Homemade Pickled Ginger / Gari

Young ginger is a summer season ingredient; so it's best to pick it up fresh at your local Asian grocery store that has it before summer ends. I picked this up from Portland's Fubonn Asian supermarket on the southeast side of the metro. Inexpensive, for what it is. Though, I'm not going to break even on cost with preparing it into pickled ginger compared to what it costs already prepared. At least it won't have any of that nasty pink food coloring.

I made it from this recipe ratio from Just One Cookbook and let's just say that I'm very disappointed in the thinness that a Cook's Illustrated top recommended mandoline has done with these ginger slices. I could have sliced them thinner with a knife. They taste OK, though, more like ginger pickles than the pickled ginger you'd eat with sushi. There was no pink to the young ginger to begin with, so these didn't turn a shade of pink while fermenting. In fact, they are of a light brown color.

TheFoodening Blog: pickled ginger, ready to eat

Homemade Sour Cream

Maybe one day I'll write up a post of the many combinations of sour cream, heavy cream, buttermilk, whole milk, and the ingredients that thickens the sauce and/or cheese. But that day is not today. Here is how to make sour cream from scratch if you happen to have run out of it or just wanted to make a party chip dip. This will be thinner than store-bought sour cream because it lacks thickeners such as carrageenan, a seaweed extract. 

No lemons? Substitute lemon with an equal amount of white vinegar.

Ingredients

1 c (8 oz) heavy cream
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 c (2 oz) whole milk

Directions

Like the crème fraîche, you'll want to use a clean pint size mason jar.

To the jar, add the heavy cream and lemon juice. Give it a stir to mix together. Add milk. Cover with a lid and shake a bit. Remove the lid and cover with cheesecloth, secured with a rubber band around the rim. Let sit on the counter for up to 24 hours, or overnight.

The mixture should have thickened.

Why this process requires the cream to 'breathe' while the crème fraîche does not. I have no idea. Maybe you don't want extra 'flavors' in the crème fraîche.

Remove the cheesecloth and give the mix a stir. Cover with a lid and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Homemade Crème Fraîche

I'm not sure why people buy $4+ tubs of this at the grocery store. It is heavier than heavy cream and thinner than sour cream. It'll whisk up like heavy cream but will have a much different taste and texture. This is different than making sour cream from scratch.

1.5 c heavy cream
0.5 c low fat buttermilk

Pour ingredients into a clean pint or quart mason jar. Cover and shake the jar a few times. Let sit on kitchen counter for 8 hours; then refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

To use with fresh berries:

Whisk desired amount until it has thickened to stiff peaks. Add 1 tsp granulated sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Spoon this over fresh blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries.

Ginger Salad Dressing

This recipe tries to replicate the house-made ginger salad dressing that one can usually find with a Japanese restaurant's entree or bento salad. It comes together fairly easily; though you will have to procure or make-from-scratch a couple of the ingredients.

Yes, there is such a thing as toasted sesame oil and you can buy it in any grocery store that also stocks Asian goods. In the Portland or Seattle areas, Whole Foods and Uwajimaya definitely carries both oils. Read the ingredient label since not all brands carry pure sesame oil--where it is the only ingredient. You could also make it yourself by using toasting white sesame seeds before grinding it into an oil; though that takes special kitchen equipment to extract the oil from the seeds. That is too much trouble. Just buy the stuff.

Making your own sushi ginger is fairly simple, if you can get your hands on fresh young ginger. Sometimes

Ingredients

50 gm pickled sushi ginger
1/4 c toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce

Directions

Purée until smooth using an standard electric blender or immersion blender. Serve over fresh greens or roasted vegetables.

Canning 2018

The part about food blogging that bugs me is that if I don't write something up as I am doing the recipe or series, it doesn't get written up at all. Now I have to look at my old social media posts to see if I did any canning in 2017 other than a case of salsa (12 pints). I will surely update this post as the year progresses.

Bitters is a new experimentation series. Instead of taking the bitters class at OMSI, I thought I would just read up on it and try out the experiments myself instead of spending $130 on the course. Isn't that what the library and the Internet are for?

Here's what's been going on so far:

Extracts
Young ginger, 4 oz

Bitters
Cherry bitters, 4 oz

Liqueurs (vodka base, simple syrup sweetened)
coffee liqueur (Stumptown coffee base), 1 litre

Salsas
Control batch salsa (jalapeno peppers), 5.5 pints, 0.5 pints eaten already
Hatch chile salsa, 6 pints plus 2 half pints

Here's what's scheduled to be made:

strawberry liqueur
chocolate liqueur

Completed Extracts
Lemon extract, 1 pint
Vanilla bean extract, 1 pint
Bing cherry-infused bourbon, 1 pint
Cherry blossom extract, 4 oz