Feh! I am in a culinary mood, but all the recipes I know seem mundane and all the ones I find online have cacao nibs and creme fraiche in them. Not that that’s a bad thing, but judging by the reactions of the staff at Pak’N'Save when I asked if they had rennet, I don’t fancy my chances.
I have, however, completed two tasks of kitchenness today. The first, defrosting the freezer - well, technically, wiping the mould out from the freezer I started defrosting the other day until I got bored - we shall not speak of. The second was starting a batch of sauerkraut. I am not fond of sauerkraut. Nevertheless, Sally Fallon recommends it so sternly that I feel obliged to try it at least once. It’s pretty simple to make, in theory - all I did was mash half a head of chopped cabbage, two carrots, three cloves of garlic and some peppercorns and mustard seeds with salt for ten minutes. This draws out the humours and exhausts a small percentage of the snortlepig’s destructive powers, until she gets distracted and spills your entire bag of black mustard seeds over the floor. The kraut is now chillin’ on the bench, lactofermenting away, and in a week or two, if all goes well, my intestinal flora will be so lushly biodiverse that armies will quail before them. I’m also attempting a sourdough starter on the bench next to the sauerkraut, which now I think on it may not be wise. The beasties will probably hybridise into some hideous Frankenzyme and kill us all. Still, it is called wild fermentation; one learns to live on the edge.
Also, this will make you happy. If it doesn’t, that’s probably the universe’s way of telling you something.
Mother Says: