Quarantine Kitchen #1: Fermented Goodies
GSBTB Open Kitchen is a platform that takes people out of their isolation in a new city and gives them a chance to get to know new people through the simple act of cooking, where everyone has something to contribute. Due to the Covid-19 crisis, we are all staying home, but the Open Kitchen still wants share the community’s kitchen adventures, and give you a chance to share yours — and here’s where our Quarantine Kitchen series comes in! To start you off, we’re sharing some pickling and fermenting adventures that GSBTB Open Kitchen Manager Ricarda and her son went on last week.
Pickled Wild Garlic Flowers (Bärlauch/Wunderlauch)
Recipe adapted from Ugly Duckling Food Waste.
The beautiful finished results. Source: Private.
Ingredients
200 g wild garlic flowers (make sure these are really wild garlic, as some poisonous flowers look similar)
200 ml apple cider vinegar
200 ml water
200 g sugar
2 star anise
a few black peppercorns
1 tsp mustard seeds
(Note: You can feel free to change up the spices; it’s just what I had handy.)
Directions
Pick, wash and weigh the flowers. Sterilise some nice jars (you can use old jam jars, for example) and once the jars are cold again, pack the flowers inside. If you have time you can make it look nice from the outside (I clearly didn’t have time). They need to be quite tightly packed so don’t worry about pressing down.
Yummy things brewing. Source: Private.
In a saucepan, heat the vinegar, water, and sugar with the spices, until the sugar is dissolved. Let this cool down.
Pour into the jars with the flowers and fill to the top. Tap out little air bubbles and seal.
Ingredients
1 whole Chinese cabbage
2-3 litre cold water
5 tbsp salt
170 ml water
2 tbsp rice flour
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp soy sauce
3-6 tbsp gochugaru paste (Korean red chilli paste)
1-2 whole carrots
3-6 cm ginger
4 cloves garlic
1/2 bunch dill and Bärlauch
Directions
Chop the cabbage, and in a large bowl mix the cabbage the water and salt in a large bowl. Place a plate on top, and weigh it down with something heavy. Leave this for an hour at least.
In a saucepan, heat the 170ml with the rice flour and sugar, and stir constantly until the mixture is dense and sticky. Leave to cool.
Cut the ginger and garlic into really small pieces, the carrots into ribbons, and chop the herbs.
When the rice flour mixture is cold, stir in soy sauce and gochugaru paste, then add garlic, ginger, carrots and herbs.
When cabbage is done soaking, drain properly. Add the rice flour mixture and, wearing gloves, mix until all the cabbage is covered. Transfer into clean (ideally sterilised) jars.
Store in a dark space for about 3 days to ferment. After that, transfer to the fridge. You can eat it right away, or wait another week or two (tip: the kimchi tastes best after two or three months, if you can wait that long!).
Out on a Bärlauch picking adventure. Source: Private.
Stay tuned for more cooking adventures to come, in the next series of Quarantine Kitchen!