Spoonful Suppers

This has been a long week of eating. In a failing effort to empty out my fridge of ferments, I have made a lot of food that used the fermented products. The amazing thing about fermented food is that it does not take a lot of it to add a lot of flavor to your food. This became very annoying this week. I made a rose berry coulis which my housemates and I enjoyed, yet I still have two jars of rose kombucha in the fridge. I also made miso soup, pea miso butter, pea miso tamari reduction, and pea miso garlic cabbage salad. All of that only went through only one of my jars of miso. I have 3 more. When it came time to use some of my squid garum, and the recipe called for “a very light drizzle of squid garum,” I realized that in the battle for space in my fridge, the ferments will always win. I should not speak so ill of my ferments, though because the food that I did make was very exciting and delicious.

The first dish I made this week using my ferments was a mango lemongrass vinaigrette over charred vegetables and tofu with chili crisp. I charred the vegetables over my stove in a pan with the slightest bit of oil in it. There was a slight mishap when one of the bok choy pieces was too big for the pan and hung off the side a bit which then started a small grease fire in my equally small kitchen. Everything was fine, but it was humbling. Once again my ferments remind me that they are the boss here, not me. The finished (and very well charred) product was delicious.

Next I used my pea miso in a grilled cabbage panzanella-esc salad with big chunks of sourdough croutons and tomato. The miso made the salad a bit heartier than a traditional panzanella. One of the great joys of making my ferments is that I get to feed them to people, who are always a bit surprised by how delicious it is, this dish definitely surprised people. This week, however, my boyfriend is quarantining and 2 of my housemates left on a trip, so I have no audience to taste test my ferments. I think this upcoming week, I will go back to filling my fridge with ferments and give up on using them for the time being, until everyone returns to me.

An exciting discovery this week was that my chicken garum smells exactly like parmesan cheese. Of all the things that I thought it might smell like, this was certainly unexpected, but not at all unwelcome. It is a fun change from fisherman’s warf vibes that the squid garum gave off before. I have also been working on some superfluous ferments for a friend of mine who brews his own beer. I am making some fermented hot sauce and some ginger beer for him to mix with his beers in a Michelada. This upcoming week, I am going to start the pumpkin seed miso and make the roasted koji mole (koji roasted and blended to make a mole-like sauce).

Ferments Completed: 54

Ferments in Progress: 7

Ferments to go: 113