Battle of the Brines

Salt or pepper?
Sweet or savory?
Glazed or frosted?

Welcome to the Battle of the Brines, where we debate the age-old question of ume or shoyu.

I used tamari to make them gluten-free.

Before we begin, I should note that I forgot to add water and did 100% tamari, so these pickles are going to be black as a bat turd in a cave at midnight.

They probably taste saltier.

Chop two daikon radishes into paper-thin slices.  

As you can see, ours are a little thicker.  

This is what happens when you pickle at midnight.  

If you have a benriner mandolin, use that.

Split the daikon into two batches.  

Batch A will become ume pickles.  

Here my lovely hand model has sprinkled 

1 teaspoon of sea salt into Batch A.

This is the batch that will become the ume pickles.

She is kneading the daikon until they begin to weep water.  This takes about 3-4 minutes.

This is the part I forgot to photo-document.  So this is what it looked like:

The white things are daikon slivers, which are square in Photoshop-adelphia.

We are adding ume vinegar until we're about 1/2" below the top of the pickles.  

The pickles will release more water overnight.  

Squish those pickles down as low as they can get, and cover them with a cabbage leaf.

Comme ça.  Daikon, ume vinegar, and cabbage leaf.  

This cabbage leaf will mold.  That's ok.  

That's what it's there for.  Don't eat it.  

Cover your jar in cheesecloth and place in a warm, dry spot for the next 3-5 days!

Now place Batch B in the recently vacated bowl.

Add 2 tsp. shoyu or tamari and knead for 3-4 minutes.

Add daikon, tamari/shoyu, and water to the jar until pickles are almost covered.

2 parts tamari/shoyu to 1 part water.

Cover with a cabbage leaf and cheesecloth, and wait 4-5 days!

Check back in on Friday and we'll let you know which pickle was more delicious!

Amazake Parfait: Not Actually That Hard

I've been putting off making amazake forever.  Whenever I crack open a macro book, it always reads like this:

Amazake is a sweet fermented rice product that makes a balanced, health-supportive dessert option.  First we inoculate rice kernels with the koji aspergillus spore.  Next, we make three gallons of soft rice, bring the pot to 140 degrees fahrenheit with a cooking thermometer, insulate an insulated tub, and ferment for 8-12 hours in a sterile jar.  It's so simple!

Just like making a TB vaccine!

My friend Sue from the Kushi Institute rolled her eyes and laughed when I told her I couldn't make it.

"It's not rocket science," she said as she gave the boiling rice a stir with an enormous bamboo paddle.

Isn't it?  I decided to give this spore-inoculating, twelve-hour incubating rice byproduct a try.  Koji has been sold out in a bizarre nationwide dearth.  I tried all the normal culprits... the Kushi Store, South River Miso... everybody was sold out.  Then me and May were walking by this busted up Japanese grocery store in Brookline trying to score cheap seaweed, and BAM.  A fridge FULL of koji!  Who would have thought that this store, which had the nutritional depth and range of a 7-11, would have three giant tubs of koji spore for sale?  It was a birthday miracle.

So we cradled our tub of fungus-spiked rice fragments like a baby and took it home.  It was a sign.
Amazake was our destiny.

making amazake

It's not actually that hard.

I could probably make it after having a drink.

I'm not going to try to prove that, though.

::INGREDIENTS::
.: 3 cups koji-inoculated rice fragments.  Brown or White Rice is ok.
.: 3 cups short-grain brown rice
.: 9 cups water


::PARFAIT TOPPINGS::
.: vanilla extract
.: cinnamon
.: nutmeg
.: almond extract
.: apples
.: toasted almonds/pecans

The day before ( afternoon or evening for an overnight fermentation, 8 AM or earlier for a day fermentation), make your rice.  Soak and rinse your brown rice, then bring rice and 9 cups of water to boil.  Cover and simmer 40-50 minutes, until rice has a soft, porridge-like consistency.

When the kids are tucked into bed and Nancy Grace is over, bring your cool rice back up to temperature.  It should be warm and steaming, but not hot.  You should be able to put your finger in it for a few seconds and not get scalded.  If you have a food thermometer, this is 140 degrees.

