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

Early Spring at the Market - On the Cheap!

When people talk of visiting the Farmer's Market they don't often exclaim over its cheapness.  More usually you hear grumbling and groaning over the prices, so much more expensive than the supermarket, is it actually worth the money...

All opinions aside over whether it really is that much more expensive, I am here to offer the market through another lens - my Scottish thrifty lens.  My Scottish thrifty lens is an inheritance from a long line of thrifty Scots.  When it comes to sniffing out a deal or using the very last drop of dish soap, few do it better than the Scottish.  So if you are heading towards the market, make sure to keep your eyes out for these smokin' early spring deals.

1) Apples - In Vancouver, apples are a fall fruit.  They are at their peak as the air crisps up, signalling the oncoming winter.  So the spring is the best time to find deals on apples.  They have been in cold storage and aren't at the height of crunchiness but who says you have to only eat apples raw.  Stock up on big bags of apples and make apple sauce, apple pie, apple chutney, etc. etc.  I found big bags of certified organic apples for only $5 bucks! 

2) Beet Greens - So I've actually been volunteering at the market and I've discovered that most people don't want the beet greens.  They ask the farmer to strip them off.  I know!  Crazy!  All that delicious and nutritious greenery going straight into the compost bin.  So what is a thrifty person to do?  Well you have two options: 

• Option 1: Stand by the beets and start makin' deals.  Ask people if they are going to eat the greens and if they say no, offer to take them off their hands.  You are doing them a favour by relieving their "throwing it away" guilt.  
• Option 2: Speak to the farmer directly.  Explain that you are a beet green fanatic and are horrified that people don't eat them.  As you ask what they cost train your children to chime in with a "mommy I'm hungry" and I am sure you will get them for free.  Ethics you say?  You're talking to a thrifty Scot.

3) Frozen Tomatoes - Farmers don't throw stuff away, especially small-scale organic farmers.  They process it, freeze it or compost it.  Certified organic frozen tomatoes are the way to go.  Way cheaper than fresh and perfect, perfect, perfect for making tomato sauce and paste.  Early spring is the time to find frozen tomatoes because that year's crop isn't quite in yet.  Snap them up!

4) Market Membership - With all the hustle and the bustle of the market many things escaped my notice in the past.  Now that I am volunteering I have time to soak in the market culture.  Lesson from last weekend?  Get a membership to the farmer's market society.  Then, as you wander around the booths, you will get deals on specific items.  It's a win-win situation.  Get on it.

I would love to hear about other deals and steals that people find at the market either through commenting or email.

Check back soon to hear more about my experiences volunteering at the market this summer.

My Food Library: Odd Bits

I was signed up to volunteer the other day at the Grape Juice Wine Auction with Big Sister's at the Ferrari-Maserati dealership on Burrard.  I've been a Study Buddy with Big Sister's for five years and do whatever I can to help this organization raise money.  Arriving early for set-up I was told that they had enough volunteers so I had an hour to entertain myself before the event started.  What does a food lover do with a free hour when they are at 3rd and Burrard?  Anyone who lives in Vancouver knows that they visit Books to Cooks.

This was no idle visit, however; I knew what I was looking for - a book about offal. 

My experiments with organ meats so far have not gone well.  The internet is useful but not thorough and cobbling together random recipes has resulted in some questionable results (stinky beef kidney, overcooked goat heart, disgusting liver soup, rubber tire pork liver).  Because I'm trying to develop a taste for organ meats, eating bad organ meat is very counter-productive.  I needed a passionate expert to hold my hand and I found her in Jennifer Mclagan.

As soon as I stepped into Books to Cooks I was greeted warmly and within moments was ensconced at the book bar, piles of offal-centred books grew around me.  Being a student I'm very careful about spending my limited budget and after chuckling through a few pages I knew that Odd Bits fit my bill.  Within a few days I had almost finished reading it, bringing it with me on my weekend trip to Vancouver Island.  Who brings a cook book with them to read on vacation?  Guilty as charged and I unabashedly admit to relishing every page.

This book will be an incredibly valuable reference book and source of inspiration (see a future post on turkey neck soup, a delectable and meaty odd bit).  For anyone who is serious about expanding their palate and celebrating every part of the animal, Odd Bits is an essential addition to their food library.

Roman Bacon: Part 1

I first heard about guanciale on Chopped.  It was a secret ingredient and for some reason I decided to look it up.  Oh my goodness!  Luscious pig jowl washed with wine and scented with black pepper and thyme.  This was something I had to try.

