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Pickled asparagus recipe

May 3, 2009 | 29 comments

Ingredients for pickled asparagus

It’s asparagus season and bunches of them keep appearing in our fridge. I could eat the spears with butter three meals a day but I managed to save a bunch for pickling after a friend’s recommendation. The recipe I used is simple:

Ingredients:
-1 bunch of asparagus
-1 or more carrots to fill jar
-4 radishes
-4 cloves garlic
-1 teaspoon coriander seeds
-1 teaspoon black peppercorns
-2 cups water mixed with 1.5 tablespoons salt
-1 wide-mouth, 1-quart mason jar

Note: you can substitute a second bunch of asparagus for the carrots and radishes, depending on space in your jar

Directions:
Wash the veggies. Snap off the woody bottoms of the asparagus and see how they fit into the jar, heads down. If they stick out from the mouth of the jar, cut more off the bottom until they do. You can toss these bits into the jar or compost them. Cut each carrot lengthwise and then cut each half lengthwise again. Cut each of these four carrot lengths in half. Cut the radishes into quarters. Slice the garlic cloves thinly. Add the carrots, garlic and radishes to the jar and spoon in the spices. Pour the thoroughly-mixed salt water into the jar. The water should cover the vegetables completely. If they don’t, you can either add more veggies or more salt water. I put in the carrot and the radishes because I still had space. If you prefer, start with two bunches of asparagus and forgo the root vegetables.

Here they are in the jar:
asparagus ready to pickle

To seal them from the air (which keeps them from molding and allows fermentation to occur), I used a different method than I described in my post on how to pickle anything. I took a smaller jar filled with water and placed it into the mouth of the one-quart jar like this:

Jar sealing pickles from the air

Cover the top with a towel to keep out dust and then put the jar in your cabinet. You might want to put a towel under it, too, in case the carbon dioxide released during fermentation makes some brine bubble over. After a week or two, they should be ready.

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How to make yogurt

April 29, 2009 | 3 comments

About a week ago the New York Times ran a story on making your own yogurt. It’s easy. I won’t say that it ‘boils down to this’ because boiling and living foods don’t go together very well. Here’s how it develops:

Heat the fresh milk at 180 to 190 degrees, or to the point that it’s steaming and beginning to form bubbles. The heat alters the milk’s whey proteins and helps create a finer, denser consistency.

Let the milk cool to around 115 to 120 degrees, somewhere between very warm and hot. For each quart of milk, stir in two tablespoons of yogurt, either store-bought or from your last batch, thinning it first with a little of the milk.

Then put the milk in a warm jar or container or an insulated bottle, cover it, and keep the milk still and warm until it sets, usually in about four hours. I simply swaddle my quart jar in several kitchen towels. You can also put the container in an oven with the light bulb on.

There are some more specific serving suggestions and recipes in there, plus some great info about what causes milk to harden up as it turns into yogurt. Check it out!

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Ginger beer, with alcohol (and tea)

April 2, 2009 | 4 comments

Sencha Ginger Blonde Homebrew Ale

When I write, I like to drink beer to lubricate the mind and I like to drink caffeinated tea to stay focused. Sometimes I drink them at the same time. So after reading about brews made with things like safron and oysters in Burkhard Bilger’s article about extreme beer and Dogfish Head Brewery, I was inspired to combine my vices in a single beverage.

I also added ginger, because I like it. I started with the makings for a blonde ale from my local homebrewing store, Oak Barrel Winecraft. I chose that beer because I was afraid the bitterness of something with more hops would drown out my extra flavors. About 40 minutes into boiling the wort, which is closer to the end than the beginning, I added a sliced, hand-sized hunk of fresh ginger. As soon as I turned off the heat at the end of the boil, I dipped a bag holding one cup of sencha green tea into the wort and let it soak for five minutes. Then I strained and fermented the beer as usual.

I like the grassy flavor of sencha, and i was hoping it would come through in the beer. It didn’t. But the ginger did come, with a nice kick at the end of every sip. And it settles the stomach, too. As for the caffeine, the tea gives the brew a bit of a zing, but to get a strong effect I think I’ll have to use a black tea in a heavier beer. Maybe with some cardamom and other masala chai spices? I’d also like to add even more green tea to an even lighter beer.

While asking Uncle Internet if he had any beer recipes involving tea, I came across this excerpt of a text from 1822 bashing tea as a drink far inferior to beer:

I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age.”

The writer also says of tea that it, “besides being good for nothing, has badness in it.” Happily, there’s no badness in my tea beer.

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