Sauerkraut

Somehow after making all those vegan cabbage rolls we still have a number of (smaller) cabbages rolling around in the pantry - which was great, because we got to make sauerkraut! When salt meets cabbage, magic happens.

You'll need:

2 medium sized cabbages (if you mix red and green cabbages, you'll get bright pink kraut!)
3 tablespoons sea salt
Large ceramic crock/two large mason jar/clean plastic bucket.

1. Finely shred your two cabbages. You can use a mandolin, or a knife (and some patience). On a recent visit to Poland, we learned that you can use a vegetable peeler to make finely shredded cabbage for kraut - so you can use that too! Save a few of the larger, outer leaves - you'll need these later.
You can add other fruits/vegetables/spices as well to liven up our kraut - shredded carrots, beets, onions, apples, juniper berries - be creative!

2. In a large bowl, toss the cabbage in the sea salt.

3. Pack the salted cabbage into your fermentation container of choice. This part is magic. You will look at your huge mound of cabbage, and you will look at your (less huge) container, and you will think 'no way this is going to fit.' It will. It will, because you will be packing it in there with a wooden spoon until it submits.

4. Pack the sauerkraut into your fermentation container until the juice from the cabbages covers the cabbage itself. The cabbage should be completely submerged in juice. No need to add water for this to happen - just keep packing it in.

5. Take some of the outer leaves you set aside earlier, and pack them snugly on top of the kraut. Additionally, we often take ziplock bags with a little bit of water in them and fit them into the crock. This will prevent too much of the juice from evaporating, but will still let the gasses escape. If you're using large mason jars, fasten the lids very loosely.

6. Check on the kraut every few days. If a bit of mold forms on top, no worries - just skim it off. If it looks like the brine is evaporating and receding below the level of the cabbage, either push the cabbage down below the level of the brine or (if you need to) add a little bit of water to top it up.

7. After a week or so, taste the kraut. It will still be pretty crunchy and young at this point, the flavors will continue to change and develop as it ages. I like kraut best after about three weeks - but keep tasting and see when you like it best!

Pumpkin Carving

We had a pumpkin carving party the other night, and I just had to post this picture of my friend Shannon's masterpiece. Its Rosie the Riveter - in all her pumpkin glory.

Agata and I teamed up to make a pumpkin styled in honour of our friend Mason. I think we got pretty close.

Happy halloween!

Stove-Top Popcorn with Parmesan, Black Pepper and Rosemary

Its been a bit of a rough week around here. First off, "fall" seems to mean "rain" this year, and the sun has been hiding on us for weeks now, and on top of that? Agata has about five weeks to go before defending her Master's thesis (yay!). All of this calls for snacks, in a big way.

I think there is a conspiracy afoot, and it has to do with popcorn. Have you been to a theater lately? They sell you popcorn for like, $7 a bag! Even worse are those little bags of microwave popcorn they sell you, so you can make your own crappy MSG-filled popcorn at home. Also, specialty popcorn machines. The whole world is trying to convince you that you need their help to make popcorn. Not true!

The truth is, making popcorn is the simplest, cheapest, fastest snack out there. Popping corn, even the organic kind, is incredibly cheap at the grocery store, and all you need to make it is a pot with a lid. It's not hard, it's not messy, and it takes about 1 minute. And even better, once it's made, you can cover it in all kinds of delicious things. Here is my favorite fancy popcorn recipe to make me feel gourmet on a rainy day.

You need:
1 cup corn kernels
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan (or more, to taste)
1 tbsp of butter or olive oil (or more, to taste)
11/2 tsp sea salt (more or less, to taste)
1 tsp freshly grated black pepper (again, to taste)
2 tbsp fresh, finely diced rosemary (...)

Making stove top popcorn:
1. Heat up a tablespoon of butter or olive oil in the bottom of a medium sized pot on medium heat.
2. Once the butter has melted (or the oil is hot), toss in 1 cup of corn kernels and put the lid on. Shake the pot back and forth on the burner, holding the lid on tight. You should hear popping - this means you're doing it right. Keep shaking!
3. When the popping slows down, take the pot off the heat. Popcorn! At this point, you can really do whatever you want to it.
4. Add 1/4 of a cup of fine, freshly grated Parmesan, a pat of butter, sea salt, freshly grated black pepper (and I like it chunky, if possible), and fresh, finely diced rosemary.

Even with all these nice ingredients, this whole snack is still significantly cheaper then a box of Oreos, and tastes better, too. How do you all like your popcorn? Any tricks I should try?

Vegan Cabbage Rolls

Its been raining non-stop in Peterborough for almost a week now, and I felt like the house could use some cheering. We also had a cupboard full of cabbages harvested last week, and a Sunday off work, and the whole set-up just screamed cabbage roll dinner party. So that's what we did.
 