Pour your koji rice in the big pot of warm rice, and stir stir stir.  Stir until it's well-mixed.  At this point, the books all say to put your pot of rice/koji in a warm lunchbox surrounded by jars of hot water.  I put the pot in the oven set to 150 degrees because I knew the oven was old and leaked heat, so it'd be between 130 and 140.

May stuck signs on the oven that said "WILD FERMENTATION IN PROCESS, DO NOT DISTURB," and we left it in for 12 hours.

I know I just threw a ton of numbers at y'all, but it breaks down like this:

Make watery rice.  Make it warm, not hot.  Mix in fungus.  Stick in oven.  Check on it in 12 hours.

I checked up on it about every 2-4 hours just to make sure the oven wasn't acting up or catching on fire.  Safety first, guys.

When we opened the oven, it was kind of like having a baby.  The rice was sweet like candy and SO delicious!  I knew right away I had to make it into parfaits.  I mixed in vanilla extract, nutmeg, and cinnamon to a small bowl of amazake.  We roasted walnuts and layered the parfait, amazake, nuts, amazake, nuts.  Next time, I'm going to do mixed berry and almond parfaits with cashew cream on top!

Macrobiotic Kimchi

Remember that Kimchi Soup I was telling you guys about? How there was no macro kimchi to be found, and you should probably make your own?

Well guess what? I did!

And now I'm going to share my trials, tribulations, and shattering, exploding jars with you!

So it's not the prettiest picture. I wish I had a camera that didn't look like something Wario played with in his N64 dream castle, but I don't. Not yet, at least.

I'm so excited to share this recipe with you, and to share this kimchi with the staff at the Kushi Institute. We're an excitable bunch. The prospect of free koji spores or a homemade batch of natto can titillate us for days. This kimchi is pretty much the most scandalous thing to happen since the dumpster was emptied.

HOMEMADE MACROBIOTIC KIMCHI

1 4-5 lb napa cabbage
5 carrots
2 packs of scallions
1 onion
1 head of garlic
1/2 lb. ginger root, fresh
4 dried ancho chili peppers
4-5 tbsp. salt
8 c. water

Chop your cabbage into big, wide slices. The water will wick out of them, so don't worry about their being too large. Slice your carrots into thin ribbons. Your scallions can be cut large, into about 3-4 inch sections, and your onions can be cut into eighths. Combine all vegetables in a bowl, and begin to squeeze them. Here at KI, we call that "Pressed saladizing" them. You're basically breaking down the cell walls a little bit so they absorb the salt water faster.

Combine salt and water, then submerge and press the veggies, as though you were doing a pressed salad. Leave them under pressure for a few hours, until the veggies start absorbing some of the water. Make sure all the stragglers are submerged, because you don't want anything poking above water for sanitation issues.

After you remove your heavy thing, drain (and save) the water. Mince your garlic, grate your ginger, and crush your chili peppers. Mash them into a pulp (wearing gloves!!), and massage them into your kimchi.

Press vegetables tightly into a jar, filling in any gaps with salt water. I banged my jars on the table a few times to get the bubbles out. Make sure they're full to the top, store in a room-temperature location, and let them chill out for at least 7 days!

BEWARE THE EXPLODING JARS: Check on your jars every morning. If the lids feel extremely tight, it's okay to open and drain them a little. The vegetables will wick liquid, and nobody wants a pressure explosion. I put my jars in a plastic box, and everybody made fun of me until one of them exploded and I didn't have to face a disaster! Ha ha!

When your kimchi is done, if it's too salty, feel free to rinse them. The fizz and pop to my kimchi makes it feel more ALIVE than any food I've ever made before. How blessed are we, to have fresh, alive food?

It's awesome.

Pressure

These two have a lot in common.

In addition to being red, having layers, and needing a strong wash, they're both under pressure.

One because it's pushing down on me, pushing down on you.

The other because it's under a rock, about to become my salad.

Here at the Kushi Institute, we have pressed salad every day. Pressure "cooking" is very different than "pressure cooking."

The former involves pressing the liquids from thinly sliced vegetables mixed with salt so that it "cooks." The latter involves pouring some grains in a pot with some water, screwing on the lid, and ducking when it explodes.

