Traditional Table Tuesday: Lacto-fermentation and my new favorite condiment

I'd like to introduce you all to my new favorite condiment... drumroll, please... Ginger Carrots, a.k.a. Pickled Ginger Carrots or Lacto-fermented Ginger Carrots. As strange as they sound, they are amazing, and really easy to make. You must try these!


I was inspired to make these carrots by reading Nourishing Traditions' explanation of the benefits of lacto-fermented vegetables, long a staple in many societies because the lactobacilli produced in this method of fermentation serve not only to preserve veggies, but also makes them more beneficial to the health of those who consume them. The lacto-fermented vegetable most people are familiar with is sauerkraut, although much of what we find canned or jarred nowadays lacks the beneficial lactobacilli that homemade sauerkraut contains because industrial processes kill it off. Lactobacilli and the lactic acid they produce help to promote healthy intestinal flora, much like the good bacteria we are familiar with in yogurt.

I thought I'd try these carrots after I wasn't much a fan of the sauerkraut I made. (The family loved the kraut, though I did not. Gabriel will enthusiastically eat a PBJ sandwich and sauerkraut--on the side, not on the sandwich--for lunch! Peter likes my lacto-fermented beets better than the sauerkraut, due to texture issues. Guess he's not the only baby like this!)

Here's the recipe, with some of my own notes added, based on that from Nourishing Traditions. These are a delicious accompaniment to so many things, including, but not limited to: Black Beans and Rice, Thai Coconut Fish Soup, Hummus and Avocado Sandwiches, the above-pictured "Garden Pitas" (layered with hummus, carrots, beets, and feta), Red Lentil soups and dals, Spinach & Cranberry salad, and other rich or spicy foods.

Ginger Carrots

4 cups grated carrots, very tightly packed
1 T. freshly grated ginger (use less if you're not sure you're a big ginger fan--it's strong)
1 T. sea salt
4 T. whey (if not available, use an additional 1 T. salt, although know it might be a bit salty for your taste--you can get whey by draining yogurt or buttermilk through cheesecloth, or, join a milk co-op like me and order a quart of it. Hey, if anyone is really excited about making this, I'll order you some whey myself!)

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl or pot. Pound with a wooden pounder or meat hammer until the carrots release their juices, maybe about 10 minutes. Place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar and press down firmly so that the juices cover the carrots. The top of the carrots should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar (they expand!). Cover tightly and leave at room temperature about 3 days before transferring to cold storage (the top shelf of your fridge).

Traditional Table Tuesday ( a day late): Our Daily Bread

As I mentioned in my first post on our journey to becoming more “traditional” eaters, we would like most, if not all, of the foods that we purchase to be foods that mankind has been eating for thousands of years. This means eliminating from our cabinets packaged foods such as cereals, crackers, boxed cookies, frozen premade dinners, and highly processed breads.

Now, I grant that there are some delicious breads out there, from good bakeries, made with only fresh, traditional ingredients. I don’t even allow myself to browse at the Whole Foods Bakery, primarily because at $5-$8 a loaf, their breads just aren’t in our normal-everyday budget range, but also because I would probably drool on the cases and I know Peter and Gabriel would be begging to have some bread since they love the stuff!

At home, I can make my own bread with all organic ingredients and eat it fresh out of the oven for about $0.89, if I make my standby Whole Wheat Sourdough. My sourdough starter has been disappointing me lately, so at Michael’s request, I tweaked a 100% Whole Wheat bread recipe with conventional yeast, soaking the grains overnight to reduce their phytate content (what in the world is this, you ask? Read here or here to find out) and also to make mouth-wateringly fluffy bread and rolls.

The new conventional yeast recipe I’ve recently discovered, based pretty closely on a recipe from an awesome used-bookstore treasure, Cooking with Whole Grains by Ellen and Vrest Orton, costs me about $2.00. Again, I use all organic ingredients, but instead of water I use milk, butter, and honey, so that adds to the cost. However, a great frugal tip-- you can use milk that's past its prime for this loaf--yes, sour milk-- and honestly I think it tastes even better!

I have to tip my hat to my mother who facilitated my discovery of this great cookbook which has tons of old-fashioned, all 100% whole grain recipes! She passed along this fascinating article called The Mystery of the Mill, which is the introduction to the cookbook I referred to above. Anyone interested in the history of food and the industrial food system will be interested in reading this history of how white flour, although less nutritious, became the predominant flour of our American food system. (It’s all about the money, folks. Are we surprised?)


