Raspberry savoury sauce with cinnamon and turmeric

Every year we have very good harvest of raspberry, after eating fresh and turn into coulis, I found another way of using it up. By turning it into a savoury sauce with a lot of cinnamon and turmeric for use with Natto in breakfast. I always want to incorporate more cinnamon and turmeric in my meal and this is a good way to ensure regular daily intake. 

Raspberries cook soft and sieve out seeds. Reboil season with soy sauce, brown sugar, cinnamon powder, turmeric powder, black pepper and other spices you like. 

Rugosa rose petals

From end of spring until now I have been collecting Rugosa rose petals, the wild variety of rose with lovely fragrance and colour. They are air dried next to the window for 3 days and now have collected 2 big jars. These can be used to make hot drink, in dessert and stews. 

Some petals are infused in diluted vodka and in cider vinegar. Will see later on how they taste like. 

Honey fermented lemon peel

After a month, the jar of honey fermented elderflower, ginger and lemon slices have stopped bubbling, meaning it is ready to be bottled and keep in the fridge to enjoy. 
The lemon peels looks great and is too wasteful to be thrown away. I cut them up into pieces and dry in the oven at 65˚C, around 3 hours. 

A nice chewy snack, lemony, mildly sweet and a floral note. I will use more of these thick skinned not bitter organic lemon in future honey fermentation projects. 

Fermentation projects

 

廚房角落，陽光曬不到，是我的小小實驗室，放漬物、發酵中材料，由五月到現在，轉化在家園收成的時令蔬果，延長食用時間。

-蜜糖發酵接骨木花和檸檬

-蜜糖發酵迷迭香、薑和檸檬

-天然乳酸發酵榨汁後檸檬皮

-野玫瑰花瓣浸酒

-豉油米麴發酵原粒蒜頭

-天然乳酸發酵原粒蒜頭

-米麴發酵蒜蓉

-覆盆子浸酒

-米麴發酵覆盆子蓉

-天然乳酸發酵覆盆子

今年大計是多吃發酵食物，先要多做才成。

Fragrant salted eggs

Went to Saturday Milk market at Limerick and bought duck eggs, not easily available in Ireland. I like to add star anise, cloves and black pepper into the salt brine, the resulting egg yolk will have a nice fragrant. Now I need patience, around 5 weeks in this cool weather. 

Fermented Kumquat

I bought kumquats and found them quite tasteless, no sour flavour at all. In order not to waste them, I cut them into slices, seasoned with 2% salt, some sugar and lemon juice. Keep at room temperature to ferment, pretty slowing at the below 20˚C temperature. 
Serving a small plate every day, it is more interesting this way. 

Food transformation

 

我的食物實驗室！一直覺得以前在學校學的知識太多理論太少實際用途，唯一安慰，是現在試做發酵、浸漬食物，以做實驗的態度，先研究理論，觀察、記下變化、成果，次次改善，沒有難度，好玩又吃得安心。

由左至右：

1. 油浸金盞花Calendula治皮膚疹/敏感

2. 洋山楂花Hawthorn藥酒

3. （前）乳酸發酵白蘿蔔

4.（後）釀蜜糖酒 Mead

5. 蜜糖接骨木花 Elderflower 糖漿

6. 花椒八角醃漬鹽蛋

Lactic fermented Dakion

It is time to harvest all the daikons from poly tunnel, they have grown big during the hot month and so are slugs. 

On top of making soup and stew, I also tried fermenting them like sauerkraut. Instead of salting it heavily and wait for the bacteria to work, I used dried fermentation starter culture. With the culture, I don’t need to add so much salt, and no need to worry when fermentation will happen or not. 

Indeed the jar is bubbling gently the next day, I can start to enjoy mildly sour daikon the day later. It is a tastier way to enjoy fermented food regularly.

Pickle lemon skin

Bought in organic shop these big puffy type lemon, with thick skin that is not bitter. After juicing, I cut the skin into thin strips or small cubes, season with salt for a day. Either pickle in vinegar (I use blackcurrant vinegar here hence the colour) or use in cooking.
Gives a nice colour and a refreshing note in the dish. I also keep some in freezer in small portions, to use later, will also sprinkle on pizza.

Fermented onion

Harvested a few large onions last autumn and not sure that they could survive well over winter, so decided to add salted water to ferment them, like sauerkraut. Worked well, turned sour after 2 weeks. I keep the jars in the fridge and use them a little a time in cooking. Great to increase intake of fermented food.

Fermented daikon leaves

Now that there are less veg to harvest from the garden, it is time to take the excess stored in freezer during the summer.

This is the first time I made salted fermented leaves of Daikon, I used a small amount in a stir-fried dish. It is indeed umami tasty, added a good touch to the dish.

Fermented onion

Harvested a few onions, thought of fermenting like sauerkraut to enjoy them regularly as a condiment. 


