For a number of years now I’ve been making big batches of kimchi in the wintertime. I make it when the big heads of chinese cabbage start to show up in the farmer’s markets, sometime just before Christmas, and it lasts me in jars through to the spring. Like jam and pickles and applesauce, kimchi is one of the seasonal foods I look forward to making and putting away every year, and one that I give away to friends.

Kimchi is a traditional Korean pickle. Although you can make kimchi from a variety of vegetables, kimchi is most commonly associated with cabbage.

Stories abound of how the Koreans bury their kimchi pots in the ground in the fall and dig them up again in the spring, when the kimchi has well and truly rotted. I think westerners tell these stories because kimchi can have a very strong taste and smell, and that can be scary to a western palate used to blander food. Describing kimchi as a sort of zombie food that must be disinterred to be eaten seems to explain its more exotic and terrifying qualities.

Kimchi is not rotten. Like saukraut, kosher half-sour dill pickles, kefir, and sourdough starter, true kimchi is a fermented food. Although kimchi has a lot of chile pepper in it, its strong taste and smell comes mostly from natural yeasts and bacterias that develop over time in the mixture of vegetables in the pot. The kimchi pot does not need to be buried. Koreans traditionally buried the pot for the same reason root cellars exist; its easier to moderate the temperature of food underground if you don’t have artificial heating and cooling.  No one does that any more.

This is how I make kimchi, based on a bunch of recipes I found on the internet years ago and adaptations I have made over the years. It requires about 45 minutes of actual work and 5-10 days of very casual tending. This isn’t an exact recipe, because I don’t precisely measure anything. My kimchi is different every year because of the amounts of things I have on hand and also because fermentation is not an exact science. There’s no way to duplicate it every time, to make it perfectly safe and uniform. That’s why it’s so special.

You Will Need

To make kimchi you will need:

1 3-4 lb head of chinese (napa) cabbage, chopped into 1-inch pieces
Salt
Water
1 small bunch of mustard greens, chopped
1 bunch scallions, chopped into 1-2 inch lengths
1 Daikon radish, grated, about a cup
1 carrot, grated, about a cup
1 1-inch section of ginger, grated
1 head of garlic (yes, I said a head. 4-5 big cloves, 7-8 small cloves), peeled and sliced thin
A little sugar
A little salt
1/3 cup of Korean powdered chile pepper
Some kimchi from a previous batch
A little water

The first time I tried to make kimchi I used plain western cabbage and cayenne pepper. Both of these were bad ideas. Western cabbage has entirely the wrong texture. Kimchi is not korean spicy coleslaw. Seek out real chinese cabbage, otherwise known as napa cabbage.

Make sure you also get actual korean powdered chile pepper. I tried using cayenne pepper and was surprised that my kimchi was too hot to eat. Kimchi is mildly spicy-hot, but most of the strength and the depth of the flavor comes from the fermentation, not from the peppers. I also tried other chiles and found that nothing tasted right until I actually went to a Korean market and got Korean chile powder. There’s something about the terroir. Fortunately, a huge jar of Korean chile pepper only costs a couple bucks.

You can get mustard greens from large fancy grocery stores these days, or from any Asian grocery. Don’t use the stems. You can leave these out if you can’t find them, but I find they really add an interesting taste.

Step 1. Salt

This step is optional. Salting the cabbage helps it release some moisture. You’ll end up with a limper less crunchy kimchi. I think it helps the kimchi ferment faster. If you’d prefer a more vegetable-tasting, crunchier kimchi, omit this step.

Layer the cabbage with salt in a big bowl or a plastic tub and cover with water. The water should taste slightly salty, like seawater. Add more salt if necessary Let sit for 4-5 hours, or overnight. Drain and rinse.

Step 2. Mix

Add the cabbage and all the remaining ingredients to the largest bowl you own and mix them all together. I like to mix the vegetables first with my hands, and then add the chile powder and a little water with a big spoon.

If you don’t have kimchi left over from a previous batch, that’s OK. You add a few spoonfuls to this batch as a “starter” to get this batch going faster with the right bacteria for the fermentation.

Step 3. Ferment

After mixing everything together, I put the kimchi into a tub and leave it out on the back porch to ferment. I used to use a stoneware pickle crock or glass half-gallon mason jars for this, but recently I discovered these food-safe plastic restaurant tubs and they’re a lot easier to keep clean and haul around. Don’t seal the top; you need it open a crack to let the good critters in there to do their work. Open in and stir it once a day or so.