I used to hate pressed salad. Growing up, I thought it tasted like cold, limp, salty cabbage. I used to gulp when I swallowed it. I didn't realize that there are as many kinds of pressed salads as there are "real" salads, and each one is a star in its own way. I'd love to share a couple of these with you now!

The thing you should remember is, pressed salad shouldn't taste bad. If it tastes bad, make it different next time. I learned this with the Worst Dish I Ever Made, Macrobiotic Yorkshire Pudding.

Überpressed Salad

Green Cabbage

Red Onions

Green Apples

Daikon Radish

Step 1: THINLY slice these ingredients. When I say thinly, I mean graze-your-knuckles thin. If it helps, bust out your handy mandolin and grate that way, avoiding your fingers. We have more injuries at KI from the mandolin than any other implement besides, perhaps, the Circle of Pain. I've lost years of youthful-looking knuckle skin to the Circle of Pain. I'm going to have hands like Jane Fonda before I hit 30 because of that thing.

I cut my ingredients to bite-sized widths before slicing. For onions, this means cut them in half once vertically (along the furry top, which has been removed first), cut it in half again long-ways (it should be in tall quarters now), and then sliced super-fine into what we call "Thin half-moons" at Kushi. I'm going to do a cutting demo any day now.

Step 2: After you've cut the apples, place the thin slices in a bowl of cold water. They're going to hang out here for the next two hours as your salad presses, so you can either forget about them or snack on them. It's really whatever you want. I live in your computer. I'm not actually judging you or anything.

Step 3: You hopefully have about 5-6 cups of shredded vegetal material. Add about a teaspoon of salt, and begin mixing and squeezing the vegetables in a LARGE bowl. Don't be shy. Squeeze them like you're wringing out a washcloth. Knead them like bread. Keep squeezing until a pool of water begins to form at the bottom of the bowl.

Step 4: Smush all your salad into a circle, and squish that under a small bowl with the U facing just like that... a U. Not a n. . The two bowls, the big one and small one, should kind of interlock. Now take something really heavy and stick it in the small bowl. Something REALLY heavy. Might I suggest:

-A rock

-A bag of rice

-Harry Potter 1-7 (Book, not DVD. Kids these days...)

-Guilt

Step 5: Wait two hours, remove heavy thing, and drain the liquid.

Sauce:

2 tsp. Mustard-Dill Dijon Mustard (We got it at whole foods)

3 tbsp. olive oil

3 tbsp. white wine vinegar

Squirt of lemon juice

Whisk until emulsified, then add to salad, add your green apple slices if you haven't eaten them all, and enjoy!

Healing Pressed Salad

Napa Cabbage

Green Cabbage

Radish Slices

Red Onion (If your system can handle it. If not, no worries.)

Follow all the steps listed above until Step 5. Here's the sauce I'd use:

1 c. umeboshi plum vinegar OR 1 c. brown rice vinegar.

Let the salad soak in the brine, taste, and give a quick rinse if it's too salty.

Party Pressed Salad

1 c. shredded green cabbage

1/2 c. shredded rutabaga

1 c. blanched crushed almonds

Follow Steps 1-5. Add almonds and ENJOY the sweet with the salty!

Tofu Cheese!

Greetings, snackers!

Well, little brother will be arriving at the Kushi Institute this weekend for his kitchen residency, and I couldn't be more surprised. If you had asked me two months ago the likelihood of my brother coming to KI, I would have said that it was DEFINITELY possible. In fact, I think he's volunteering with Dick Cheney, Paula Deen, and all four of the Beatles!

I'm really excited that he's willing to give macrobiotics a try and abandon the Standard American Diet, and I'll be excited to see what happens as his tastebuds adjust and he begins to detox.

On the topic of delicious foods that omnivores don't eat, TOFU CHEESE!

Tofu cheese is not soy cheese. Soy cheese comes in a little vacuum-sealed brick, contains appetizing effusions like "Now with non-dairy lactic acid!" and doesn't melt at any temperature lower than Chernobyl.

Tofu cheese is made from real, whole foods, so unlike soy cheese, it will actually go south pretty fast. This isn't going to be a problem, because (also unlike soy cheese), you'll probably eat it really quickly.