Cut into thin slices, season with 2% salt, when soft, pack in a preserving jar, add 2% brine. Keep at room temperature until sour, a week, then keep refrigerated.

Sauerkraut

With a few heads of pointy cabbage ready to harvest, it is time to make sauerkraut for the benefit of eating fermented food regularly.

Cut cabbage into very thin strips, mix with 2% its weight of salt, I also added, optional, ginger, caraway seed and curry powder for extra flavour. 

Mix will and rest, after an hour or two, use potato press to further soften cabbage. Pack tightly in a pot/jar with a weight to submerge all leaves. Add extra salted water to cover if necessary. Leave at room temperature, mine is sour after 5 days and I keep it in cooer pantry to slow down scouring. Have a small portion everyday.

Artichoke in oil

I have grown artichoke from seeds a few years ago, it is a perennial and the root divides over the winter. I transplanted some new shoots to 2 areas in the field, without much care at all, they both grow well.

Now I have quite a number of plants that produce flower buds, which is especially valuable in this period when there is not a lot to harvest.

In order to learn to preserve them, I harvest a few buds, steam for 20 minutes, remove the outside hard scales, keep in lemon juice to stop browning, season with salt and keep in a jar filled with olive oil. A bit of work but not difficult, an easy way to add some garnish to a dish. 

Low temperature confit garlic in olive oil

Long cooked garlic does not have the harsh flavour nor the gaseous after effect of eating raw or quick cooked garlic. I make a batch of confit garlic, to be frozen, and eat a couple now and then, like a condiment to the dish. 

1.Peel garlic and place in a single layer in baking dish.
2.Cover with olive oil, bake at 85˚C until soft, around 2.5 hours. Keep garlic infused olive oil for cooking.
3.Place on baking paper in a large tray, freeze until hard, and store in a box in freezer.
4.To serve, take it out and warm up in the dish at the end of cooking.

Honey fermented garlic

The second way to transform and preserve garlic is to use honey to ferment it. Just add honey to cover peeled garlic, and be patient. Let it bubbles as honey extract water out of garlic, stir everyday until bubble subsides.
When garlic sinks to the bottom after a few months, it is time to start enjoying them, crunchy, with a reduced garlic flavour. The longer you keep it, the milder is the garlic flavour. The honey can be used in cooking or making drinks.

Garlic olive oil puree

A good harvest of garlice means I need to start transforming them right away. The easiest is to peel and freeze the cloves, keep well and easy to use. 

Another way is to cook in olive oil until soft, around an hour. press into puree and store in jars in fridge or freezer. A great way to use in cooking (especially when travelling in campervan) or use as sauce in dipping and pizza topping.

150 Garlic harvest

With the past few weeks of sunny and rainy weather, I know that garlic will be well fattened up and will be ready to harvest earlier than last year, which was 6 July. 

Indeed when I test pull one out, the bulb is big, two weeks earlier. With the soil loose from the rain, it is very easy to pull out the 5 rows of 5 different varieties of garlic planted, around 30 bulbs each.

All 5 varieties grew well, zero lost, most are big bulbs, a great harvest.

Now they are dried in the barn, in a few weeks time, will start turning them into black garlic, honey fermented garlic and low temperature cooked garlic, easy to keep, to snack and to use.

Sevill and blood orange Marmalade

January is marmalade making month, it is the favorite jam in the house and the one fruit I can't grow!  Lucky that I can order organic oranges from the on-line supplier. I made Seville orange marmalade, which has very little juice and need to add lemon juice, and blood orange marmalade, with is juicy and has a good balance of sour and sweet orange flavor.

 

Seville orange marmalade finished cooking

blood orange marmalade before cooking

Seville orange marmalade before cooking

I keep the pips and boil them a few times to extract pectin, to add to the orange peel.

The orange peel, sweeten with honey is brought to boil, then rest to cool down, and repeat again 3 times until peel swell, soften and the marmalade is thick enough. Other then the pectin water and lemon juice I do not add any water, the thickness comes from having a lot of peel, pectin, and not from the use of a lot of sugar, store in freezer.

Homemade organic butter

 

Homemade organic butter

Homemade organic butter

Homemade organic butter

 

Ireland produces a lot of dairy products, 90% for export, supermarkets have good selection of butter, but no organic butter! There are organic raw milk, cream, yogurt etc but just no organic butter.

I checked on internet and there are only 2 farms that produce organic butter in the whole of Ireland. One is far away and the other has very small production and cannot buy enough for my use.

At the end decided to make it myself, from organic cream that has 43% fat, surprisingly easy and taste so good!

 

1. Whisk cream in Kitchenaid, like how you would normally whisk cream to give it volume.

2. Carry on whisking until it split, into butter and liquid (buttermilk), around 20 minutes.

3. Use a cloth to wedge butter to remove as much liquid as possible, season with 1% salt. Keep in freezer and take out small portion to use each time. 

4. Buttermilk can be used in soup or making bread, cake etc.