my precious sauce.  There were probably about 15 flies buzzing around behind the curtain, above the pot.  Ahhhh!  So freaky.  I quickly closed the curtain, took a deep breath, went back in to put the lid on the pot over the cheesecloth and then got out of the way of the freakin' flies.  Nasty.  Thank god for cheesecloth!

Damn you soya sauce.  I've invested so much effort that I just can't give up on you!

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment

A Meditation on Mold

Stage one of mission soy sauce is complete and stage two is well underway.  Stage two is the development of mold on the soya bean and wheat cakes.  The original recipe called for wrapping the cakes tightly with damp paper towel and saran wrap.  This didn't work for me.

After about a week, I checked on my soy cakes and I found day-glo paper towel and very little mold.  This didn't seem right and I am sure the ancient Chinese peasants who created soy sauce didn't use paper towel or saran wrap.

Plan 2: Arrange soy cakes on the back of mini muffin tins, squirt with a little water, seal them in and give them more time.

After about two more weeks, I decided that the mold development was sufficient.

Before setting them out to dry in the hot summer sun, I wanted to capture the best of the best in terms of mold development.

I love this one to the left.  It looks like a little mini-volcano.  I had my eye on this mold pile as it grew, starting out as a beautiful coil, over time it collapsed on itself and developed lovely little white fuzz.

This is another interesting one that looks a bit like cheese.  The darker brown patch at the top of the cake was also originally a fluffy white coil but then collapsed or perhaps got crushed by my rough handling...

Sorry little mold hill.

This is one of my absolute favorites.  It's as if you are flying through a bank of clouds in an air plane and all you can see are fluffy, fluffy clouds.

I would love to know what is going on right now in the mold colonies.  Why are some areas fluffy and some cauliflower-like?

And for the finale mold shot...  Look at those delicate white hairs.  The gaping hole is where I ripped the little cake away from the pan.

I'm such a beast in the kitchen.

One thing I should mention for those inspired to make their own soya sauce is the smell.  You are basically making blue cheese (from a smell perspective) and after about a week the soya wheat cakes start to smell like ammonia and sour blue cheese.  You will probably find the odour offensive though my roommate hasn't mentioned it yet so maybe it is not as bad as I think it might be.  She is also used to me brewing up weird things on an almost constant basis.  Now that the moldy cakes are in the living room window getting baked by the sun the scent might become stronger and weave its way through the apartment a bit more.

I'm not yet at a point where I can see or smell soya sauce.  I keep sniffing the bottle I have in the fridge to see if I can detect any similarities, this might happen once I start to ferment my mold cakes.

Exciting!

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment

Homemade Soy Sauce: Part 1

As I started to write this post, I kept wanting to write: "Fermentation is not commonly used in the West."  After I wrote it though I kept coming up with examples of fermented products - beer, wine, cheese, 'kraut, pickles, vinegar... etc. etc.  We clearly ferment a lot of things.  I suppose that in the East the methods and subjects are different so in some ways it feels like a different process, but fermentation is common to many cultures.

While I haven't been able to clearly divide how different culture ferment, one thing I can say is that making soya sauce is funky involving kneading and mold and fermentation and sunlight.  This ancient process takes a long time, possibly up to six months, but the end result is stunning (according to the blogosphere).  Here is step 1 to delicious homemade soy sauce.

Ingredients

• 420 grams of dried soy beans
• 3 cups of whole wheat flour from the Flour Peddler - check out this website, really cool guy who mills his flour by bike
• 2 cups of all-purpose flour

Directions

1) The first step is soaking the soy beans overnight.  They swell considerably so cover them with about three times as much water as there are beans in the pot.  There are ways of quick soaking beans but I don't recommend doing that in this situation.  When a process is meant to be slow, perhaps it is better to luxuriate in the slowness rather than attempt to speed it up?

2) The next morning the soaking water will be all bubbly and slightly thick.  Pour this water off and pour in fresh water, again using about three times as much water as there are beans.  Put the pot on high and watch it.  I am serious about the watching because once it reaches a boil, the soy beans will quickly foam over the pot and all over your stove top.  No one wants that.  Once the water is at a strong boil, turn it down to just under the maximum heat (or to however low it needs to be so that it doesn't continually boil over).  As the beans cook, skim the foam off the top.

The cooking time is about two hours or so.  You will be able to easily smoosh a bean between your fingers when it is finished cooking.

Note: My 454 grams of dried beans turned into almost 800 grams once puffy and cooked.  This is approximately seven cups of soy beans.  Yes I have seven cups of soy beans.  It was only at this point that I started to calculate how much soya sauce I was making - approximately 10 litres, and it won't even be ready in time for Christmas!