It's minimally processed, relying instead on natural fermentation to get that cheesy flavor. I have it filed under pickles because the fermentation method it undergoes is nearly identical to the pickling process. It isn't stringy. It has a consistency more like ricotta. Observe:

Step 1: The cold, cold smushing of the tofu.

Step 2: The tofu warms up, and what used to feel like a punishment actually feels kind of cool.

Tofu cheese is incredibly delicious, and the bacteria that form from the fermentation process have all kinds of goodies to offer a deficient digestive tract. I hear it's also really high in B12. This would be a fun one to make with the kids, because there's no cutting and no cooking involved, plus it's GREAT on pizza with a little basil, some onions, and some olives!

Tofu Cheese

2 blocks firm tofu, pressed and squeezed until most of the water has drained.

1-2 tbsp. umeboshi plum paste

3 tbsp. light miso (we used South River Miso's Chickpea)

3 tbsp. dark miso (we used South River Miso's Dandelion Leek)

Kneed ingredients together until they form a soft, squishy paste. I kneeded my tofu mixture for about ten minutes. I'm trying to work on infusing positive energy into my food, so I played some Usher/Ludacris collaboration for the benefit of my cheese. I'm anticipating a block of cheese with some serious mojo. That's not just any energy. Those are some pretty serious jams.

Press the tofu cheese in a glass/pyrex container, and allow to ferment (sealed) 6-12 days. On the far end of 12 days, I would definitely only keep for another day or two, and days 12-14, I would definitely cook it.

Enjoy, and I'll post pictures of our finished product!!

The Deceptively Simple Guide to Pickling

It's been hard to keep this blog here at Kushi. When you're eating, sleeping, and breathing macrobiotics, at the end of the day, the hardest thing is to sit down and consider... "What's missing? It must be MORE MACROBIOTICS!"

One thing I set out to learn was how to pickle. May says I eat so many pickles, I'm going to pickle myself. She's probably right. I'm mummifying myself with every slice of briny daikon. Forever young, I want to be forever young...

When we pickle here, we don't use cucumbers. Here are some of the things we pickle:

broccoli stems ++ daikon radish ++ onion slivers ++ cabbage slices

To pickle, slice into matchsticks or THIN slivers (as thin as you can get them).

If you plan on making umeboshi vinegar pickles, do a salt rub... about 2-3 tsp for a 2-3 quart batch.

Submerge in a mixture of 3 parts water to 1 part fermented pickling mixture. These include:

shoyu ++ tamari ++ umeboshi plum vinegar

NOTE: if using tamari, I'd do maybe 3 parts water to 1/2 part tamari. For instance, 3 cups water, 1/2 cup tamari. It's much, much stronger than shoyu. If you pickles are still too salty, you can certainly do a rinse.

After thinly slicing your vegetables, submerge them completely in the liquid brining mixture. If in a hot climate, pickle 24-48 hours at room temperature. If a cold climate, 3-4 days should be good. It's very important that none of the vegetables are above the water level, as they can mold and rot in an aerobic environment. Translation: Keep them under.

After your time is up, you can store the pickles (preferably IN the brine) in the refrigerator for 7-10 days. Placing the pickles in the cold environment of the fridge slows the pickling process and keeps them from going bad.

Pickling encourages the growth of a kind of bacteria that the American diet is strongly deficient in. We eat pickles here at KI once a day, after dinner. It's the highlight of my culinary day. I hope you enjoy and have good pickling experiences!

The Long Awaited Pickles Arrive!

My brother-in-law Jeff embodies what many hipsters aspire to be. He's a lumberjack. He turns wooden bowls. He can grow a mustache.

Most importantly, Jeff makes his own artisan beers.

I am not as skilled as Jeff. The last tree I lifted from this mortal coil was the rose bush I puked on that withered and died a couple weeks ago. I can't turn wooden bowls. I am literally allergic to beer.

But after reading a stirring biography of Dom Perignon, I figured that if a 17th century Benedictine monk and my brother-in-law could find the time and storage to ferment, why couldn't I? I mean, what's my excuse? Dom Perignon didn't have the internet.