Here’s the recipe from Cooking With Wholegrains with my modifications:
Soaked Wholewheat Bread

12-24 hours before you wish to start rising the bread, put in a large bowl:
3 T. honey
3 T. butter

Pour over:
1 ½ cups warmed (but not boiled) milk
Stir until butter and honey are melted.
Add:
½ cup buttermilk or yogurt
5 ½ cups flour

Stir until well mixed. Let stand covered in a warm place until you are ready to start the rising process. I usually do this step ( the “soaking” step) the night before, and start my rising process in the morning.

Mix together and allow to proof:
2 1/4 tsp commercial yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar or honey Mix this into your bread. (I used the bread hook on my Kitchen Aid with much success.)
Once it’s mostly incorporated, mix in:
2 tsp salt

Knead it for a bit, then set in a well-oiled, covered bowl to double in bulk. You’ll be allowing this doubling four times. Once it’s doubled–about an hour, but sometimes a bit more the first time–punch down the dough, and fold the dough from the sides to the center until it is about turned over, and let rise until doubled again. After the fourth time, turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead for a minute or so until it seems firm. Cut off about a third of it, leaving about 2 lbs. of dough for a loaf and about 14 oz. of dough for a couple dinner rolls. Alternately, you could make 2 loaves. After cutting the dough knead it a minute or so more, shape, and place in your bead pan. Let rise in the pan until about doubled–don’t let it over-rise, so keep a close eye on it, then place in a pre-heated oven at 425 for 15 minutes, then lower to 375 and bake for 20 minutes longer, maybe 45 minutes in all. You may need to "tent" the bread with some foil to keep the top from browning too much.

My Sprouting Debut

One of my recent resolutions has been to incorporate more traditional, varied, and nutritious foods in our family's diet. Sprouts, anyone? :) Apparently germinating seeds, nuts, and grains turns them into nutritional powerhouses, and it's pretty exciting for a two-year-old too!

We chose lentils as our first sprouting experiment. It was actually pretty simple. (Gabriel saw the red ones in the Whole Foods bulk bins and asked if we could try them, hence the red and green combo.) Here's a quick story about how it went. If you want more in-depth info, check out Sproutpeople, the folks we got our sprouting lids from.

First, we obtained our equipment: mason jars for about $1.25 at Michael's and the lids from the abovementioned site.

Next, the lentils were soaked overnight to jump-start them out of their dormancy.





Second, I rinsed long and well, especially those red guys. They were very starchy and the starch inhibits the sprouting.














Then I drained, long and well. (8-12 hours). I repeated rinsing and draining until the sprouts were about 2.5 days old. The most important thing was to make sure there was enough air circulating in the jars, I think so they didn't get moldy or suffocate.








By about day 2.5, this is how the green lentils looked. Exciting, no? Raw they tasted a bit like an uncooked bean sprout. As well they should, because lentils are beans. :)

Finally, I steamed a mixture of the red and green lentils to use in the recipe below, an invention of my own.


Sprouted Lentil Salad
2 cups sprouted lentils (or other beans)
1 red pepper
1/2 Vidalia onion
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
Homemade red wine vinaigrette (to your own
taste)
Toss everything together, and serve on top of greens, if desired. I think I actually prefer it on its own, though. And yes, for those of you who are wondering, Gabriel did eat it. And he even said "yum". Although that might have had something to do with the fact that he got to pour his own dressing on top of the two tablespoons of sprout salad he had, and he poured about a tablespoon of dressing on. Not sure he could taste anything through the vinegar, but at least he ate it!

Ode to vegetables (and a veggie cookbook too)

We’re not vegetarians, but a quick glance on our shelf or in our fridge and you might think that we are. In the past year and a half, Michael and I have come to the conclusion that meat should be a “sometimes” food for our family, which means that vegetables, grains, and legumes take an honored place in our pantry! We usually only buy and prepare some type of poultry, fish, pork or beef/buffalo dish about once a week, and we decided to take this low-meat approach for a variety of reasons:

*Simplicity: An interesting fact: the monastic Rule of St. Benedict calls for a vegetarian diet unless otherwise dictated for health reasons. Ever heard of those cookbooks “From a Monastery Kitchen”? They’re all vegetarian.