How long you leave the kimchi out to ferment depends on how strong a taste you like and how nervous you are about letting food sit around unrefrigerated. A day or two in cool weather and you’ll get a very mild flavor, a crunchier kimchi, and you’ll still be able to taste the vegetables. A week in the sun and the kimchi will develop a spicy, sour, intense flavor, and look more pickled.

Why out on the porch? As the kimchi develops the smell will get stronger and more powerful, and an open jar of it can spread all over your kitchen like chemical warfare. I happen to like the smell, but others in your household may not agree.

Needless to say that if your kimchi turns a funny color or grows mold then your fermentation has failed and you should throw it out. I have never lost a batch but I can see it happening.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Most of the years I made kimchi I only left it out for a few days. This last year I forgot about it entirely and rediscovered it out on the porch after ten days. I opened the jar and leaned over for a look and all the skin on my skull melted right off, like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was some really great stuff.

(I am writing, a lot. I hope some of you are still around to read.)

When I was seven my friend Carolyn lived at the end of the road in a big old white house shaded under huge maple trees. Her house was more interesting to play in after school when our parents were at work than my house was, because her house was older and larger than my house, and it had more corners and places to explore, but mostly because it wasn’t my house. And so we rode our bikes up and down the street, and we climbed the maple trees in her yard, and we explored the basement and attic and other back corners of her house, and then one day while we we exploring we found the old jars of pickles at the back of the pantry closet behind the kitchen stairs.

There were two jars of dill pickles, big half-gallon mason jars we could barely lift out of the closet and onto the kitchen counter. We didn’t know how old the jars were, and there was no one else around in the house to tell us. The tops of the jars were furry with dust and although there were labels on the jars the writing had faded so we couldn’t see the dates. Inside the jars there were whole pickles, packed tightly, and if we tipped the jars on their sides we could see garlic and peppercorns and whole spiky brown heads of dill seed through the cloudy brine.

I loved pickles. Pickles were my favorite snack. I ate jars and jars of canned cucumber pickles from the store, picking out the last pickles with a fork and then drinking the brine as well. At delis we sometimes found big glass jars of pickles on top of the counter, the sours and half-sours, the pickles suspended in brine like mad scientist torture experiments in vegetables. I always stepped up and asked for a sour dill pickle, and the counter man would look at my mother and ask, “are you sure?” When my mother agreed the counter man would reach deep into the jar with a big pair of long-handled grippers and then lean way over the counter to hand it to me, still dripping with pickle juice, wrapped up in a little piece of wax paper. Full sour dill pickles were so green they looked like they would glow in the dark, so large they took two hands to hold, and so sour they made me squish up my face with every bite. It would take me all afternoon to eat a sour pickle, and my teeth would ache for for another day after that. It would be many years later before I grew to appreciate the spicy, salty, crunchy half-sours, but I always loved a full sour pickle. Eating sour pickles was always an adventure.

The pickles Carolyn and I found in the closet behind the stairs didn’t look much like deli pickles. They had faded to a pale greenish grey, and they were smaller and curved to fit into the jars. Still, they were obviously pickles, and the prospect of a whole jar of homemade pickles all to myself was thrilling to me. “Let’s open a jar,” I proposed, and Carolyn eagerly agreed.

The lids of the jars were rusty with age. Carolyn held a jar and I turned the lid, but even with our combined seven-year-old strength we couldn’t budge it. We tried with a towel, and we tried with a rubber jar-opener that Carolyn found in a drawer. I had read in a book that if you whack the edge of the jar lid with the handle of a knife, you can get a jar open. We tried that and only managed to dent the lids and the knife handle, too, which would get us in big trouble later on when her mom found out. We carried the jars outside and banged the lids against the edge of the old brick wall that separated the driveway from the yard. We knocked the jars upside-down on the driveway itself (“Don’t break it,” Carolyn warned. “I’m not,” I replied). We took the jars back into the kitchen and pried at the lids with the knife, at the bottom edge along the neck of the jar and also along the top of the lid where it looked like there was a seam. Finally we got one of the lid to slowly turn with a grinding noise. It looked like the rim of the lid was turning, but the top of the lid wasn’t, which was curious. But something was moving, which gave us confidence in our jar-opening skills, so we kept working at it, and eventually the lid came off.

