Lacto Fermentation

On Saturday I attended a class on lacto fermentation, led by Jessica Prentiss, Sarah Klein, and Maggie Gosselin; Jessica did most of the teaching.  She is a big proponent of lacto fermented food, and I learned a lot from the class.  She demonstrated how to make lacto fermented kimchi, traditional sauerkraut,  rotcraut (red cabbage sauerkraut), sauer ruben (turnips), fermented greens (!), sea vegetables and cabbage (!!) and a tomato chutney.  Such a variety - it's amazing what you can ferment!

Now, why preserve food by lacto fermentation?  Well, by preserving them this way, you are, of course extending their life, as well as increasing their nutritional value. Lacto fermented foods are high in enzymes, and are a source of probiotics, the stuff that helps keep your intestinal flora healthy and digestion working smoothly.  Also, ferments are high in vitamin C - we know that captain James Cook took sauerkraut on voyages to prevent the development of scurvy in his crew.

Fermented foods are rooted in the traditions of northern folks, people that live where it gets cold and snowy and only three growing seasons; you rarely find fermentation traditions in southern, tropical areas.  These tropical areas have a whole slew of enzyme-rich foods, like papaya, for instance. You'll find strong fermentation traditions in places like northern and central Europe, as well as Korea.

This time of year - early autumn - is the best time of year for fermenting.  We are leaving the warmth of summer and heading to the cooler seasons where we rely on our larder/pantry for most of our food.  Fermented foods are a perfect fit.

One of the neat things we came away with from the class was this great food wheel (pictured above).  It clearly outlines what is in season in the NY Metro area all year and during certain seasons.  I love the drawings - the wheel is very functional as well.  I plan to use it this year to guide me to what is in season (beyond what I already know).

The class lasted almost 3 hours, and I came away with a lot of info and some recipes.  More in a future post.

Preserving

I'm really a fan of preserving these days.  A couple of weeks ago I utilized a number of preservation techniques, including:

• pickling
• lacto fermentation
• freezing
• salt preserving

A couple weeks before that, I canned in a water bath 15 pints of crushed tomatoes.  I also made 2 pints of oven dried tomatoes.  The oven dried tomatoes are delicious!  Dried slowly at low heat for about 6 hours, flavored with thyme, salt, pepper, and olive oil, resulting in concentrated flavors.  They will be great this winter.  And I'll have some tasty olive oil after the tomatoes are gone.

The pickling involved petite green beans, flavored with jalepeno and onion, in a salt-vinegar brine.  They are spicy!  I fermented a jar of beets and radishes - they should be very flavorful (and perhaps a bit spicy, too) and go great with things like beans, grains, and roots this winter. 

I froze a bag of grated summer squash (for a future quickbread), and roll of parsley and basil (separate, not together).  What do I mean by a roll?  Basically the leaves are washed and dried and put into a freezer bag, compressed into a roll, wrapped up and frozen.  It compacts into quite a narrow roll, compared to what it was like on the stem. When I need any of these herbs for soup or whatever, I just take out the roll and cut off an end, which should yield a lot of herbs.

For the salt preserving, I layered kosher salt and rosemary leaves in a pint jar, compressing it all as I went along.  The benefit of this, aside from having rosemary all winter, is that I'll have rosemary salt, which I can use on roast chicken.

In this economy, it is a shame to let anything go to waste.  Thank you human history for developing all these preservation methods.