I spent almost three years of my life living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  While living there my absolute favorite food was pupusas.  They’re not hard to love, considering they are pretty much like the corn tortilla version of pizza (which I am rather obsessed with).

It’s a simple idea, you take a ball of masa dough, make a hole in the center and stick in a lump of cheese, or meat, or veggies, or a mixture of those, pat it flat, fry it up with a decent amount of grease, and serve it with a variety of spicy cabbage slaws and krauts.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but the main type of kraut used on top of pupusas is called curtido, which is pretty much just a broad term for pickle.

 

I have played around with various non-fermented versions of curtido over the years but it wasn’t until I won a copy of Fermented Vegetables by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey (available also in Canada) that it finally hit me what was missing from my version—mine wasn’t fermented!

The recipe is very simple, just cabbage, carrots, onion, garlic, and chile pepper flakes, and oregano and cumin.  You can take the curtido in different directions by tweaking the ratios, making it hotter or milder, more herbs or less, more of one vegetable or less, and so on.  I was running out of carrots the day I made mine so I think I’ll use more next time, partly because it will add more color to the final product.

 

The recipe is adapted from Fermented Vegetables, and if your library doesn’t have this book I highly recommend getting yourself a copy (or asking them to get it!).  I’m so happy to have won a copy because I love the book and have read through pretty much the whole thing!  Now I see before me a summer full of fermenting….

It will be a week or two before it’s fully fermented, but making it now will help connect you to the spirit of Cinco de Mayo, which is ¡perfecto!  Once it is ready make your favorite tacos, burritos, or even try making pupusas, and then be sure to put tons of curtido on top.

I’ve been enjoying my  hot fermented carrots for a couple weeks now and will soon be making another batch.  Well, actually the next batch will be different, as I’m going to try different flavors than this batch because it ended up being a bit hot for Madame and way too hot for my Young Assistants.  However, I’ve enjoyed adding the spicy tangy carrots to different meals so maybe the next round should feature one jar of super-hot ones, and jar of not-hot ones.  The options are pretty endless in terms of the herbs and spices you can add to a simple jar of fermenting carrots.

 

 Okay, so those carrots were photographed last summer… these days carrots don’t look quite so lively, but it’s nice to remember what summer looks like….

The process is fairly straight forward.  But before I get to that I should also say if you’re new to fermenting and are considering where to start I would recommend NOT starting with Kimchi.  Not because Kimchi isn’t good, on the contrary it’s amazing!  But it is tons more work, probably 10 times the amount of work, what with all the chopping, dicing, pureeing, packing….  In the case of fermenting carrots you’re really not doing anything new if you already like cutting and eating carrots, therefore this is a good place to start.

Here’s how to get started fermenting:

1. Make a salt water brine with 2 cups hot water and 1 ½ teaspoons salt.
2. Peel and cut up carrots, place them in a wide-mouth pint jar (500 ml), packed to about 1 inch from the top.
3.  Add desired spices, herbs, seasonings to the jar.
4. Allow the brine to cool close to room temperature, dump it around the carrots.
5. Cover the carrots with a cabbage leaf and weigh down everything in the jar with a smaller jar filled with water.  Cover with a towel or plastic bag and let ferment for 1-2 weeks.
6. Start eating them.  When they taste the way you like transfer them to the fridge.  Otherwise let them keep fermenting until you reach your desired sourness and tangy-ness.

You can see the clove of garlic and the cabbage leaf floating amongst the carrots.  Eventually you can remove the cabbage leaf, it just helps get the fermentation going and can also act as something to help hold the fermenting vegetables down.

Notice that the brine is a bit too close to the top; leave a bit more space as fermentation can cause the brine to overflow a bit.

Read my original, more thorough post at Bailey’s Local Foods.  Guidance for making these fermented carrots came from Food Renegade and Well Preserved.

This post was originally written for Bailey’s Local Foods.

I’m very new to the world of fermentation, especially when it comes to foods.  I didn’t grow up eating sauerkraut and still find it a bit odd.  However, the first time I had kimchi I knew I’d have to learn how to make it (because I’m kind of cheap, but mostly because I love learning how to make new things!).  So I took two recipes and made my own version using as many local ingredients as I good.  The result is KWimchi, or KW-Chi, or a Kimchi for KW.

Trying to emphasize the ingredients we have available from local farms this kimchi is a bit more of what Sandor Katz would call a Kraut-Chi.  Regardless of what you call it, it is delicious enough to eat by itself (which I’ve been doing lately!).

