Master Pickler Alex Hozven

Occasionally, my past rises up and startles me.

I knew Alex back in The Day, when I was a free-range bohemian living in a VW bus in Bezerkeley.

Now, she's a master pickler, her shop is called the Cultured Pickle Shop. I wish she had her shop in Portland because I love real cultured veggies. I'll let the video speak for itself, great stuff.



Enjoy your blasts from the past,

Bp

[via the Good Reverend John Nathan B.]

Nettle Time -- Part 3, freezing

Freezing is now my favorite way to store Nettles. The end product is versatile and super tasty.

Farmer Theo said that his frozen Nettles ended up weird, slimy and black. I was hoping that was due to over cooking, so my main goal was to parboil the nettles just long enough to make them edible, but not long enough to make the leaves break down. I succeeded.

This first picture is of my parboiling setup. I use a stainless steel stock pot with a pasta insert. I get the water (with a little salt added) to a roiling boil, full power, and dump the full pasta insert in with the nettles. I stir the nettles to make sure they're all exposed to the boiling water -- 30 seconds to 1 minute maximum. The closer to 30 seconds the better in my book.



Here is the finished parboiled product. Note the bright green stems and still-green leaves -- this is what you see when they are correctly boiled. None of the leaves are more than slightly wilted, and definitely none of them are a dark, blackish-green color. That is a sign of over-cooking.

At this point they are ready to eat, and we did eat plenty of them right out of the pot -- no salt, no butter no nothing. I really love the taste of these guys, it is like a flowery, mellow spinach flavor. Oh and here's something I learned the hard way -- don't store the newly-cooked greens in a big pile (say in a huge steel bowl) for very long, because they keep cooking and can over-cook. Spread them out to cool and get em bagged up as soon as you can.



For bagging up, I use a Food Saver Vacuum Machine. For the price it works dandy. You can see from the pictures that I leave a lot of empty space in the bags. That is because I re-use them if I've only stored vegtables in them. They are easy to clean (I throw them in the dishwasher -- mine doesn't have a heating unit in it to melt them) and the extra space keeps them a good useable size.

Anyway, there they are, labeled and dated and ready for the freezer. If vacuum sealed they should stay for 2+ years in the freezer. Having "only" picked 5 full grocery bags full of nettles (and drying 2 of them), we're almost out already. In my house at least, don't expect them to stay around too long.

In the 4th and final installment, I'll talk briefly about how I've used the fresh Nettles in cooking.



Enjoy storing up wild foods,

Bp

Crazy ass Borscht recipe

So I innocently search the web for vegetarian Borscht recipes, and Sergei Svetloff's Authentic Russian Borscht Cabbage Beet Soup Recipe catches my eye. It had more steps to it than the other recipes I'd seen, so I thought it might be more authentic or something and wanted to try it out.

Dude, it took forever. Ok, maybe not forever, but way way longer than I figured a soup aught to take. It also dirtied up 4 or more dishes, since you have to saute the vegetables separately, and then set them aside. And there were weird instructions, like sticking tomato paste into a hot saute pan with veggies, without even adding liquid. I kept wondering if there was some bad translation going on or something.

In the end, however, it make a damned fine soup.

I probably won't do it exactly this way in the future, but I did learn a few things that I'll keep. The biggest was to cook down the peeled beet skin and tips into broth for the soup. Nice way to stretch the veggie and get the most nutrition out of it as well. Also -- there seems to be a big deal made about not boiling the broth once the vinegar is added. Interesting.

So, if you are feeling adventurous, follow these directions to the letter and see what you can come up with. I'd love to hear what folks think.

Enjoy trying out labor-intensive foreign recipes just for the hell of it,

Bp

[photo via Taste of Europe website]

Mega low tides inspire truancy, quest for aphrodisiacs

I'm ditching a class tomorrow, because the tide is going to be SO DAMNED LOW. I can't resist the chance to go out and walk up to rocks that I've always admired from shore, check out the wildlife on the rocks, and gather up some mussels, sea vegetables, and razor clams. Just bought my clam gun, and I'm going to head out at 0-dark-hundred tomorrow morning, license in hand, bucket, knife, scissors, and gun in tow.

