Culture, part 2
Colin Pistell Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:43PM The journey into the wacky world of fermentation continues. After a week of experiments I am delighted to announce that I have, thus far, not poisoned myself. This news will no doubt come as a profound relief to all of you, or, at the very least, to my poor mother, who has thus far weathered all my tales of big jumps, big falls, and close encounters with snakes with a surprisingly small amount of facepalming - but who may have been pushed too far when I happily announced that I would soon be ingesting large quantities of bacteria on purpose.
Before we get into how it all went, let's touch briefly (me? brief? hah!) on why we'd want to do this in the first place. The consumption of cultured dairy products and fermented vegetables is very old and, as a little research will show, incredibly widespread - cultures from all around the world have their own unique traditions.
The primary benefit of culturing dairy products and fermenting fruits and vegetables is the production of lactobacilli, the catch-all term for bacteria that produce lactic acid. These bacteria act to preserve the veggies or dairy products in question (a valuable practice in the age before refrigeration), but also serve as digestive aids. They increase the vitamin availability of the veggies they're cultured in. They can also take up residence in your intestine where they help break down food and produce some neat enzymes that have antimicrobial and anticarcinogenic properties.
Not surprisingly, traditional food cultures evolved to take advantage of these effects. Pickled vegetables and cultured dairy were included as condiments or tonics with most meals. There's sauerkraut in Europe, kimchi in Korea, a wide variety of pickled veggies in Japan. There's keifer and kvass in Russia, laban in the Middle East, dahi in India, and the Masai people of Africa live largely on soured milk.
So why did we stop? I can now speak from experience when I parrot Sally Fallon in saying that this is an artisanal craft - I cannot see it being industrialized. Indeed, industrial pickling relies heavily on vinegar brine and a final blast of pasteurization, which destroys all the beneficial bacteria. We would all do well to re-educate ourselves with this rich slice of food culture.
And when it comes to experimenting with ancient food practices, you can count on me to blaze the trail for you! We left off with waiting for the buttermilk to fully thicken, right? Well, it did - 24 hours later I had a jar of beautifully thick buttermilk - it smelled pleasantly sour and tasted really good.
My plan was to leave this batch out to separate into curds and whey - the curds could then be fully drained and turned into cream cheese and the whey could be used to ferment some veggies. In hindsight, I should have reserved some of the buttermilk for the next culture, but I forgot.
The beginning of the draining process
Fast forward 3 days. The milk had visibly separated and the time had come for draining. I lined a fine strainer with a clean unbleached dishcloth and set it all over a big bowl. They whey began to drip through almost immediately, but it took several hours for the process to finish. Once it was done dripping, the bundle of still-kinda-liquid curds had to be tied around a wooden spoon (and ONLY a wooden spoon will work!) which, for some reason, made the whole thing start dripping again. Apparently it is very important to not squeeze the sack of curds, but that didn't stop me from poking it a few times. Another few hours passed, the sack stopped dripping and I was left with a jar full of pure whey and a bowl full of real cream cheese.
Yum
The whey was used to start a batch of ginger carrots, supposedly the easiest introduction to the world of fermented veggies. The cheese was immediately employed for breakfast. The bagels were ok, but MAN the cheese was good - so much better than store-bought cream cheese. A more complex flavor and much richer.
Ginger carrots, day 1
Another 3 days passed while the ginger carrots fermented. When I finally cracked the jar, it sounded like I was opening a bottle of seltzer. The smell was incredible. The first bite was even better. This stuff is delicious.
I have since started a batch of lacto fermented apricot butter and my first batch of sauerkraut. My whey supplies are already running low, so I have two more batches of buttermilk brewing. This is an incredibly fun activity that, although it takes a long time, requires not a whole lot of effort. I strongly encourage all of you to start experimenting.
All the recipes and techniques I've been using come from Sally Fallon's book, Nourishing Traditions, which can be found here. Check it out.
I've been taking photos of the whole process, which can be found here.
Let me know how it goes for you!