Our recipe is based on these two:

The Kitchn’s How to Make Easy Kimchi at Home

Nourished Kitchen’s Hot, Salty & Sour: My Kimchi Recipe

 

 

• Spinach (1/4lb)
• Kale (1/4lb)
• Pea shoots
• Potatoes
• Asparagus
• Carrots

(left from previous shopping)

• Mushrooms
• Sweet potatoes
• Parsnips
• 8 eggs

(in Garden)

• Lots of greens – mustard, lettuce, spinach, kale

The meal plan is as follows (note that we will be gone this weekend):

Spring?  Maybe it has arrived.  We feel it a little bit more each day.  In terms of planning our menu for the week  Cinco de Mayo should be an obvious meal choice (if it’s not obvious, it’s going to Mexican!).  However, I will still do my best to utilize local ingredients, which actually should be pretty easy, other than avocados, lime, and tequila….    Other than that this week is a little bit difficult to plan for.  One problem is that some of our favorite winter storage vegetables (namely the leeks) have been disappearing from the market the last few weeks.  That would be okay if it were accompanied by the arrival of Spring vegetables… but it hasn’t been!  We’ve been waiting for an abundance of Spring greens but since they haven’t really arrived we have been somewhat unsure what to plan!  So, this week’s plans for now are going to include things that we can plan on—cabbage and root vegetables like potatoes and beets!  Oh, one more thing, the Beet and Red Cabbage Salad from last week’s menu turned out great!

Desserts – I don’t plan desserts, they are just whatever sweet treat we have made recently, but these Chocolate Diablo Cookies from Chatelaine Magazine are amazing!

Also, an apology:  last week we didn’t get to two of our meals… so we are eating them this week (which means that two days in this menu are identical to last week’s)!  On Wednesday we didn’t make the planned meal because I didn’t feel like cooking… that was the day I ended up baking with My Assistant all day (yes, I realize this was ironic).  Thursday I had a disaster (which I will write about in a day or two)….    And I’d love to hear from you if you’re trying any of these dishes, or what local foods you’ve been enjoying lately!   Share a link to a recipe that’s local for you below!  Try to think of what you could do for 100 Mile Monday this week….

Ok, the plan for the week:

So, the meals for this week are as follows:

Also shared at: Susie QTpies Cafe and  and Erin Branscom’s Menu Monday

100 Mile Monday requirements for the meal or recipe you link:

• All produce, grains, dairy and meat are from < 100 miles away.

My meal posted below meets the requirements.  The one thing that I really couldn’t get locally was a good type of nut.  Ontario seems to have peanuts, but I have not yet found any good tree nuts like walnuts locally.  I hope to eventually find some, but have only lived here for 3 months!  So yes, I used walnuts in my dish, but not very many!   All my produce, grains, dairy, and meat were from <100 miles away.

The Meal:

Our meat for this week was the last piece from our small box that we got from Vibrant Farms through Bailey’s.  On Thursday I cooked it as a pot roast in the crockpot with potatoes, parsnips, onions, carrots, and radishes.  I also made 4 loaves of whole wheat sourdough ciabatta, and my new favorite beet and apple salad! Oh man, I know I’ve been eating beets all winter but they keep getting better.  The beet and apple salad idea came from Food & Wine but I modified the recipe a bit, partly because for starters I didn’t have pistachios and didn’t feel like buying them.  I’ve seen plenty of salad recipes that feature beets and apples (my own included) but many were more complicated or used spinach (which I rarely have on hand at this time of year).

At the very last minute that evening we invited the neighbors over and the meal turned out to be a great one for sharing!  Everyone enjoyed it and even though it was a huge crockpot full of pot roast there wasn’t too much leftover.  We had 3 of the 4 ciabattas too so I’d say they were well-received.  Oh and the beet & apple salad?  There was none left!

Pot Roast

When I make pot roast in the crock pot I just add whatever wintery vegetables I have available, a piece or two of local meat, some garlic, Italian seasonings, salt and pepper, a bit of red wine, and water and let it cook all day.  Things usually turn out quite tasty so I haven’t done much to improve upon this.  However, here is a link to a standard pot roast recipe.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Ciabatta

I’m not ready to do a recipe for this yet because I wasn’t completely satisfied with how it turned out.  Bread is tricky, especially if you have little experience.  Therefore I don’t want to give a half-hearted recipe and tell you to experiment.   Until my recipe seems completely replicable here is a link that looks good and is similar to what I did (I was working with the knowledge of several non-whole wheat recipes and also sort of making things up).  I kept track of what I did so I can improve my own recipe and post it in the future.

Holy Cow Vegan’s recipe looks straight-forward and successful, with very nice bubbles!

http://www.holycowvegan.net/2012/03/whole-wheat-sourdough-ciabatta.html

My Favorite Beet and Apple Salad

This is adapted from Food and Wine’s recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4-6 medium beets, cooked/roasted
• 1-2 apples, sliced into wedges
• ½ cup walnuts or pecans
• ¼ – ½ cup goat cheese, crumbled
• 3 Tbs. oil
• 2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbs. lemon juice
• 1 Tbs. horseradish or horseradish sauce
• Salt and pepper

Put a tablespoon of oil in a baking dish (I used Corningware because it has a lid), roll the beets around to coat with the oil, cover and bake at 375 for 1 hour.  Remove the dish and leave the lid on allowing the beets to slowly cool*.  Peel the beets, and then slice them into pieces about 1cm thick and wide.

