Pickles as a category wasn’t really something I grew up with, probably because my parents didn’t care much for acidic/sour foods. As for fermented pickles, Korean kimchi is really the only one I eat consistently. (I don’t even eat sauerkraut much, or dill pickles. On the rare occasion, I’ll eat some bread and butter pickles, or relish.) Meanwhile, Japanese pickles aren’t something I’m familiar with at all. So for my next book to review, I got a copy of “Cooking with Japanese Pickles” by Takako Yokoyama. There are 97 recipes in this book, 76 are pickle recipes and the rest are recipes using the pickles made.
The book is divided into:
Quick pickles
Classic Pickles
Pickling with the season
Traditional pickling
Some of the recipes that interest me the most are:
Napa cabbage in ginger soy sauce
Eggplant in sweet mustard
Mizuna greens in mustard soy sauce
Rice bran pickled daikon radish
Frozen ume in sugar
Garlic preserved in soy sauce
Pan-fried garlic pork
Ginger in sake lees
Enoki mushrooms in sake lees
Mixed vegetable pickles
A lot of the recipes required more time than I had available, and I was trying my best to use what I had on hand. So, the first two recipes I made were miso pickled shiitake mushrooms, and potatoes pickled in sweet vinegar.
The mushrooms were really easy. You simple rehydrate some dried shiitake, then boil for a few minutes, drain, and spread some miso into the caps. Let it sit at room temperature overnight, and then eat.
The potatoes were more effort. You cut them into matchsticks, rinse and drain a couple of times, and then pan fry. While still hot, pour a sweet vinegar mixture over it. Weigh this down for 30 minutes and then refrigerate until ready to serve.
The mushrooms tasted pretty much as you imagine they would. I tended to just snack one while I was making my lunch or dinner. But I liked the potatoes more than I expected. The potatoes are a touch sweet, a touch acidic, and mild overall. I suspect that this is the perfect pickle for people who think they don’t like pickles. I mostly ate the potato pickles in salads.
And then I was just eating the shiitake and the potatoes together in one salad. If you were to add dressing to this salad, I think it’d end up too salty. I kept it pretty simple with lettuce greens and tofu.
For fun, I took a recipe for mizuna greens in mustard soy sauce, and altered it around what I had on hand. It’s supposed to be mizuna greens, salt, karashi mustard powder, and usukuchi soy sauce. I used green cabbage, salt, standard yellow mustard powder, and Bragg’s liquid aminos. The end result was good but I found it more difficult to pair the flavor with. I tried it in a couple of different salads, and didn’t love it. However, when I served it over plain white jasmine rice, I thought it was great.
Alas, no photos of my off-script batch of pickles because I kept forgetting to take one. Honestly though, it doesn’t look that much different from something like sauerkraut.
Overall, the cookbook is easy to follow. It’s great resource if you’re interested in expanding your repertoire of Japanese side dishes. The only downside is that acquiring some of the ingredients may be a challenge. I’m very fortunate in that there’s a Japanese market in my town, and I suspect that they carry everything I need. Otherwise, I don’t think I have a local resource for getting items like rice bran that isn’t just ordering online. If you’re feeling adventurous, I hope you pick up a copy!
Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Tuttle Publishing for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.
For anyone not following my IG, I’m experimenting with making dosa for the first time.
I saw the Bon Appetit video where Sohla and Brad make some, and realized that I technically had all the ingredients. In fact, I have a lot of rice and lentils, courtesy of my grandmother. So, this might be a regular thing I do during quarantine.
I’m working on cleaning out my pantry, so this batch is purple because some black rice was used. I’m not mad at it. 🙂
I haven’t done a “Kitchen Conclusion” post in a long time (oops) but I have a lot of thoughts right now, so I figured I’d share publicly so that others can feel better informed before attempting this recipe from a very well know food publication.
First of all, I don’t consider myself an expert bread baker. Or an advanced bread baker. Or an intermediate bread baker but I think everyone I know in real life would argue against that, so I’ll compromise and say that I’m a “beginner to intermediate” bread baker. (Interginner? Beginmediate?)
Simply put, I know just enough about bread baking to recognize when I’m doing something wrong or when there’s something wrong with the recipe I am using.