The word guanciale comes from 'guancia', which means cheek in Italian.  The jowl is the lower part of the cheek, the part that droops down, all fatty-like.  Mmmmm...  Supposedly the taste of the jowl is intensely porky, I would imagine because it gets a good workout from the pig chewing all day.  I won't know for another couple weeks though, when my guanciale is ready.

To make the guanciale I cobbled together several different recipes (see my reference list down below).  My method relied on sensuality rather than strictness.

1. The first step: purchase the jowl.  I called my local butcher and they brought one in from Gelderman Farms.  It weighed about a pound and a half.  Once I arrived home, I unwrapped the butcher's paper and found a very fatty and very hairy piece of pig cheek.   Hmmm...  What to do with all this hair?  Rather than look it up, I decided that I would tweeze out all of the hairs.  Yeah, tweeze them out.  After tweezing for half an hour and making some but not a whole lot of progress I decided to leave it hairy (see notes).  I figured the salt and sugar and/or final cooking would disintegrate the hair and if not, I would either remove the skin or just eat the hair.

2. The second step: bathe the cheek in wine.  Not being a wine drinker I wasn't sure what kind of wine to buy.  White I decided, because I didn't want the pig flavour overwhelmed or the fat stained burgundy.  I chose the brand to inspire my guanciale process - Barefoot.  Any suggestions for better wines to choose are appreciated.  I massaged half of the bottle into the jowl, taking my time.  The beauty of home cooking, or one of many, is the ability to luxuriate over the process.  There is no head chef barking at me to finish with my cheek already or a customer distracting me with an order.  It's just me and my pig cheek and a bottle of wine on a sunny day in early spring.  Lovely.

3. The third step: cover with cure.  The cure recipes I found contained sugar, salt, thyme, and black pepper.  Normally I like to fiddle around with my spice combinations but not so with my guanciale.  It seemed like the spicing was the essence of the charcuterie, as if I couldn't call it guanciale without using the correct spices.  I used equal portions of salt and sugar, a solid amount of freshly ground black pepper and several sprigs of thyme (picked fresh from my garden).  All of this went into a ceramic dish with the jowl and was popped, covered, into the fridge.  It was supposed to be left for 5-7 days but mine got ten and was flipped half-way through.

4. The fourth step: rinse and hang.  The last step before I eat my cured cheek is to let it hang in a cool spot for at least three weeks.  Oh the patience it takes!  I decided to use my storage closet in the unheated basement of my apartment building.  While it doesn't have the sweet Mediterranean winds blowing through, it is cool and close so it will have to do.  I tied up my pig cheek in cheesecloth with a few extra sprigs of thyme tucked in.

Check back in a few weeks to see what happens or better yet subscribe to my blog!  Thanks for reading!

Notes:

• Learn more about the awesome anti-microbial power of thyme here!
• Since making my first batch of guanciale I have bought Odd Bits by Jennifer McLagan and now know to shave the pig skin with a disposable razor or burn it off with a propane torch.  I will probably shave it because I don't like the idea of taking a torch to my little piece of piggie.

References:

Guanciale
Guanciale, The Magical Roman Bacon
The Art of the Cure
Guanciale from Babbo

Grandmummy with a Pick Axe

I went over to my cousin's new place the other day to help get her yard in order.  I arrived and walked around back to where the family was gathered.  There was my Grandmummy with a giant shovel turning over the soil in the veggie-garden-to-be, while my two cousins-in-law (men in their 30's) were sanding a bannister.  Hilarious!  I don't know how she got assigned shoveling duty but there it was.  So I jumped in with her and then insisted we snap a pic.  Please note that I am 5'8" so she is rather on the small side.

We shovel for several hours and then she decides that the size of the rocks really requires a pick axe.  A pick axe!  I inquired as to whether or not she is a miner and then decide that I need a video clip of her using her pick axe.

I would also like to mention that the thing was heavy.  She lost it momentarily and sent me scurrying around the yard to find it for her and when I found it I did think to myself: This pick axe is freakin' heavy.  I would get tired using it!

As Mother's Day approaches, I just want to say: Grandmummy, you rock!  You give all of the women in our family an ambitious example of life in the later years and I only hope I can live up to it and be an equally ambitious example for my grandkids.

Perhaps I will take up chain sawing in my 90's?