If you like your walnuts sweet and crunchy you can add a small amount of butter (1 Tbs.), honey (1 Tbs.), and salt (dash) to the walnuts and lightly candy them, by cooking over medium heat until they are just starting to turn black.  Remove the pan from heat and allow to cool.  They should be crunchy!

Make the dressing by thoroughly mixing the oil (your choice, preferably local), lemon juice (this will never be local here) horseradish, and a dash of salt and pepper.

Toss the beets and apples with the dressing and top with the walnuts and crumbled goat cheese.  To crumble goat cheese from a “log†just unwrap one end and twist a fork into the cheese allowing the cheese to crumble onto the top of the salad.  Drizzle any extra dressing on top and serve or refrigerate until dinner.

So, before you think I cooked all this in one day you should know that the roasted veggies were leftovers.  But they were still great, in fact, they were maybe even better because they weren’t quite soft enough the first time. The celeriac-beet salad was fairly simple, although celeriac can kind of be a pain to peel, and the ciabatta was really a side product of a large batch of pizza dough for Friday night’s dinner (I make my pizza dough 1-2 days ahead).  Finally, the slow-cooked chicken pretty much didn’t take any work other than preparing a spice combo, rubbing it on the chicken, and stuffing the chicken with a quartered-onion and 4 cloves of garlic.  Anywho, the meal is as follows:

Slow-Cooked Chicken

Adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking

• 1 whole chicken (4-5 lbs)

• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1-2 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp of chili powder or Cajun seasoning

• 4 whole garlic cloves (optional)
• 1 onion, quartered (optional)

Rub the chicken all over with the spices and add more of them if you feel like it.  I can’t say I measured and it turned out awesome!  Then stuff the inside of the bird with the garlic cloves and quarters of the onion.  

Put the prepared chicken in the crockpot and set to low (if you have 8 hours until dinner) or on high (if you have more like 4-5 hours).  Obviously don’t make this meal if you are planning on coming home after work and cooking dinner with no preparation, unless you want to eat at like 11pm, which I guess is fine if you live in Spain.

I checked the progress a few times throughout the afternoon and—surprise!—each time it was a bit hotter according to my thermometer.   Having put it in the crockpot around 10:30am we ate at about 6pm and it was perfect!

Celeriac-Beet Salad

• 1 celeriac
• 2 medium sized beets

• 3 tbs. oil
• 1 tbs. horseradish sauce
• 1 tbs. (Dijon) mustard
• 1 tbs. lemon juice
• 1 tbs. (balsamic) vinegar
• Salt and pepper

Peel the celeriac and beets.  Neither of those jobs is fun exactly, but I think it’s worth it.  I think I need to learn a bit more about celeriac because I struggle to peel it.

Anyways, I made it through that job and then grated the two types of vegetables.  I grated the beets on the standard grater and then used the side with three cutters for the celeriac, but I think it would have worked better with the standard side.  I then put the beets on the lower tray of a bamboo steamer and the celeriac on the higher tray and steamed for about 20-30 minutes.  The dressing could just be your favorite salad dressing if you don’t want to make one, but I thought the horseradish sauce would bring a nice spice to the dish.  Toss the steamed vegetables with the dressing and top with crumbled feta or goat cheese.

Roasted Winter Vegetables

Assemble 4-5 of your favorite winter vegetables—potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, beets, onions, etc.  Chop them up and toss them with some oil and a dash of vinegar, then sprinkle with salt and pepper and fresh or dried herbs.  Roast them in the oven for 30-40 minutes.  If you want the onions to not get over-cooked wait 10-15 minutes and then add them to the mix.  Make more than you need and eat them with other meals too!

Whole Wheat Ciabatta

I based my recipe various ones that were on the internet, a good starting place is http://www.thefreshloaf.com/keyword/ciabatta?page=1.  I feel like I haven’t perfected my own whole wheat recipe yet so I’m going to wait to post it until I feel like a ciabatta maestro!

Ginger-Glazed Carrots

Adapted from memory of a dish my parents made one summer…

• 2-3 c. carrots, chopped
• 1-2 c. water
• 1 tsp. ginger
• 1 Tb. butter
• 1-2 Tb. honey or jam
• Salt

Chop the carrots to whatever size you like—I like making “pennies†since that is what cooked carrots are in my memory.  Boil them until soft.  Pour off all but a small amount of the water when they are done and add the rest of the ingredients.  Fry until the carrots are well coated with the glaze and serve.  If you like them really sweet you can add more jam or honey, and if you like them really gingery add more!  You can also add curry powder, which I do sometimes.