We butterflied the chicken, which is supposed to help keep the breast meat from getting overcooked and dry. The meat has had many second lives, in soup, in tacos, and there’s a ton left over for future uses.
Roast chicken and veggies
Sake update
Our sake has been fermenting for almost three weeks now. It’s looking pretty good! The remaining experiments smell strongly of alcohol.
As I discussed in the planning post, you can use different sources of amylase to digest the rice. Koji works really well, chewing/saliva is fine, barley malt is less than desirable, and ginger doesn’t work (at all, as far as I could tell). The brown rice syrup, which started fermenting unaided in the cupboard, was added to provide a wild strain of yeast.
After taking these pictures, I threw away the ginger one. It wasn’t rotting, but it didn’t seem to be doing the right thing either. A few days later, I also threw out the barley malt one. It had a weird skin on the surface, maybe kahm yeast?
So I’m left with the koji experiment and the chewed experiment. Fortunately, they both smell strongly of alcohol. I hope they’ll be done soon (how do I tell when that is?). I may add another batch of rice to each. Doing this can push the alcohol content higher than it would otherwise be, since having more food available can trick the yeast into fermenting more.
Friend V from college is interested in sampling the experiments, including the chewed one! Yay! I thought I would be the only one trying it- it’s my saliva, after all.
Feijoas and chickens
The other day, J and I took a trip to pick up free fruit.
I’m not sure what I’ll use these for. Eating, of course, but they get overripe fast. I was thinking of making cobbler or drying some. Any other suggestions?
On the way to pick the feijoas up, we saw chickens!!! I guess zoning allows them in this area.
During the trip, J and I stopped by Whole Foods to buy some stuff and to recycle some number 5 plastic through the Gimme 5 recycling program. Plastics are turned into plastic lumber and maybe into consumer products. They also recycle Brita filters!
We used the trip to go to our local Japanese grocery store, where we had dinner. I check out 99 Ranch’s and Nob Hill’s dumpsters on the way. Unfortunately, they both use compactors, so I couldn’t go diving.
Lastly, we stopped at Goodwill for more mason jars! I think we’re finally reaching the saturation point for prepared food storage. At this point, I’m attempting to get enough that we can store dry goods in jars too. It’ll make the kitchen cabinets a lot more organized.
Popovers
We made popovers, an airy, eggy baked item. Although I like them a lot, I’d never realized how easy they are to make!
Popover Recipe
6 eggs
2 cups (480 mL) milk
6 Tbs (90 g) butter, melted
2 cups (240 g) flour, sifted
1 tsp (5 g) salt
- Generously butter whatever you’re baking in. The original recipe (from Betty Crocker?) calls for ten 1/2-cup (120-mL) ramekins.
- Whisk together eggs, milk, and melted butter until frothy. Gradually beat liquid into flour and salt until mixture is smooth.
- Spoon batter into baking containers until three-quarters full. If using separate containers, put on baking sheet for ease. Place in oven preheated to 425°F (220°C). Reduce heat to 375°F (190°C). Bake about 30 min.
Substitutions: I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for the flour. Because popovers are leavened by eggs and don’t require gluten, basically any type of flour should work.
Tortillas
It was one of those nights where we had a bunch of leftovers that don’t fit well together. Fortunately, we were able to pull everything together by making tortillas!
I found this seemingly legit recipe. Tortillas are really easy in concept. The dough is made from ground corn, traditionally nixtamalized to improve nutrition, and water. The tortillas are formed by pressing, then briefly heated in a skillet.
Unfortunately, there were some difficulties. I pressed the tortillas flat using a Pyrex square baking dish, so each tortilla had a faint “Pyrex” emblazoned on it. It took a surprising amount of force to press the tortillas, and they were still too thick to cook properly. I see the benefit of a special press. We had to cook the tortillas longer than called for to cook through, but doing this caused the outside to be crispy, rather than soft and flexible.
Making tortillas used up our masa (one of the goals!), so this may not happen again anytime soon.
Dinner at Yayoi and Dessert at Gelataio
Danmuji
I made danmuji, Korean yellow pickled radish, about a month ago. It’s supposed to sit for a month before being used, so this is the initial review!