3) I used the approximate ratio of 4:3 for beans to flour.  The easiest way to mix everything is to dump your freshly cooked beans onto a clean surface and mash, mash, mash them up.  Once mashed, put the flour on top and knead the whole mess together until you have what is known as a "soy log."

4) Using the picture on the left for reference, cut your soy logs into thin slices, approximately 3/4 of an inch.  There might be larger chunks of soy bean visible.  This is fine.

It was at this point that my recipe failed me.  The next set of instructions called for wrapping each piece of log tightly in wet paper towel and then saran wrap to promote the growth of mold.  I did this and was unimpressed with the results.  I recommend laying your pieces out in semi-upright positions (propped up on the back of a mini-muffin tin perhaps) so that the maximum surface area is available for mold growth.  Seal everything up so they stay moist and mold friendly and leave it alone.  You are going for ultra mold growth right now.

5) After I was finished with my whole wheat soy log, I moved on to an all-purpose flour soy log.  I used the all-purpose simply because I didn't want to waste my soy beans and was out of whole wheat flour.  Same process - mush, knead, form, slice, wrap.

I am intrigued to study the mold growth on the different flour types.  Will my beautiful whole, wheat locally grown flour grow fantastic mold or will the commercially processed, old and stale white flour?

Any bets being made by gamblers in the whole foods community?

Please look for future posts to discover where this fermented mold sauce came from!

References

• History of Soy Sauce
• How Products Are Made
• Shaughnessy, E. L. (2005). China. Duncan Baird Publishers: United Kingdom.
• Soy Sauce

Making Fish Sauce

"An Englishman teaching an American about food is the blind leading the one-eyed." -A. J. Liebling

I have often heard it said that the Vancouver restaurant scene owes its bounty to our large Asian population, that the expansive palate of Asian diners mirrors that of the French.

Obviously Asia is a much larger area and contains many, many different cultures and cuisine types.  What they all have in common, however, is the funk.  The funk is the opposite of white bread, of pale tomatoes, of commercial mayonnaise and prime cuts of meat.  The funk is spot prawn brains, spicy kimchee, furry tofu and my oh so funky homemade fish sauce.  Or what will be my oh so funky homemade fish sauce.

I am on an Asian fermentation kick right now.  Fermenting peppers, brewing soy sauce and now creating a West Coast version of fish sauce.  As I looked up recipes, I noticed that they contained fish, salt and water.  That was too boring for me.

I want some kick, and some subtlety, and maybe even a little West Coast vibe in my fish sauce.  Here's what I came up with.

A little warning before I tell you my secret recipe.  It is completely unscientific.  Completely.  Even more unscientific than my previous attempts at fermentation.  Maybe fish isn't the best choice for an unscientific experiment but clearly I am not always one to use what my mama gave me - my brain.  It hasn't killed me yet and I consider myself lucky so, lady fate, may I have one more roll at the dice please?

Ingredients

• Almost half a kilo of sockeye salmon bits - fins and ribs and flesh, this is where the West Coast vibe came in
• The salt is supposed to be 1:2 or 3 ratio of salt to fish so I guesstimated, err on salty
• Three habanero peppers, chopped roughly
• Four cloves of garlic, mine was organic from Klipper's farm - I think that will make my sauce extra delicious and funky
• Tablespoon of star anise pieces, hey why not
• Water to fill the container

Directions

1) Open up your fish, get your nose in there and take a nice deep sniff.  Don't skip this part because you don't want to introduce the funk here.  Funky fish at this stage is not cool.  It should smell like the freshest ocean breeze or don't use it.

2) Wash out a container really well and start packing it with salt, fresh fish, habanero peppers, garlic and the star anise.  You will think to yourself, "whoa that is a lot of salt."  This is okay, salt prevents spoilage and promotes fermentation.  This is what you want.

3) Once your container is packed, pour your water on top until there is just about an inch of room at the top of your container.  If you are using tap water, let it sit out uncovered for at least an hour before pouring it in to let the chlorine evaporate.

4) Now weigh your fish bits down and put a cover on top loosely so that gas can escape.  At this point I placed the container in my "fermentation" cupboard next to my peppers.  One of the recipes I looked at said to let it sit out in the sun on occasion so I might do that tomorrow just to kick off the fermentation.

The whole process of fermenting fish sauce takes from nine months to a year so look for my grand unveiling then.  I am sure the first time I use this sauce will be an EPIC experience.

Check out this link for more information on the history of fish sauce.

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment

References

• How Fish Sauce is Made

Fermented Hot Sauce: 2-1

My first batch of fermented hot sauce was so successful that I have two orders for more!  Never one to rest on my laurels I've decided to experiment with the second batch.

I'm starting off with thai chili peppers again.  I've been reading up on hot sauces and for fermentation you want to use super hot peppers.  The high levels of capcaisin (the molecule that makes you burn) help keep bad bacteria at bay.  I again added garlic and I'm trying the fermentation process with whole peppers this time instead of ground peppers.  

