Playing Peter Piper

We didn't host Christmas this year, so there was no what-to-do-with-turkey-leftovers problem before New Year -- not that this is much of a problem; a few rounds of sandwiches, a pasta sauce or two, and a giant vat of stock to deal with the bones usually sorts it nicely.  As a combined result of going away just after New Year and having lived on pretty much nothing but mince pies, stollen, Stilton and sherry in the week after Christmas, however, I did have the problem of a fridge full of vegetables that would long be green slime before I got back to use them.  What to do?  Sweet potatoes and a couple of carrots became soup; potatoes became stuffed potatoes and stored in the freezer for future snack emergencies...

... and red cabbage, white cabbage, still more carrots, half a cucumber, two capsicums, red chillies, green chillies, onions and an entire swede became a diverse array of different pickles!

The "pickle everything in the fridge before going away" has worked reasonably well for me once before, but this time I wanted to make sure they would last a while since even with my love of pickled things, it might take me some time to get through this quantity.  Recipes often emphasise the importance of sticking to the correct quantities of known-acidity vinegar and salt in order to preserve pickles safely, but frustratingly don't always provide a generalised guide as to what the proportions should be.

I found one recipe specifying a 1:1 mixture of 5% vinegar and brine (made with 1 cup salt per gallon of water) for final concentrations (before allowing for vegetables releasing liquid) of 2.5% vinegar and about 1/8 cup salt per litre; and another saying "6 cups of water, 3 cups of vinegar and 1/2 [presumably 1/2 a cup] pickling salt", which is slightly under 1/4 cup salt per litre.  Not knowing the concentration of my vinegar, I decided at first to go for a 2:1 rice vinegar:water mix with a scant 3tbs salt in 3 cups of liquid (the salt ratio of the second recipe).  I blanched the red cabbage for a few minutes and used the water in the pickling liquid, which I simmered with star anise, peppercorns and cloves -- but on tasting, it was WAY too salty!  I added another 1/2 cup each of water and malt vinegar and 3/4 cup sugar; it was still on the salty side but better.  Half a head of red cabbage made the large jar shown at right.  I suspect when using it I may rinse it, or use it in dishes without added salt, or mix it with fresh in order to dilute the saltiness.

The leftover red cabbage pickling liquid was a deep purple colour, so I thought I'd make some pickled carrots (I had a LOT of carrots; the 1.5kg bags were 69p the week before Christmas) -- second from left.  I cut them into sticks in order to squeeze as many into the jar as possible, and then simmered them in the pickling liquid for about five minutes before bottling.  Next up were a couple of bottles of mixed vegetable (cucumber, carrot and chilli; and cabbage, carrot and chilli), using rice vinegar and ginger; and then the pickled peppers, with most of the red and green chillies, yellow and green capsicum, and some sliced red onions.  There was enough pickling liquid left for a jar of pickled red onions with stray chilli bits too.

That still left the swede.  Now, swedes are fairly dense and hard, so I thought that shaving them into thin slices with my peeler-slicer would be a good start.  Then I got thinking about thinly sliced other sorts of pickles, like radish, and the next thing that came to mind: kimchi!  A bit of googling revealed that turnip was a fairly common kimchi choice, and that virtually anything could be kim-chied.  The first step was to peel the swede, cut it into manageable sections and then slice into fine cross-sections.  These were sprinkled with 2-3tbs salt and mixed thoroughly then left to stand for a few hours.  Some recipes say rinse, others don't (and vary the salt accordingly -- 2tbs salt to about 2lbs vegetables was a common don't-rinse proportion); I went for a compromise of rinsing once in a measured amount of water (3 cups, which would result in a brine as concentrated as that recommended by the second pickling recipe) and then draining thoroughly.  A taste test indicated not too salty, not too bland.

For the rest of the mix, opinions were divided on the effectiveness and authenticity of using gochujang (chilli paste) rather than gochugaru (chilli powder) but the former was what I had, in exactly the right quantity to use up for this size batch -- about 1/4 cup.  Following another recipe, I blended up half a red onion and half an apple; garlic is also usual and the importance of ginger is stressed, but I had none left of either so I threw in a few scoops of pickled ginger instead, and a slosh of vinegar.  Mixed all together, this looked like a promising start to kimchi and tasted pretty good as well.

I packed the mix into a couple of jars, pushing it down tightly -- I think this is to remove air spaces and allow the anaerobic fermentation to take place.  Apparently after that kimchi just looks after itself, usually at room temperature for a day or two to begin fermentation before cold storage for a week or two, but I put mine straight in the fridge as I was going to be away and had visions of it coming to life and escaping.  I left the lids on loosely to allow some room for fermentation -- if it expands too much, at least the jars are sat in the (now empty) crisper drawer and won't overflow everywhere!  We'll see what it's like in a few weeks' time...

Wolcum alle another yere!

Another year (or yere, as the Middle English text made famous by Benjamin Britten would have it), another chance to reflect ruefully on my failure to blog as much as I'd like... Despite my resolution of last year to achieve one new food-related experience and one blog post each week, in 2013 I managed just 18 posts. But at least I can say with certainty that this wasn't due to a lack of new experiences; rather, I was too busy having the experiences to blog about them! Where things really went to pot (cooking pun slightly intended) was in May, when fairly massive work commitments came to an absolute crunch (why is crunch such a savoury, delightful description for food but such a horrible term in the context of crunch-time? Personally I think crunch-time ought to refer to that blessed hour of the day when it is acceptable to break out the wine and crisps) and I barely got everything done the day before heading off to Ecuador for two months.

Ecuador was full of memorable and interesting food experiences -- some for better reasons than others: Chef Olga's fried dough balls will stay with me for a long time, in fact I think I can still feel them sitting in my stomach now. And though her arroz con menestra was quite tasty, there's only so much rice and beans one can eat before it becomes tedious. Then there were the chuntacurrus: marinated, deep-fried grubs with a horny head, a tough leathery skin and squooshy innards. Although not terrible, they still fall into the category of 'things I can say I've eaten' rather than 'things I'm glad I ate'.

On the other hand: I had some truly superb seafood while staying in Puerto Ayora in the Galapagos, including a fabulous juicy, sweet and tender grilled lobster with accompaniments for $25; a very tasty encocado de camaron in a lush coconut sauce; a great mixed seafood grill; and an utterly delicious dish of sea snail in garlic sauce, all from the seafood shacks along Charles Binford Avenue. There was also the freshest of fish straight off the boats, filleted and cooked right at the dock (with sea lions and pelicans waiting to snatch up the scraps); and the enticingly fragrant caldo de bolas de verde, too hearty to be a mere soup, rich with peanuts and spices, spiked with lime and with a generously sized tender plaintain dumpling stuffed with meltingly stewed goat in savoury sauce.  And I became quite a fan of the $4 almuerzos and meriendas, including a soup, juice and choice of daily dishes -- not gourmet but good homely fare, and both cheap and comforting in my temporary home. The Ecuadorian range of hot sauces also has to be seen (or perhaps tasted) to be believed! I was in heaven at the supermarket and tried to buy one of everything; after two weeks of thirty people sprinkling them lavishly over Olga's rice and beans, we had just about exhausted the supply.

Anyway, once I got back it was off for September's pre-semester conference round and then straight back into being buried in work. Leisure to blog was hard to come by and with so many weeks of posts unposted, it seemed in vain to try to catch up. I do have quite an archive of notes and photos awaiting write-up, though, so I haven't been entirely stagnant in the fooding aspect of my life. Maybe 2014 will be a chance to get more of my thoughts and ideas and memories down in blog form. Here's hoping!