*Solidarity: There are so many in the world who either aren’t able to afford to eat meat. There are also those who usually eat only simple vegetarian food and live quite healthy lives. We try to think of them as we plan our weekly meals.

*Ecological justice: The practice of raising grain-fed, factory-farmed animals for consumption in our country results in huge quantities of (apparently) cheap meat and poultry that meet the “average American” demand for everyday meals with generous portions of meat or poultry. Much has been written about this elsewhere, so I will simply note that the low cost of purchasing such meat doesn’t accurately represent the high environmental and social cost of producing it. We find it much more in keeping with our call to be stewards of the gifts of creation to spend our resources to support farms that raise grass-fed meats and poultry. Local farms like Cibola, Mt Vernon Farm, or Polyface Farms, make appearances at roadside stands and farmer’s markets. Even though this entails a sacrificial expenditure of more money than we would otherwise spend for meat, we decided that it is ap appropriate use of our resources, especially because we purchase meat so infrequently.

*Health: The challenge of creating vegetarian meals requires a bit of creativity and forethought, but it’s worth the effort because it encourages us to eat larger portions of vegetables and legumes thanks to their starring role as the “main dish”. We definitely aren’t vegans, though –we eat a good deal of eggs, cheese, yoghurt, and milk, both to boost our protein intake, and because they’re just so darn good! :)

Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone has been my companion in the kitchen in this adventure of mainly-vegetarian cooking. It is by far my favorite cookbook on the shelf, the one I turn to for everything from broccoli to baking. Her recipes are simple yet interesting enough to provide a good variety, healthy but not annoyingly “low-fat” (they don’t call for reduced-fat cheese or egg substitutes, for example), and well-proportioned (I don’t have to adjust the salt/seasoning/oil amounts as I do with many other recipes). Because we cook from scratch almost all of our meals, we do have a relatively well-stocked pantry, but even considering this I think it is a great compliment to her cookbook to say that rarely do I have to make special trips to the grocery store for ingredients that I will only use once. She also makes suggestions for seasonal eating, which we try to do as much as possible by preparing what we can buy at the market or grow in our garden, now that it is flourishing thanks to Michael’s hard work.

No, I am not on a secret mission from Deborah to get all of my blog readers to run out and purchase her cookbook, although I did email her to thank her for her great work on this cookbook. I just wanted to share because I think the key to great vegetarian cooking is often getting an inspiration and a jump-start from some excellent cookbooks, and I have used quite a few vegetarian cookbooks that have recipes that are much too complicated to use on an everyday basis, and made me think that cooking mainly vegetarian meals would be too difficult. I now know better, thanks to VCFE!

Here’s one of my favorite "main dish" recipes from the book, although I must admit it is hard to choose just one.

Green Lentils with Wine-Glazed Vegetables, Spinach,
and Garlic-Rubbed Croutons
Serves 4-6

1 ½ cups green lentils, sorted and rinsed
Salt and freshly milled pepper
1 bay leaf
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion, cut into ½ inch dice
1 large carrot, cut into 1/4 inch dice
1 celery rib, cut into 1/4 inch dice
1 garlic clove, mashed or put through a press
1 T. tomato paste
2/3 cup dry red wine
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 T. butter or extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp chopped parsley or tarragon

Put the lentils in a saucepan with 3 cups water, 1 tsp salt, and the bay leaf. Bring to a boul, then lower the heat to a lively simmer and cook until the lentils are tender but still hold a little texture, about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium skillet. Add the onion, carrot, and celery, season with ½ teaspoon salt, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are browned, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and tomato paste, cook for 1 minute more, and then add the wine. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer, covered, until the liquid is syrupy and the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the mustard and add the cooked lentils along with their broth. Simmer until the sauce is mostly reduced, then stir in the butter and season with pepper.

Just before serving, steam or saute a large bunch of spinach. Pile the lentils into a flat serving dish, surround them with the greens, or stir the greens into them, and serve with thin Garlic Rubbed Croutons (slice baguette/other bread 1/4 inch thick, brush with olive oil or butter, place on baking pan and bake at 375 until crisp and golden, and rub with halved clove of garlic when they emerge from oven)

Buen provecho!