YOU CAN PICKLE, I PROMISE: A RECIPE AND MEMOIR

DAY 1, HOUR 1: ACQUIRE CUCUMBERS

We had about 10 kirby cucumbers from May's CSA membership, as well as two long, soft, anonymous cucumbers that were withering away quietly in the back of the fridge. They would see glory before they died.

Above, the cucumbers have been sliced into spears and COVERED in salt. We rubbed it in. We then covered and refrigerated it. We then refrigerated it for six hours-twelve hours. We probably watched reruns of Doctor Who for the duration of this process.

DAY 1, HOUR 6 OR 12:
Construct your brine. We used this recipe with McCormack brand pickling spice because it was $4.79 a jar, and to use the more delicious recipe, it would have been like $16 and we would have had excess celery seed that would have taken years to use up. The best way to do this is to use a recipe like Martha Stewart's Dill Pickle Chip recipe and purchase the seeds at your local bulk spice distributor.

• 12 3 to 4 inch long pickling cucumbers
• 2 cups water
• 1 3/4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh dill weed
• 1/2 cup brown rice syrup
• 8 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
• 1 tablespoon pickling spice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 4 sprigs fresh dill weed

May took the reins from here on out. She heated the water and vinegar and spices until it boiled, and let it cool.
DAY 1, HALF AN HOUR AFTER THAT:
We rinsed the salt off the pickles and tossed them with chopped dill sprigs. May then packed them artfully into recycled jars, where they would nestle 'mongst the brine and spices which have been ladled in subsequently, for the next 3-4 days.

DAY 4. SUNRISE:
It feels like Christmas morning. You run to the fridge, throw open the doors and grab the nearest of seven jars of pickles. It might look a little cloudy. That's okay. From the top down, it looks gorgeous.

Wow. What we're seeing here are cucumbers, dill sprigs, cloves, crushed garlic cloves, and little balls of mustard seed floating around the jar. It really is killer for looks.

I drained out the liquid here so you can see how great it looks. It was time-consuming to wait four days, but we've been enjoying them for nearly a week and a half, and have a billion cucumbers to share with friends.

Looking back, I wouldn't use the McCormack pickling spice. It's so sweet that it's really better suited for corned beef hash. When we pickle next week, we're springing for the dill seed and celery seed to get a more savory, more dill-ish pickle. But that was easy! And it would make a KILLER Christmas present if Christmas was in August!

Fish n' Chips and Macro Root Veggie Relish

Here's a fun summer recipe the whole family can enjoy. It's cheap, accessible in terms of ingredients, and a familiar food for those of us of Anglo-Saxon descent. It also would go REALLY well with the cool yogurt sauce of the previous entry. This is truly junk food, so I recommend mixing it with the root veggie relish listed below. If you're doing the relish with the fish, I'd either cut back on or eliminate the oil so that you don't have to do overtime at the gym tomorrow. Throw in my fresh summer steamer greens, a scoop or two of fresh watermelon, and you've got yourself a barbecue!

GLUTEN-FREE "FRIED" LEMON-BREADED COD FILLETS

Via Martha Stewart's Body and Soul:

Serves 4

• 2 cups Erewhon's Gluten-Free Brown Rice Crispy Cereal (Whole Foods), partially crushed
  
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest (from 2 lemons)
• 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
• 4 cod fillets (4 ounces each), skinned
• 3 ounces baby spinach (4 cups)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine cereal, oil, parsley, zest, and salt.
2. Set a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet. Press fish in crumb mixture, turning to coat. Transfer to wire rack. Bake until golden brown and cooked through, 14 to 16 minutes. Divide fish and spinach among 4 plates.

GABRIELLE'S RAW ROOT VEGGIE RELISH

1 c. carrots, grated on a cheese grater through the big holes
1 c. daikon radish, grated
options:
Tiny diced red onions
Diced green apple
Celery

Apple cider vinegar, bragg's liquid aminos, dash avocado/grapeseed/flaxseed oil, organic vegan Italian dressing to taste.

Combine liquids into a sauce and add shredded root veggies. Toss. Can be saved and used over several days, and you can re-shred and add new veggies to the same old sauce if you want more. I'd go verrry easy on the dressing if you want to serve it with anything fried.