Softcore food porn
Feb. 27th, 2007 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumLast week, in because St. Patricks Day is coming up, and there will be corned beef, I put up some sauerkraut. I'd been complaining to Maia that I wanted my kraut-pot, and she got it, and that's the real reason, but to be able to make a good rueben is also a decent excuse.
For those who don't know, or recall, kraut is one of the easiest things I can think of to make at home, and impress your friends and relations.
It needs four things.
1: Some form of kraut pot. The classic is a wide-mouthed, straight-sided piece of ceramic, with a loosely fitting lid; which reaches almost to the edges, and has a handle on the top.
2: Cabbage
3: Salt.
4: A knife.
That's it.
Slice the cabbage (or chop it, this is a personal preference). Layer it in the pot. Sprinkle salt on it and press it down with the lid.
Repeat this until the pot is full. When the pot is full, leave it in a cool place, with the lid. In two-five weeks (depending on just how cool it is) you will have sauerkraut.
The salt will pull water from the cabbage. This is all you need. If it take more than couple of days to extract a brine, add some water.
How strong the brine is will affect the flavor, less than about five percent, and it won't work. Five percent will take a little longer and give you the classic, limp, sauerkraut of cans and second-rate/dirty water hot dog stands.
6-8 percent will have more pep, and a decided crunch.
10-12 percent is kim-chee territory. The color will stay brigter, and the crunch goes way up. If you are making your kraut by chopping, instead of slicing, I'd go with the higher concentration.
Flavoring is to taste. Add some black pepper, some caraway, a bit of cumin; if you want to make stuff to clear out your sinuses (and encourage the neighbors to move) you can use napa-cabbage, garlic, hot peppers and some lemon rind to make winter kim-chee. While it's fermenting it smells as though a sewer is backing up, but the final flavor is pretty good, though I need a lot of rice, or other starchy stuff to eat more than a few bites.
I also figured out, last week, how to short cut one of the steps for country-style hash browns.
I like my hash-browns to be puffy, and that means cooking the potatoes in advance. Last Friday (or perhaps the one before) I offered to make some hash-browns for Maia, and for the sake of speed, used the micro-wave to pre-cook them.
They were, of course, gummy. Feh. They were also a trifle dry at the surface (from the starches coagulating).
So I tossed a bit of water in the pan, and put a (smaller) lid on top of them, which caused them to steam, and gave me, more of, the fluffy insides I wanted, with the brown crust I like (the kind which, almost, pulls off the chunks of potato).
Not perfect, but on the the other hand, it was twenty minutes from start to finish, and didn't take up any space in the fridge overnight.
For those who don't know, or recall, kraut is one of the easiest things I can think of to make at home, and impress your friends and relations.
It needs four things.
1: Some form of kraut pot. The classic is a wide-mouthed, straight-sided piece of ceramic, with a loosely fitting lid; which reaches almost to the edges, and has a handle on the top.
2: Cabbage
3: Salt.
4: A knife.
That's it.
Slice the cabbage (or chop it, this is a personal preference). Layer it in the pot. Sprinkle salt on it and press it down with the lid.
Repeat this until the pot is full. When the pot is full, leave it in a cool place, with the lid. In two-five weeks (depending on just how cool it is) you will have sauerkraut.
The salt will pull water from the cabbage. This is all you need. If it take more than couple of days to extract a brine, add some water.
How strong the brine is will affect the flavor, less than about five percent, and it won't work. Five percent will take a little longer and give you the classic, limp, sauerkraut of cans and second-rate/dirty water hot dog stands.
6-8 percent will have more pep, and a decided crunch.
10-12 percent is kim-chee territory. The color will stay brigter, and the crunch goes way up. If you are making your kraut by chopping, instead of slicing, I'd go with the higher concentration.
Flavoring is to taste. Add some black pepper, some caraway, a bit of cumin; if you want to make stuff to clear out your sinuses (and encourage the neighbors to move) you can use napa-cabbage, garlic, hot peppers and some lemon rind to make winter kim-chee. While it's fermenting it smells as though a sewer is backing up, but the final flavor is pretty good, though I need a lot of rice, or other starchy stuff to eat more than a few bites.
I also figured out, last week, how to short cut one of the steps for country-style hash browns.
I like my hash-browns to be puffy, and that means cooking the potatoes in advance. Last Friday (or perhaps the one before) I offered to make some hash-browns for Maia, and for the sake of speed, used the micro-wave to pre-cook them.
They were, of course, gummy. Feh. They were also a trifle dry at the surface (from the starches coagulating).
So I tossed a bit of water in the pan, and put a (smaller) lid on top of them, which caused them to steam, and gave me, more of, the fluffy insides I wanted, with the brown crust I like (the kind which, almost, pulls off the chunks of potato).
Not perfect, but on the the other hand, it was twenty minutes from start to finish, and didn't take up any space in the fridge overnight.
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Date: 2007-02-27 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 11:13 pm (UTC)Thanks.
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Date: 2007-02-28 08:28 am (UTC)Thanks for the reminder -- it's been more than a year since I've made sauerkraut, and months since the last batch of pickled Napa (which I interlayered with thin slices of daikon, to good advantage). This time, I'll try long slivers of both the radish and the Napa midribs , to be used in sushi. Currently, _shiso_ (Perilla frutescens) seedlings are germinating by the thousands in my back yard, so I need to figure out how to pickle some of them (probably with vinegar, I guess, although purple tsukemono might be interesting.)
The problem with sauerkraut is that I want it _now_, and probably won't be in that mood three or four weeks in the future. The St. Patrick's Day Tradition, of course, calls for simmering the corned-beef overnight, then adding potatoes and a quartered cabbage to the kettle at the right intervals before the serving time. (Not, I suppose, that Irish people who can afford better would serve such humble fare on that feast day -- a good roast, perhaps, maybe a rack of lamb.)