I love Korean food. Here’s a recipe for greens that I cooked for lunch today that was absolutely delicious. I used stock that I made from fish heads instead of dried anchovies and brown rice miso instead of Korean soy bean paste. Try it. You may like it.
I make this tasty broccoli salad all the time and I love it. I just thought I’d share the recipe with you today.
Ingredients
Cut up the head of broccoli finely. Mix all the chopped ingredients in a bowl. Squeeze in the juice of 1/2 lemon. Add the olive oil and spices and mix well. That’s it. Easy.
I love broccoli and I never thought about making a salad out of it until a few weeks ago. Now I make this all the time.
I’ve never had a sharp knife for cooking. Come to think of it, even growing up I don’t remember my mother ever having a sharp knife either.
I’ve always had the kind of knives you can buy in a pack for about 3 bucks that don’t really cut anything. You know the kind that squash a tomato flat against the cutting board before finally tearing through it. To cut a carrot I’d have to push down so hard that the slice of carrot would end up being propelled across the kitchen. A spoon could probably do a better job at cutting.
There is a benefit to having dull knives. I’m a bit clumsy in the kitchen. While I’ve been told that you’re more likely to cut yourself if you’re using a dull knife than a sharp knife I’m not inclined to believe that at all. I cut myself almost every time I cook.
My husband bought a sharp knife this weekend. I’ve reluctantly been using it. It is the sharpest knife I’ve ever held in my hands and frankly, it makes me nervous. I nearly cut my finger off trying to cut up a pumpkin on Saturday. “Nearly” here means that the knife slammed down on the cutting board and while my finger was no where near it I could imagine the knife slicing through the bone of my finger like butter completely ruining my writing because without a finger there would be a whole range of letters on the keyboard I couldn’t use.
I’ve never been one to shy away from risk though. I hold full glasses of water over my laptop all the time and have even eaten food that has passed the use by date. I can handle risk. That’s why I continue to use this dangerously sharp knife in the same haphazard manner I’ve used knives my entire life. So far so good. It’s been three days and I still have all my fingers.
I’ve been fermenting food recently. There’s nothing like some old vegetables to compliment a meal. It’s true. I currently have lacto-fermented salsa and kimchi in jars in front of the radiator in the living room. Our kitchen is too cold to encourage the fermentation process. Actually, we really don’t need a refrigerator. We can keep our veggies cold by storing them in the cupboard. I’m also growing an experiment in gluten-free sourdough bread in front of the radiator.
The other day my husband walked into the living room and said, “It smells like a barnyard in here.” He was probably thinking that I was trying to make kefir again, but I haven’t tried that since the last kefir debacle.
Anyway, when my family starts complaining about the barn-like odor I know it’s time to put the ferments in the frig. My salsa and kimchi joined my raw sauerkraut in the refrigerator this morning. Of all the fermented vegetable sauerkraut is my least favorite. What were they Germans thinking? Didn’t they have any other seasoning besides salt?
I proofed my sourdough last night. I started a loaf rising this morning and now it’s in the oven. I have no idea what it’ll be like. As I write this I’m realizing that I don’t even know what time I put it in the oven.
My husband who happily eats my fermented foods is always ready to make fun of the process of making them. Here’s his recipe for sourdough bread.
First put some dough in a jar and let it sit for three days.
Next put the dough in a glass bowl and let it sit overnight.
Then put he dough in a loaf pan and let it sit for a few hours.
Finally bake it.
It isn’t rocket science, but it is a little more complicated than that. As one of sourdough websites I read said, “If this sounds brain-dead simple, that’s because it is. People who didn’t believe the Earth was round did this for millenia.” They may of not realized the Earth was round, but they sure made some good bread. I wonder how good they were at figuring out whether to push or pull a door open. Probably better than me.
In Case Your Wondering:
You may be wondering, “Hey, what’s up with all the fermenting going on in your house?” You may find it frightening. You may even be thinking, “Remind me never to eat at Lovelyn’s house.”
The good bacteria found in fermented foods promotes gut health. Fermented foods have been part of many traditional diets for years. Find out more about the health benefits of fermented foods.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays on Cheeseslave.
I have a problem with following instructions. I don’t like to admit it, but realistically I do. If someone tells me how to do something I’ll usually do what I’m told, but if given a set of instructions to read I usually don’t bother. So I guess my real problem is reading instructions not necessarily following them.
I decided to start making kefir about a month ago. I though it would be a good way to get some healthy fermented foods in my family’s diet. I bought some kefir grains online. Kefir grains are the bacteria cultures used to make kefir. I ordered them from a woman who calls herself the Kefirlady. The Kefirlady owns Nigerian Pygmy goats and grows her kefir grains in fresh raw milk. The Kefirlady is also untrusting of the banking systems and only excepts payment in the form of cash mailed directly to her home. I picture her as a hunched old woman with scarf tied around her head, a shepherd’s staff and bony hands.
I put my payment in the mail and nervously waited for my kefir grains to arrive. A week later they did, along with 10 pages of instructions which I sort of read–if sort means reading the first paragraph and putting it on my desk to be buried under a bunch of other papers.
So I re-hydrated my grains in water for 24 hours. Then I put them in milk and thought I’d have delicious kefir in 1 week. After a week of changing my kefir’s milk roughly every 24 hours, I didn’t have delicious kefir at all. What I had was a thin milky substance that tasted like something that was wrung out of a sheep. Now I know what a barnyard tastes like and it’s not good. This can’t be right, I thought the first time I tasted it. Undeterred, I kept my sheepy kefir grains fed in fresh milk for two more weeks. It just kept getting sheepier and sheepier tasting. Finally, I gave up and got rid of the whole concoction.
After disposing of the Great Kefir Experiment of 2009, I decided to sit down and read the instructions that came with my kefir grains only to discover that my failure may have been my own fault. That’s unfortunate because I was sure the Kefirlady had tried to kill me. I pictured her taking my $10 bill from the envelop, putting in her apron pocket, then rubbing her bony hands together and saying, “Thanks for he $10, dearie. Now I will poison you.”
The kefir rules I broke:
1. Stir kefir with a plastic spoon. I only broke this rule once, but maybe once is enough.
2. Change the milk every 24 hours. On the 5th day, I got this brilliant idea to just put some new milk in with the old milk my kefir grains where already in. 12 hours later I went to swirl the jar to see how my kefir was doing and it was solid. That led to the breaking of rule number 3.
3. Don’t squeeze the kefir grains. Initially, when reading this rule you may think, why would anyone squeeze kefir grains? When I accidentally made the block of kefir cheese mentioned above I was horrified. How would I find would I find my kefir grains in that? I wondered. I dumped it all out and started squeezing it through my fingers to find the little rubbery kefir grains. Does pinching each grain really hard count as squeezing? I afraid it might.
Lesson learned:
If something you’ve purchased comes with instructions you might want to consider reading them unless the instructions are too long, you’re too busy to be bothered, or you think you can figure it out on your own.