Or, half of it did. The lid was in two pieces: a flat disk on top of the jar itself, and a band around the edge that screwed onto the jar and held the disk in place. This explained the seam on the top of the jar — the seam was where the two parts of the jar came together. It took still more prying with the knife to break the seal on the flat part of the lid, but finally it came loose with a pop. Out from the jar emerged a faint ghost of dill and vinegar.

Inside the mouth of the jar the olive green heads of the pickles peeked out of the brine and there was a big head of dill stuffed into the top. Carolyn got me a fork and a plate and I speared a pickle. It was softer than I expected, so soft it took some work to unbind the pickle from the jar without breaking it in pieces. I put the pickle on the plate and cut it open with the knife. Other than the funny color it looked like a pickle, with a bumpy cucumber skin on the outside and seeds on the inside. There was nothing moldy or gross about it or anything.

“Do you think its bad?” Carolyn asked.

“It doesn’t smell bad,” I said. “How old do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Carolyn said. “Really really old.”

I put my finger into the pickle juice on the plate, and then put it into my mouth. It tasted like vinegar, and maybe a little metallic. I cut off the end of the pickle and put it into my mouth. Carolyn watched me like she expected me to fall over dead any second. “What’s it like?” she asked me.

“It’s really good,” I said, and I cut myself another piece.

It was a dill pickle, but not sharp and sour like the glow-in-the-dark pickles I was used to, and not plain and salty like the deli half-sours. It was both sour and salty and tasted of dill and garlic and spices and something else, something deeper and delicious, something I had never tasted before. There was also that slight taste of metal, like an old can, but if I tried I could put that taste aside. I reached for more.

Emboldened by my tasting, Carolyn had some of the pickle, and agreed with me that it tasted really good. Both of us had more of the pickle on the plate. Then we had another one. Before we knew it, we had eaten the entire jar.

Carolyn’s mother was completely aghast that we had eaten the jar of pickles at all, let alone the whole thing. In amongst the scolding she said something about “grandmother’s pickles,” although I never found out if it was Carolyn’s grandmother or Carolyn’s mother’s grandmother. She was even angrier when she saw the state of the knives. She called my mother, and then between the two of them we both got a very stern lecture on Absolutely Positively NOT eating strange food we found in back closets. Although today I think we would have had a fast trip to the emergency room for a date with Mr Stomach Pump, at the time I think we were just watched overnight to see if we got sick. Neither of us did. Carolyn’s grandmother, or great-grandmother, knew how to can, and even though the pickles were old they were fine. Although the second jar of pickles, the one we couldn’t open, never did reappear after that. I never got a second taste of those pickles after the one afternoon. Carolyn’s mother probably spirited that jar off to the trash before we found a way to get it open.

* * *

Some people spend their whole lives trying to recreate some fundamental memorable experience in their past. They are always searching, reaching, grasping, tasting, but no peach tastes like that one perfect juicy summer vacation peach. No kiss is ever like that first one with the girl who broke your heart. No roller coaster is ever as exhilarating as the one on the beach that was torn down in 1956.

For me one of those core experiences is that jar of pickles. Thirty-five years later I can still taste those pickles. Thirty-five years later I am still trying to understand what it was about those pickles that made them so good. I’ve learned how to make and can pickles, and I’ve learned about vinegar pickles, and, and fermented salt pickles, and kosher pickles. I’ve made batches and batches of my own pickles, and I know how to use canning jars with the two-piece lids to keep pickles almost indefinitely. Thirty years later I am still searching for hundred-year-old pickle recipes, still gathering recipes from grandmothers and great-grandmothers all over the internet, still collecting heirloom cucumber seeds, and locating lost spices and ingredients with strange names that barely sound edible.

I’m still searching. I don’t know if I will ever find the pickle of my childhood, or if the memory of the perfect pickle is too idealized in my head. But I do believe that someday I will find a pickle that will be good enough that when I step up to the deli counter for an old fashioned sour dill, that pickle-eating adventure won’t be nearly as good as the pickle-finding adventure I’ve already had.

Note: the following procedure refers only to the consumption of Smarties(tm) brand citric-acid based candies available in the continental United States. For information about the consumption of Smarties(tm) brand chocolate-based candies available in the UK and Canada, refer to subsection 4.3.2(a), Proper Consumption of M&Ms.

1. Shuck the Smarties.

Regardless of the total number of Smarty rolls to be consumed, all individual Smarties must be removed from their respective wrappers and piled up on a flat surface. Shucking and collecting Smarties ensures even distribution of flavors across rolls.

