Flour and water

This Memorial Day weekend has been one of the worst in my memory weather-wise, with constant rain or drizzle and temperatures well below normal. Fortunately it's kicked my domestic side into high gear, and I've been busy in the kitchen. Yesterday it was tortillas:



Little soft taco-sized numbers, and so easy to make:

• 2 cups all-purpose, unbleached white flour


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 cup palm shortening (original recipe calls for lard)


• 1 tablespoon canola oil


• 1/2 cup warm water

Mix together the flour and salt, then cut in the shortening with your hands until the mixture resembles course crumbs. Add the water and oil and knead into a smooth dough. Divide evenly into 16 balls of dough and let sit in the fridge for at least one hour. Heat a skillet (mine is plain old stainless and works fine, but seasoned cast iron is supposed to be ideal) to just below medium. Roll out the dough as thinly as possible. I roll mine between two pieces of non-stick parchment paper so additional flour isn't necessary. Carefully lay the tortilla in the pan and cook until the surface begins to puff (you can see this just starting in the pic above). Turn over and cook for a few more seconds. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

And today, in my never-ending quest to find new things to ferment, I'm attempting homemade soy sauce. Well, bean sauce, anyway. I'm using black-eyed peas instead of soy. Following the directions I found here, I made the flour/bean loaf:



After ten days under layers of paper towel, they should be well-inoculated with the necessary microorganisms, and hopefully the weather will have cheered enough to dry them outside. After that, it's a summer's worth of fermenting until it's ready to bottle and use. So much for instant gratification.

Fermentapalooza

I've fairly recently become hopelessly addicted to kimchi. I've had the ultra-hot, mushy, canned variety and was none too impressed. Inspired by my New Favorite Person, Novella Carpenter (seriously, read her book, Farm City...now), I've come to realize how easy it is to make fresh, delicious kimchi at home. And often out of stuff that might otherwise end up in the compost bin. For example, my newest experiment:



This is proto-kimchi, of the radish top variety. I love traditional garden-type radishes, but there's so much waste with all those greens. I've tried cooking them (they're okay sauteed, especially if there's butter involved), but I'm betting they'll taste great fermented to perfect tartness with basil, cilantro, onion, garlic, and heaps of red pepper flakes.

The process of kimchiafication is simple. Take a bunch of sliced vegetables (radish, onion, greens of all sorts...the list goes on and on), sprinkle liberally with sea salt, mix, and let sit until they've released much of their water (an hour is usually sufficient). Rinse well and squeeze as dry as possible, mix with seasonings (which for me most often includes the aforementioned pepper flakes, garlic, grated fresh ginger, toasted sesame oil, and fish sauce or fish paste), a little honey or sugar, and pack into a clean crock with a plate on the surface of the kimchi to keep everything squished together. Then just put a lid on it and hide it in a dark corner of your pantry for a few days. When it starts to smell pickled, it's kimchi. Repack it into a sealed jar and stick it in the fridge. Eat it with meat, noodles/rice, in soup, or just by itself as a tart, slightly-salty snack. Like any pickle, it keeps virtually forever when refrigerated.

Extra-bonus: unpasteurized kimchi is full of "good", gut-friendly bacteria.