I used Maangchi’s recipe, substituting oat bran for rice bran, and turmeric for gardenia fruits. Apparently, gardenia fruits are edible. Who knew? Gardenia is used as an ornamental, so maybe you could forage for them. The fruits aren’t supposed to taste like much, however. Much like turmeric, they’re mainly used for their yellow color. The rice bran was supposed to add a “complex flavor”. I’m not sure if the oat bran was a good substitution in this case. But it doesn’t seem to have done any damage!
During the resting period, the radish ferments, according to Maangchi. However, I’m not sure if this is correct. The radish is supposed to be stored in the fridge, so it wouldn’t ferment very fast. And you add vinegar directly to the brine. In normal lactic acid fermentation, such as in kimchi, the brine becomes sour over time due to lactic acid buildup. There’s no need to add vinegar. So I believe that the radish is simply being pickled.
That said, perhaps it is supposed to be fermented; while good, the radish that I ate didn’t taste like commercial danmuji. It is crispy and vinegary, of course. There’s a very strong funky radish smell and flavor. J thinks it smells like rotting or maybe rotten meat, but I really just think it smells like radish. Delicious!
The yellow coloring hasn’t fully permeated the radish yet. At this point, it has a halo of yellow, with a completely white interior. Maybe with time…
Even compared to kimchi, this was an easy recipe. You should try it!
Rice-based alcoholic product
We’ve started trying to make something resembling sake. We found a sake recipe online, but it seemed really hard so I just mixed random stuff together instead.
Gochujang update
We made gochujang a while ago. I added more salt to the top to discourage mold, although there hasn’t been any.
The top layer of gochujang is a little drier, and is starting to get that maroon color. It’s been about a month since we made the gochujang, but it hasn’t seemed to ferment yet. No bubbles, no change in smell. It seems very well preserved. I guess I’ll just leave it out until we need it. It can mature for a few more months.
You’re supposed to put gochujang in the sun every day to discourage mold. Unfortunately we don’t have a balcony and nothing is allowed in the public walkway. So for a while (until I decided it wasn’t doing anything), I put it just in front of the door with the door cracked open. That way it is technically inside, but still in the sunlight for a few hours.
Our landlord contacted us the other night. Apparently another tenant has been complaining about a “horrible”-smelling (it doesn’t smell like anything) red paste outside our door. The tenant is also apparently thinks this means that we have bed bugs………..
Edit: J was all het up over it. He took it to mean that the neighbors think we’re dirty, and went on a cleaning binge. And now the shower’s super clean!
Takoyaki meetup attempt fail!
Last Saturday, we tried to go to a Japanese-English language meetup (they serve takoyaki afterwards). Because it’s in the far-away city of Cupertino, we decided to make a full day of it and spend time at museums in the area. Unfortunately, it turned out that we had gotten the date wrong and the meetup wasn’t happening… ;_; Ummmm
But the trip was totally worth it! We did lots of other exciting things.
The first planned activity was the Cupertino Historical Society. It’s a very small museum inside the Cupertino community center. Turns out that it’s free (although J left a donation), which is always nice. Afterwards we wandered around the park behind the community center. We ate our box lunches while gazing out over the pond. I believe I had leftover pasta and split peas.
Fortuitously, Cupertino was having it’s community-wide garage sale last Saturday! I love garage sales!!
J and I went to several together, and I went to several more alone (while J attempted to attend the language meetup).
I got:
and the aforementioned waffle iron. All these were from a single jackpot sale! A middle-aged man and his parents were cleaning out the parents’ home, so most of the items were mid-century (hence the waffle iron). There was also lots of old tupperware, many other cookie and fruitcake tins (reminds me of my family!), old electronics, etc.
While I was going to garage sales, J got dinner and boba.
We went to Sprouts and Whole Foods afterwards. Sprouts has some weird bulk items, like chocolate-covered honeycomb. Surely people don’t eat the honeycomb. Isn’t it made of beeswax??
After-afterwards we got bread at Paris Baguette, a Korean bakery chain.
