Cooking: Fermenting and glass followers...

Since we’ve been getting a farm share from our local CSA at Appleton Farms ( https://thetrustees.org/place/appleton-farms/ ) , I’ve been learning how to ferment things to preserve them ( you can only eat so many beets in one week ). I’ve gotten pretty good at various varieties of pickles and sauerkraut variants based on this very good book Fermented Vegetables: Creative Recipes for Fermenting 64 Vegetables & Herbs in Krauts, Kimchis, Brined Pickles, Chutneys, Relishes & Pastes by Amazon.com Services LLC ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLNAJ0C/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_HS-lFb6ZBKYVZ )

I had initially gotten a ceramic crock for fermenting, but I found that after a while the salt from the brine would leech into the body of the ceramic because it had un-glazed edges and would crack the glaze from inside. This made it so that you couldn’t really sanitize the crock and mold would get into it and would infect your product. I ended up having to discard the crock.

Now I use glass jars, quart wide mouth jars, and this works great and additionally everything is already in a jar and you can just apply lids and refrigerate when the fermentation is done. The only challenge is having a proper seal and keeping the fermenting vegetables submerged in the brine. I had been using plastic bags filled with water which provided both functions, however it wastes plastic bags… So I found two options for glass “followers” (that is what these weights are called) one is a set of solid glass disks made to fit inside wide mouth jars, and the other is using the jam size ball jars which also fit inside filled with water. Both can be adequately cleaned and are reusable. I use a primary follower of parchment paper ( not having fresh grape leaves handy ) then the weight on top, cover everything with a towel to keep the light out.

I have a batch of beet, carrot, onion, cabbage sauerkraut and some dill pickles going now using both methods. I have high hopes, they were both a lot easier to use than water bags…. I’ll report back…

Cooking...

I’ve been getting back into cooking now that I feel like I have more time and mental bandwidth. I used to experiment a lot more and try new recipes and ingredients, but when my work life got to a certain level of intensity I fell back to more of a rotation of greatest hits and familiar things. Without a work life anymore, I find that it’s easier to take my time and look at a bunch of the cook books I’ve accumulated or search the interwebs for something interesting to cook.

It is also farm share season and the constant influx of a box of vegetables from Appleton Farm helps to drive cooking activities and planning for the week. Making dishes or food products that can be frozen or preserved is a part of this too, we can’t eat all those vegetables in one week, but over the rest of the year we do. Pickles and sauerkraut are also great things to make and enjoy later. I also have a fish share from Cape Ann Fresh Catch and this means that I'll be cooking at least one fish dish every week.

I also like classic dishes done in a classic way, they became classics for a reason, they became cliches due to overuse and losing focus on what was great about them. For example I made a classic Caesar Salad a little while ago from scratch, it was amazing especially with ultra fresh romaine lettuce from the farm. It was nothing like the watery bland stuff that you get in most restaurants nowadays… The umami from the anchovies and egg yolks against the bite of the garlic and the acid from the lemon is just amazing.

Cooking, when you can do it in a relaxed way, is extremely satisfying, the process is engaging, the result happens in a finite time, and it is something you can share and so it is also gratifying beyond just consuming the food. When I was much younger I cooked in restaurants as a short order cook, turning and burning as it were, and I learned how to relate to food, how to prep, how to be confident about the process, and how to multi-task to get things out at the same time. I remember closing the restaurant and feeling completely drained and yet calm after an especially intense shift. It also formed bonds with the rest of the team in the kitchen even if you were very different people, the intensity that you shared drove you together for that time and when you were flowing together and it worked it was a great experience.