I have a sourdough recipe that I’ve made a couple of times and liked. I still need to work on my shaping technique but that’s a user issue. And even though I have a recipe I like, I still like to explore other recipes. It’s how I learn. So when I wanted to make sourdough bread this weekend, but realized that the timeline of my tried-and-true recipe wasn’t going to work with my schedule, I took that as an opportunity to experiment with a different recipe.
That was when I remembered that America’s Test Kitchen recently posted on Instagram their Almost No-Knead Sourdough.
I copied the recipe before it went behind a paywall. I used the weighed measurements which are a little weird but anyone who bakes bread regularly should be using weighted measurements. Honestly I don’t mind that the recipe is in ounces as opposed to grams since my kitchen scale can do both but WHO ON EARTH DEVELOPS A RECIPE WITH A THIRD OF AN OUNCE?!
Anyway, I’m reposting it for you even though I don’t like to repost things out of copyright respect. But if I’m going to talk about this recipe in depth, then you need all the details.
18 1/3 ounces King Arthur all-purpose flour 1 ¾ teaspoons salt 12 2/3 ounces water, room temperature 3 ounces mature Sourdough Starter
Whisk flour and salt together in medium bowl. Whisk room-temperature water and starter in large bowl until smooth. Add flour mixture to water mixture and stir using wooden spoon, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until dough comes together, then knead by hand in bowl until shaggy ball forms and no dry flour remains. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for at least 12 hours or up to 18 hours.
Lay 12 by 12-inch sheet of parchment paper on counter and spray generously with vegetable oil spray. Transfer dough to lightly floured counter and knead 10 to 15 times. Shape dough into ball by pulling edges into middle. Transfer dough, seam side down, to center of parchment. Pick up dough by lifting parchment edges and lower into heavy-bottomed Dutch oven. Cover with plastic wrap.
Adjust oven rack to middle position and place loaf or cake pan in bottom of oven. Place pot on middle rack and pour 3 cups of boiling water into pan below. Close oven door and let dough rise until doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with your floured finger, 2 to 3 hours.
Remove pot and water pan from oven; discard plastic from pot. Lightly flour top of dough and, using razor blade or sharp knife, make one 7-inch-long, 1/2-inch-deep slit along top of dough. Cover pot and place on middle rack in oven. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Bake bread for 30 minutes (starting timing as soon as you turn on oven).
Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown and registers 210 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack and let cool completely before serving.
And here’s the clip of the recipe they shared on Youtube. Skip to 4:15 to go to the recipe. The first four minutes are about making your own starter, which I did not need to do since I was using my existing starter.
So…
No offense to ATK or to Dan Souza, but I have no idea which bread recipe they were using on the show because it DEFINITELY IS NOT the published version. I wish I had photos or videos of my experience to show as proof but I had no idea I was going to have very strong opinions about this recipe.
To be transparent, there were two things that I did differently that would not have changed the experience for the worse. I mixed my dough for 5 minutes with a dough hook in my KitchenAid at the start instead of mixing until shabby ball formed. All this should have meant was that my dough would be ready in 12 hours, not more, and even possibly a little less time. I swapped about 2 to 3 ounces of King Arthur all purpose flour with a whole grain flour from a local source. Theoretically, it would make my dough drier than what the recipe intended because the germ and bran that are present in whole wheat flour can absorb more liquid. For the record, I did not add any extra water.
After 12 hours, my dough had risen beautifully and was double in sized. So far, so good. Or so I thought. When I turned the dough out to knead 10-15 times, I couldn’t! The dough that came out of the bowl was nothing like what is shown on the show. It was quite wet and stuck like crazy. The only way I could knead it was to use the slap and fold technique. It was my salvation. It didn’t take long to shape a ball with this technique, but it’s outside the scope of the recipe.
If you need it, here is an example of the slap and fold technique, which I think was made famous by Richard Bertinet. (At least, that was who I learned it from back in the days when his first book “Dough” was published.) You can skip to 1:40 to see it in action. You can see how sticky a Bertinet dough is. It is nothing like the ATK video. This is basically what I had.