I have four cups of peppers fermenting so I can make a whole lot of sauce as well as allow two of the cups to ferment for a longer period of time.  As you can see I left the green stems in again and I plan to grind up some of the green tops with the peppers once the fermentation period is over.  I'm rather excited about this hot sauce experimentation.  There are so many ways to experiment and change the character of the sauce even with just the basic ingredients.  How long do you ferment them for?  How long do you age the sauce?  How much vinegar do you add?  How finely is it ground?  Do you keep the seeds and membranes or remove them?  Lots to contemplate.

The peppers and garlic and brine are now bubbling away in my darkest cupboard.  I like to keep the top on loosely so that the glass jars don't explode spraying peppers and garlic all over my kitchen.

Once the fermentation period is over I plan to remove the stems and add a touch of chipotle pepper when I blend the thai chilis up.  Chipotle is a smoked red jalapeno and I think a hint of smoke should be nice in the hot sauce.  

At this point, I'm not sure how long I will let the other jar of peppers age?  Any thoughts?  Suggestions?  I am learning that hot sauce lovers are a passionate, somewhat obsessive, bunch and I would love to hear other contemplations on aging and fermenting and heat.

"You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you.  I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you.  You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours."

-from Saint Augustine Confessions

Like my sauce here!  I'm number 19.

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment

Fermented Hot Sauce: Part 2

My fermented hot sauce was bubbling and brewing away in the corner for several days.  It developed a little bit of white mold, which I promptly scraped off.  I did notice mentions of mold in various blog posts so I didn't worry overly much, it seems to relate to the fermentation process.

Once I felt that it was fermented enough (use your intuition) I slipped on a glove and picked through the mixture removing all of the green stems.  I then dumped the mixture into a saucepan with about half a cup of white wine vinegar and let it boil for several minutes. 

I put in a teaspoon of salt and then poured the whole saucepan into my blender and whizzed it up until I liked the consistency.  The sauce then took another journey into the saucepan for another round of boiling while I sterilized a few little jars.  I tasted it again as it boiled and decided to add a teaspoon of white sugar.  This just seemed appropriate.

The verdict: Whooo!  This sauce basically takes my head off!  The thai chilis are killer hot, KILLER hot, seriously.  The burn is a quick burn, there is no slow build-up that surprises you after a few minutes.  It kicks you in the mouth quickly, spreads and then sits.  You will sweat and it might make your eyes roll back into your head slightly.

Fermented Hot Sauce: Part 1

I never used to like hot sauce. 

That changed during my first camping trip.  I was 19-years-old.

Traveling to the site with a fellow newbie girlfriend, we brought with us a lot of beer, a 12-pack of hot dogs and a sack of buns.  That was it.  We had no tent, no sleeping bags, no nothing.  Just beer and hot dogs.  We joined a big group of experienced campers.  They had barbecues, food tents, frying pans, cooking sauces, venison, and...

Sriacha sauce.  That lovely fermented garlic hot sauce, you all know it, the squirt bottle with the green lid.  The symbol that you're in a good restaurant.  I mean, come on, Morimoto uses it.

So there I sat by the fire with a nice cold beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other, watching as this beautiful piece of venison was coated in sriacha and grilled over the open fire.  Luckily the guys took pity on my pathetic camping skills and offered me a taste of the venison, with a warning that the sauce was quite spicy.  Never one to make wise decisions, I scoffed at them and dumped more hot sauce on my piece of meat.  As I popped the venison in my mouth they all stared, waiting for my reaction.  I gave them none!  Not only that, but I then put more sriacha on my hot dog.  I mean I couldn't even feel my mouth at that point.  Thank god for beer.

Somehow, this traumatic first experience led to a passionate love affair with sriacha that continues to this day.

Because I am so passionately in love with this sauce, I am embarrassed to admit that I only recently learned that it is fermented when watching a documentary on Chinese food systems (yes the movie was as thrilling as it sounds).  I had tried to make sriacha previously and had never achieved a good result, which confused me but didn't lead to much investigation.  I simply accepted that I must purchase the sauce I love rather than make it.

But not anymore!  Here is mark 1 in my journey to make a delicious fermented hot sauce.

Ingredients

• A lot of thai bird chilis (maybe a cup and a half)
• Four bulbs of garlic
• One tbsp of salt
• Water

That is really all you need, and a little luck (or a prayer to the fermentation gods, which is my preferred method).

Directions

1) Fermenting hot sauce seems to be much like making sauerkraut.  I chopped all of the green tops off the bird chilis and then tossed the red ends into my food processor.  Normally I like to hand chop but I had so many bird chilis and the volatile oils were so powerful that into the food processor they went.