Now, cabbage rolls are generally a ground beef and rice kind of recipe, but Agata is wise in all things Polish and vegan and came up with a (delicious) solution. These cabbage rolls are not only fun to make, but they also happen to be (a non-meat variation on) Agata's family recipe.

Cabbage Rolls:
2 large onions, finely diced
1 cup cooked brown lentils
2 cups cooked brown rice
4 cups button mushrooms, diced (or, if you feel like splurging, throw some shitakes in there)
1 cup dried mushrooms, if you have them.
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sea salt, or to taste
One large cabbage

Sauce:
1 can of diced tomatoes - (or approx. 5 ripe medium tomatoes)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce (or Worcestershire sauce, but its not vegan)

Part one - prepare your filling

1. If you are using dried mushrooms, re-hydrate them in two cups of water for ten minutes.
2. Save the mushroom water, and add it as part of the water you cook your rice in. The mushroom water is quite rich, and the flavours will really come through in your rice.
3. Fry your onions and mushrooms together until softened, and combine in a bowl with the cooked rice, lentils, sesame oil and salt.

Part two - prepare your cabbage wrappers

1. Remove any damaged outer leaves from your cabbage - do not discard!
2. Place the entire cabbage in a pot, about 1/4 filled with water. Cover the pot and steam the cabbage for ten minutes.
3. After being steamed, the cabbage leaves should come off easily and without tearing. Remove the leaves from the cabbage. As you remove the leaves, carefully shave down the cabbage spines. You do this by turning the leaves upside down (so the raised spine is visible) and carefully running your knife along the leaf removing the raised part of the spine only. The whole leaf should still be in tact, but the thicker spine should reduced.
4. Roll the filling into the cabbage leaf like you would roll a burrito, tucking the ends in.

Part three - cook the cabbage rolls

1. Line the bottom of a large pot with the damaged outer cabbage leaves (or the broken or ugly ones) removed earlier. These will act as a barrier and make sure your cabbage rolls don't burn while they cook.
2. Place your cabbage rolls in the pot - its fine to stack them if you made a lot.
3. Add one cup of water, cover and steam the cabbage rolls for 45 minutes.
4. While the cabbage rolls are cooking, combine the sauce ingredients in a separate saucepan and use an immersion blender to combine. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Serve the cabbage rolls warm, and covered in tomato sauce. Enjoy!

Saving Seeds

Last weekend, Agata and I spent a day putting the garden to bed for the winter. It was a gorgeous fall day (the first one without rain in almost a week), and we spent the day harvesting, planting garlic, saving seeds and getting the beds ready for the spring.

Agata has been saving seeds for a few years now, but like so many tasks in the garden this was my first time. It was a remarkably simple process really - by this point in the summer most of the plants had gone to seed, and in most cases, it was just a matter of snapping off the seed pods, and carefully shaking out the seeds into a bag and labeling them. If the seed pods weren't ripe yet we brought the plant home to hang dry.

(bachelor's buttons, also known as cornflower)

For tomatoes and cucumbers, the seeds need to ferment in their own juices to mature. We saved some of the tomatoes and cucumbers that were too far gone for eating (which is what you want - huge, orangey-yellow cucumbers and overripe tomatoes), separated out the guts and seeds and left them to rot in small dishes on the balcony, keeping each variety separate. After a few days, we separated out the seeds from the fermented juice and mold by rinsing them off with water.

The seeds that are good quality are heavier and fall to the bottom, and the ones that are not mature enough or bad in some way float to the top. We spread the good seeds out on some paper towel to let them dry, and then packed them away for next year. Not pretty, but effective.

Beans and peas were easier. We made sure to save some of the beans on the vine, letting them get thick and woody and dry out. Saving the seeds just involved collecting the varieties we liked, shaking out the beans at home and spreading them out to dry and cure.

(rattlesnake pole beans and cranberry pole beans)

We tried lots of different varieties of tomatoes in the garden last year, and made sure to plant each variety far enough away from the rest that they wouldn't cross pollinate, so the seeds would breed true the next year. Of course we can't know for sure if it worked, but I wouldn't mind trying some made-in-our-garden hybrids, either.

We saved seeds from the plants that had worked well in our garden this year. I like the idea of saving the same strains of plants, year to year, as well as trying out new ones. One of the things I'm really loving about community gardening is that the garden itself will stay the same, even if we move in the spring. Planting the garlic felt like a promise - after the snow, spring will come and we can do it all over again. I'm jazzed.

(some decorative cabbage. Not edible, but pretty.)

As a side note, we're still in the market for a black tomato variety we love: any suggestions?