By this time I was done with kneading, it was almost 9pm. Rather than shape it, move it to a parchment sheet, and then letting it rise for the final time in the dutch oven, I chose to do my final shaping in a banneton and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Because this was a very wet dough, I knew it was going to need the physical support of a banneton for any success. Also? I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
On the plus side, it meant I got to work with my banneton. The last time I used it, I screwed up my shaping which meant my dough stuck to the banneton like crazy. I have since watched many videos from “Bake with Jack” and learned what I did wrong.
In the morning (aka “This Morning”), I took my banneton out of the fridge. My dough hadn’t risen as much as I thought it would. At this point, I let this sit in a “cold” oven for an hour with a pan of just boiled hot water next to it, much like the original ATK instructions. When the hour was up, everything looked good to go. I carefully turned the dough out onto a parchment sheet, and it looked lovely. (THANKS JACK FOR THE SHAPING TUTORIALS!) I scored it with the sharpest knife I had and proceeded with the rest of the recipe.
The thing I learned next? Do not use a cold start oven method when using a wet dough. That lovely looking dough I had? Gone. I wish I took a photo of it before it went into the oven. It grew out instead of growing up, spreading out mostly where I had scored the dough.
Now, I know some modern ovens don’t lend to cold start oven method very well, but that is not my oven. I have done cold start oven bread recipes before with standard instant yeasted doughs without issue. I’m 100% positive it was the hydration level of the ATK recipe that caused my bread to not look like Dan’s loaf.
I also think that the cold start oven method with a wetter dough caused my crust to be softer and chewier than expected. If you don’t like a crunchy crust, then this might be the preferred method for you. But if you want the classic crust usually associated with a sourdough, this is NOT it. You will be disappointed.
While my bread does look much like the one in the official Instagram post, it looks nothing like the bread in the video. FYI, I baked for the full amount of time per the recipe instruction.
Last observation, when it comes to sourdough, people like their open, irregular crumb. This is still not that recipe. My crumb, while not dense like a standard yeasted dough, was not as open as I would have liked.
When all is said and done, the bread tastes fine. But I’m still going to officially declare this as a recipe fail. It did not work as expected. It looked nothing like what was on the show. Anyone with less bread baking experience is going to freak out trying to make this, and think they did something wrong.
Even though I know ATK will never notice my little blog, if they ever should:
:: I’ve attended a few of this semesters Science and Cooking lectures, presented by Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. So far, I’ve seen Margarita Fores, Wylie Dufresne with Ted Russin, and Vicky Lau. I’ve learned that the nipa palm looks like a torture device, and don’t make donuts unless you’re crazy. lol!
:: And most recently, I attended a lunch at Juliet in Somerville, MA. It was a stop on Yvette Van Boven’s Homemade Christmas book tour. The lunch menu was inspired by the book. Both Yvette and her husband, Oof Verschuren, are wonderful people, really friendly and down to earth. I’m so glad I got to meet them both.
In a perfect world, I’d be experimenting with sourdough breads regularly. I’d create boules of beauty, and share them with friends and family.
However, this isn’t a perfect world. A handful of close friends are gluten free. I rarely get to share the things I cook and bake because I’ve messed something up just enough that it doesn’t feel fit for sharing, or I’m just make enough food for myself for the week. At the end of the day, I’m just feeding myself.
I do make bread on occasion. I even had a rye sourdough starter going for over a year. But those two statements? Rarely done at the same time. When I make bread, it’s usually with SAF instant. When I was maintaining my sourdough starter, I was just finding ways to cook the discarded starter. I was almost never making proper bread with my starter. It even got to a point where I forgot I had a starter hanging out in my fridge. I literally did not notice it in my fridge until about two months after its last feeding.
Even then (!!!), it took me a couple of weeks to finally toss it in the trash. Some part of me hated feeling like I was giving up on a project. But logically, it didn’t make sense to try again. More so, because I have a place in a 10 minute walk away that does a wonderful sourdough. I’ve started going there a bit more frequently because I absolutely love their sourdough pizzas, but you can pick up bread to take home. I can spend 2-3 days making sourdough bread on my own, or I can spend $4 – $7 at my local restaurant.