Of course most shellfish are considered aphrodisiacs -- I need that like I need a hole in the head, but I thought it would be good to mention. Be warned, Portland.

Enjoy geeking out so hard you miss class,

Bp

[photo via Wikicommons]

Chili commentary

Me: (after tasting The Wife's chili) "I don't know, it doesn't taste like it needs much of anything."

The Wife: "Cornbread."

T.: "Hate."

[laughter]

The Wife: "Ok, he's right it does need Hate more than it needs cornbread."

FDA set to approve cloned animals for food markets

According to this AP article, the FDA has approved cloned animals safe for for market as meat and for milk production. The final approval is a few months away. It doesn't look like they plan to make it mandatory to label it as such either.

Enjoy the comfort and confidence provided by your corporate government agencies' oversight,

Bp

Wild Edibles I did pick, post #2/2

A writing challenge to myself: finish this post before the Chanterelle Blue Cheese quiche is out of the oven -- go!

There were a few more dandy edibles that we picked while out last weekend. Two of them are in the Boletus family. I like Boletes for picking with beginning mushroomers because it has a safety built into it. If it has sponge instead of gills underneath, it's at least safe to pick and check out later (if there isn't a mentor around to check). The worst you get in the pacific N.W. is one that will slime up like a slug when cooked, or be bitter as hell and obviously inedible (big hint, when the bitter bolete is sliced with a knife the whole flesh section turns blue very quickly). So, relatively harmless compared to some of the other scary fungi out there in our forests.

The most abundant Boletus we ran across was Boletus zelleri. The magenta coloration on the stem, and the suede-leather-like brown cap are telling markers for this dandy little mushroom. It has conspicuous yellow sponge as well. Like all boletes, the bugs love em. Pick them young, and slice them in the field to make sure they aren't buggy (when is say buggy, what I really mean is maggoty, yech). They are great to eat, especially after they've been dried, with a strong enough flavor to hold up to mixed dishes and really beef up vegetarian soups and stews. They can often be found in the city, underneath large Doug Fir that are surrounded by mossy lawn. Of course you have to be sure the folks who tend the lawn don't use chemicals, and that dogs don't have access to the site. I've picked enough while driving around in an electrical van in the fall to make two large pizzas. It was great.

The next Boletus we picked, in much less quantity, was the Admirable Bolete or Boletus mirababilis. This handsome bolete grows out of rotting wood, has a slightly longer stem (generally) than the Zeller's, and doesn't have the magenta coloration on the stem. Otherwise, it is a pretty dam close look alike to the Zeller's. A nice thing when two look alikes are both tastey. I've found that when I am in old-growth forest, with plenty of rotting logs on the forest floor, and lots of moss, these can be the most conspicuous and abundant edible around. Again, since the bugs like them too, the take tends to be less than with Chanterelles, which bugs completely boycott. This is another good drying mushroom (all the Boletes are), and has a bit of a lemony flavor sometimes that is quite pleasant.

Finally, and on a completely different note, we picked Angel Wings -- Phyllotus porrigens. These are thin, translucent shelf mushrooms that like to grow especially on downed hemlock logs. They probably grow on other softwood logs as well. They are easy to identify, sometimes abundant, and often a nice look of variety in a mushroom dish. The flavor is delicate, and the texture sturdy/slightly rubbery. They won't melt in a saute pan which is nice. It's not an outrageously tasty mushroom, but it's great to add to a mushroom medley dish, and always fun to collect.

There we go, the last of this week's edibles. [general disclaimer coming, warning] Please do not use these posts as a guide to pick and eat mushrooms out of the woods. These posts are best used for fun reading, and backup material for use when you are in the woods with someone who knows their stuff. If any of my warnings about possible fungal poisonings sounded nonchalant, I didn't mean to come off that way. You really don't want to mess around with these guys as a mistake could end up being a huge one.

[all photo copyrights are credited in the text links for those mushrooms next to the photos in this page]

Enjoy your arboreal daydreamings,

Bp