2) Once the chilis were roughly processed they went into a bowl with four roughly chopped garlic bulbs, salt and a just a touch of water. I also added the green tops.

I found a plate that fit over the chopped chilis perfectly and then weighted it down and put it in the corner.  Now I just have to wait a week to see if anything is going to happen!

Before setting and forgetting it, make sure that the salt draws out enough water to submerge all of the peppers so they can brew and bubble and develop.

Notes

• Wear gloves.  Don't even think about working with this many hot peppers without wearing gloves.  You will not be able to wash all of the volatile oils off your hands and you will, I repeat, you will touch your eyes or nose at some point and it will burn.
• Be careful when you take the lid off your food processor.  Whizzing up that many hot peppers releases a lot of volatile oil and breathing it in will make you cough and choke.  You've been warned.
• One of the recipes I found called for the green tops to be added during the fermentation process.  It makes a "richer" flavour supposedly.  Meh.

References

• Nourished Kitchen
• Well Preserved

Simple Sauerkraut

As I carried on down my fermenting path I naturally came upon sauerkraut.  Sauerkraut is one Western fermented food that is quite familiar - I assume because it's popular to serve it on a hot dog.  Unfortunately the sauerkraut that is served on hot dogs is generally industrially produced, which means pasteurized, which means the death of happy bacteria.

Before we get into the making of sauerkrat, a little background.  The word comes from the German language and means sour cabbage, pretty accurate.  Souring cabbage is a great way to prolong its shelf-life.  I read that Captain James Cook brought 'kraut on his ocean voyages and that the vitamin c content kept his men healthy and their gums intact.  In my high school textbooks there was talk of limes preventing scurvy but sauerkraut makes more sense in terms of accessibility and storage.  The bottom line is that sauerkraut is pretty fantastic.

Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the modern term sauerkraut comes from Germany, soured cabbage actually came from China.  Those familiar with kimchi (that is for another post) would recognize it as a spicy, delicious form of soured cabbage.  Supposedly Mr. Genghis Khan brought it over with his pillaging hordes.  I am happy he did because sauerkraut is delicious and makes cabbage infinitely more digestible, speaking of which, onto the recipe.

Recipe

1. Start with a beautiful cabbage.  If you look on the Wild Fermentation site it calls for an awful lot of cabbage.  I started with half a small head so if it went to hell in a moldy hand basket I would only lose a little bit of yummy veggie.  Shred the cabbage finely.

2. The next step is to pack the cabbage into a ceramic or clay pot with salt.  Simply put a little cabbage in, put a little salt in, put a little cabbage in, put a little salt in, until your pot is full.  The salt helps to release moisture from the sauerkraut and also creates a nice pH for the good bacteria to grow. 

3. Once your pot is packed with salted cabbage, take a plate or a bowl that fits into your pot and use it to press down on the cabbage so that it is firmly packed into the container.  This helps to further release moisture.  Then, with the plate or bowl in the crock, place some sort of weight on top and leave your cabbage for 24 hours.  Some recipes call for airtight conditions.  I put a double layer of tea towel (clearly not airtight) on my cabbage and then put my french press on top to act as a weight.

4. After 24 hours, check your cabbage.  Mine was still bone dry for some reason!  I guess I managed to pick a piece of cabbage that was devoid of moisture.  In this situation, take a cup of water and add a teaspoon of salt to it and use this liquid to fill up your container until the water rises above the cabbage.  Again, weigh it down and leave it.  The cabbage will be fermenting away on its own but you do want to check the water level every couple days to make sure the cabbage is submerged in brine (salty water). 

5.  Voila!  A simple homemade sauerkraut!  I left mine to ferment for two weeks, though you can start to eat it earlier.  I was housesitting so my sauerkraut got a little extra time to itself and I have to admit that it was (and is) delicious.  There was a slight hint of carbonation, and I don't know if that is a good or bad sign, but I ate it three days ago and I am still alive to tell the tale so it clearly didn't kill me.  In the future I am going to use an airtight container.

The next big question.  How did I enjoy my first sauerkraut meal?  On a hot dog of course!  I bought a spicy italian sausage from Save-On-Meats and a white hot dog bun from cobs (there is no need to mess around with whole wheat for this purely indulgent meal).  I gently sauteed the sausage and then placed generous mounds of sauerkraut on top with sriacha sauce on the bottom.  Simply delectable!

Notes

• My version of sauerkraut is as simple as it comes - salt, water, cabbage.  I plan to experiment with different spice combinations, think fennel seed, caraway, dill.
• I also want to try adding different veggies, beets perhaps, broccoli stalks, brussel sprouts.  Check back to see my new experiments! 

References

Sauerkraut recipe
About 'Kraut

"sauerkraut, n.". OED Online. March 2012. Oxford University Press. 15 April 2012 <http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/171354>.