The Essential Book of Fermentation (39 page)

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

These preserved lemons add a tantalizing aroma and a sharply defined flavor to tagines of all kinds, but especially North African lamb stews. Flavorful bits of fermented lemon bring simple vegetable dishes to life, too. Add some to a tapenade, mash some into butter and use it to flavor grilled chicken or fish, add it to chopped raisins used in a couscous. Because it’s the peel that you use after the fermentation, make sure your lemons are organic and well washed before processing. Ordinary Eureka lemons are fine, but Meyer lemons are even better, as they have a sweeter, more delicate flavor.

Makes 2 to 3 quarts

12 organic lemons

½ cup sea salt

4 whole cloves

5 black peppercorns

1 bay leaf, crumbled

8 coriander seeds

1.
Wash and dry the lemons. Place 1 tablespoon of the salt in the bottom of a sterilized quart canning jar. Mix the cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and coriander seeds together in a small bowl.

2.
Remove the hard bit at the stem end of the first lemon. Starting at the blossom end, cut through the lemon down toward the stem end until you are an inch from the end. Rotate the lemon 90 degrees and make a second cut, so that you’ve cut an X to within an inch of the stem end. Pack the interior of the lemon with about 1 tablespoon salt and a pinch of the spices, squeeze the X closed, and put the lemon into the jar.

3.
Repeat with more lemons, adding salt and layering in the spices each time, pushing each down into the jar so as to make the juice run. When you’re an inch from the top, stop. Put on a sterilized lid and screw it down with the band. Set the jar aside. The next day, push the lemons down again, and repeat on the third day. If on the third day the juice hasn’t completely covered the lemons, squeeze out juice from the remaining lemons of your original dozen and add the juice to the jar so the lemons are covered. Don’t use commercial bottled lemon juice or water.

4.
Set the jar, with the lid just barely closed so any gases can escape, on a warm kitchen counter for 30 days, pushing down the lemons in the jar with a sterilized knife a few times during this period. If you see a cloudy jellylike “mother” form on top, simply remove it. If fuzzy growth appears, that’s mold. Start over.

5.
Store your lemons in the fridge after the 30-day period. To use, sterilize a fork and take out a lemon, placing it in a bowl. Scrape off the pulp but reserve the salty juice to add back to the lemon jar. Rinse the peel to remove some salt, then cut the peel into thin strips or dice into small cubes.

Fermented Hot Sauce

How hot do you like it? It can be nice and hot using serrano or jalapeño peppers, or down-on-all-fours-pounding-the-floor-and-crying hot if you use habaneros or pequins. You decide. Personally, I like to use habaneros, or their close cousins, Scotch bonnets, because they have a delicious, fruity aroma and—I’m assuming—a similar flavor, although they are so damn hot even a little obliterates your taste buds. So I use only a drop or two of this hot sauce on huevos rancheros, frittatas, in a soup or stew, or to make the devils dance on Asian dishes. I would caution you to use goggles and protective kitchen gloves or even vinyl medical gloves when handling these peppers. A tiny splash in the eye is no pleasant experience. Even touching your eye with a finger that’s touched a habanero is pain city.

Makes 1 scant quart

3 pounds fresh hot chiles

6 cloves garlic, peeled and rough chopped

2 tablespoons Sucanat (whole cane sugar)

2 teaspoons sea salt

1 tablespoon
homemade kefir
or whey mixed into ¼ cup lukewarm water 1. Trim the stems from the chiles, but if using habaneros or Scotch bonnets, leave the green tops.

2.
Place all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and process to a smooth paste.

3.
Transfer the paste to a quart canning jar, cover the top with a square of paper toweling, and screw it down with a canning band. Allow it to sit at room temperature for 1 week, stirring it once or twice during that time.

4.
Place a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl and turn the paste into the strainer. Using a spoon or spatula, press the paste into the strainer, scraping back and forth so the hot sauce runs into the mixing bowl, leaving bits of seeds and pulp behind.

5.
Pour the hot sauce into a jar, close with a lid, and store for up to 2 to 3 months in the fridge. Use sparingly.

Horseradish Sauce

Horseradish is easy to grow yourself, and usually available as a root at markets like Whole Foods. When you make this sauce from a fresh root, it will clear your sinuses quickly! It also gets cultured by the bacteria in fresh whey. You’ll need to use filtered or spring water. It’s great with pot roast or other beef dishes, the way the Germans like it. Mix some with chili sauce to make cocktail sauce for cold Gulf shrimp.

Makes about 1 cup

1 cup peeled, shredded fresh horseradish root

1½ teaspoons sea salt

¼ cup fresh whey

1.
Peel and shred the horseradish root and put it in a blender. Add the salt and whey. Blend into a thick puree. Then add water a little at a time, blending until a smooth sauce forms.

2.
Transfer the sauce into a small jar with a lid loosely closed. Allow the jar to sit in a kitchen cabinet at room temperature for 1 week. Refrigerate the jar after the fermentation. It will keep for 2 to 3 months.

CHAPTER 13

The Grain and Flour Ferments

Bread Starter

Is it possible to attain
terroir
in a homemade loaf of bread? Well, every kitchen has its own unique mix of microorganisms floating in the air, so if you capture these yeasts and bacteria by putting a bowl of flour and water out for them, you will soon have a one-of-a-kind fermenting mixture that will leaven your bread. In fact, before people started producing commercial yeasts at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, bread was made at home (or at community ovens) using the householder’s own starter that was sometimes handed down through generations. The Boudin Bakery in San Francisco uses a starter that was first made in 1849 and has been kept alive and refreshed ever since.

Here’s how to make a starter that’s uniquely yours. You can use all-purpose or whole wheat flour, but I prefer all-purpose flour, which seems to get the starter off to a stronger start. Yeast and bacteria in the air will find your starter, but if you want real sourdough bread, Cultures for Health (www.culturesforhealth.com) sells sixteen heirloom varieties of sourdough starter.

When your starter is being colonized by your ambient microbes, its pH will slowly drop and it will become more acidic as naturally occurring enzymes turn starch to sugar, yeast turns sugar to alcohol, and acetobacter turns alcohol to acetic acid. In addition, there will be some lactobacilli in the starter that will add lactic acid to the mix. The acidic environment and the overwhelming presence of yeast cells will almost surely protect the starter from harmful microbes, but my rule of thumb is when in doubt, throw it out. The starter should smell yeasty and clean, with a light note of vinegar, and with no black or gray mold spots.