It will do me more good than harm to recognize what I am willing and not willing to do. If I didn’t live so close to awesome bread, I’d probably feel differently about this. Or if I had a large family to feed, which I don’t.
But you know what they say: when one door closes, another opens.
It’s hard to see, but the radishes in my dongchimi had some color change. Everything smelled fine, but I wasn’t convinced so I didn’t eat it.
Both photos were after I drained out the liquid. Before I drained it, it looked like this:
That’s a lot of life going on in there.
I haven’t had the energy to buy the ingredients again. But I still wanted to work on some fermentation so I decided to try my hand at amazake.
Amazake is a drink made from sticky rice and koji grains. Koji are rice grains that have been inoculated with the bacteria you would use to make miso soup and other Japanese fermented products. Amazake, like yogurt, needs a certain temperature range to ferment. It was the primary reason why I never bothered to make it.
Last week, it occurred to me that I had access to a couple of sous vide products which could make DIY amazake possible in my house. So, it’s currently doing its thing in a slow cooker hooked up to a Codlo device.
This is what determination looks like:
It’s not the most thought-out set-up, but that’s what I get for not planning ahead. What you see is a 3qt sauce pan (with the rice and koji) set into a 4.5 qt oval slow cooker. The sauce pan was too tall, and the handle was in the way. So, I resorted to covering it with aluminum foil.
I am ridiculous, I know.
This also won’t be done until about 10pm because cooking the rice and then cooling it took me longer than I had anticipated.
Join Rachel Dutton and Benjamin Wolfe, food microbiologists at Harvard University’s FAS Center for Systems Biology, for a tasting of artisan cheeses and salami as they share exciting new discoveries in the science of fermentation.
The New York Times called fermentation one of the top 10 food trends in 2013. But what is fermentation and how does it transform raw materials like grains, grapes and milk into delicious foods like miso, wine, and cheese? What are microbes and how do they ferment foods? Where do the unique flavors of cheese and salami come from? Why do flavors vary across different producers and how does this relate to ‘microbial terroir’? In this special event, we’ll explore the science of fermentation through the lens of cheese and salami.
*Due the the limited availability participants may only register one additional guest.* Alumni and Friends of the Harvard Community: $20
Rachel Dutton received her PhD in Microbiology from Harvard Medical School and is currently a Bauer fellow at the Harvard FAS Center for Systems Biology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her lab studies the microbial communities that make up the rind of cheese, with the goal of understanding the biodiversity of cheese communities, the interactions between cheese microbes, and on developing experimental model ecosystems. Research from the Dutton lab has been featured in Culture Magazine, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times.
Benjamin Wolfe is a microbiologist/mycologist at Harvard University, specializing in the microbiology of fermented foods. He has a B.Sc. from Cornell University and a M.Sc. from the University of Guelph. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University studying the ecology and evolutionary origins of mushroom-forming fungi. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow with Rachel Dutton at Harvard’s FAS Center for Systems Biology where he is working on several projects exploring the ecology and genomics of cheese microbial communities. He’s also working on a project to characterize the microbial diversity of American artisan salami. Ben has taught food microbiology courses at The San Francisco Cheese School, the Harvard Summer School and is a regular contributor to Lucky Peach magazine.
I would go if I could, but I’m busy Wednesday nights without enough notice. Registration is required, but anyone can sign up. If you’re local and available Wednesday evening, I recommend going! (And then, please let me know how it went!) (^_^)
I went to the Red House again for New Year’s Eve. The menu was almost the same, but a few things were different.
I had the latkes, the paradelle (again), the stuffed scallops, and the bread pudding. The latkes were delicious even without the sauce, so I’ll have to say that I liked it better than NYE 2011’s preparation. The paradelle was still delicious, but perhaps spicier than last time. The stuffed scallops were very good. It looked like a small portion compared to the other entree options, but I had suspicions that it would be a smaller plate of food and strategically ordered it so that I would have more room in my belly for the bread pudding. (haha, and it was the right move in my opinion.) The scallops were served on shells with some asparagus spears. There was a lot more seafood in the stuffing than I expected, but the dish wasn’t overly fishy or anything. The bread pudding was quite yummy and filling, but I don’t remember having chocolate chips in it last time.
Awesomesauce Eats 