2. Spread out the Smarties.

After piling up the Smarties, spread them out into a single layer so that all flavors and colors are visible. A single layer enables the smarties to be properly sorted.

3. Pick out and eat the pink ones.

Ideally, each individual Smarty should be nibbled around the edges until both sides of the Smartie are flat (rather than concave). Then the Smarty itself can be squared off, octagonned, rounded again, and eventually reduced to zero. If you’re pressed for time, this step can be skipped.

4. Pick out and eat the orange ones.

5. Pick out and eat the yellow ones.

6. Pick out and eat the green ones.

7. Pick out and eat the purple ones.

8. Eat the white ones.

One could make the eating process more efficient by sorting the Smarties into piles by color after shucking them from the wrapper. But that would be obsessive.

Today while I was waiting in the starbucks line a very large man came in the door behind me YELLING into his cell phone.

“I know that’s what he told you,” he said, “but I’m sick of that shit. You tell him that he needs to get that work done. You tell him that he’s had three months now and that work isn’t done and he needs to get OFF HIS ASS AND GET THAT SHIT DONE. NO. NO. You’re NOT LISTENING.” The man was poking the air next to my head. I edged away nervously. The people in line behind him edged away nervously. “You need to get on the GODDAMN PHONE AND tell him what I’m telling you. Tell him I WANT THAT WORK DONE AND I WANT IT DONE THIS WEEK OR HE’S GOING TO GET A VISIT DIRECTLY FROM ME AND NO ONE WANTS THAT DO THEY. OK? OK? OK? GOOD.”

The man slapped his phone shut and moved up to the counter. “Hi,” he said to the barista, who edged away nervously. “I’d like a decaf pumpkin latte.”

More updates. I had planned to post this immediately after a panoply of updates (part 1) but I got distracted by the arrival of really large book. Perhaps you heard of it? Harry Potter and the Weekend of Accomplishing Absolutely Nothing?

The Return of the Cold-Brewed Coffee

My iPhone post was exceptionally popular the week I posted it, what with frenzy being at its peak just before the phone was released. But then as I watched my stats I noticed something funny: there was another post that was consistently getting better hits. A post I wrote almost exactly two years ago about cold-brewed coffee was by far the most popular post on this blog, even more popular than the iPhone post.

What the hell? I thought. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on: the New York Times had done an article about cold-brewed coffee, and it had sparked a fad. Suddenly my review was in great demand from the curious. (the same thing happened when I wrote about no-knead bread; perhaps if I want to be a more popular blogger I should just always write about what the New York Times writes about.)

I panned cold-brew coffee in that original post. I had nothing good to say about it. “Tastes like ass” was the term I used, and I stand by that assertion. (“assertion,” ha ha ha. I’m sorry. I am 12.) I have a bunch of friends who have glommed onto the fad recently and they insist that my method was flawed, that you need to make smaller amounts than the full pound at a time I was making, and you don’t need to dilute it.

I am still dubious. But perhaps I will try it just to update that post and keep my stats up.

Death and Camping

An update for the happy camper (1 and 2)

A couple weekends back we drove out to the Sierras for the Death Ride, one of Eric’s two big bicycle events of the year. I’ve written about the Death Ride before, here and here. Eric wrote up his Death Ride story on his blog.

Normally for the death ride we get a motel room some distance from the ride, wake up at 3AM, and drive in a panic for an hour to the start of the ride in hopes of finding a good parking spot. At 5:30AM when Eric leaves I go back to sleep in the back of the car and wait for him to get back.

This year we have the VW camper van. This year we could camp along with a zillion other bicyclists in the park next to the start line. This year there would be no parking spot worry. And best of all, we could sleep in. All the way through to 4AM, when the Death Ride organizers turned the loudspeakers on, put the volume up to 11 and woke us all up with rousing music. The Mission Impossible theme. Appropriate.

This was our first big camping experience with the Eurovan and I am happy to proclaim it a success, mostly. On the one hand, sleeping in the poptop is comfortable and spacious. The windows in the side of the poptop are right at eye-height, which means as you’re dozing off in the wilderness you can look out at the stars (and the night sky in the sierras without any urban light pollution: tremendous). On the other hand given that the poptop is canvas it is very noisy up there. If you’re not used to a lot of noise — and we’re not, we live in the country — normal outdoorsy noise from other people can keep you up at night. We didn’t get a lot of sleep. I’m thinking earplugs.

Hanging out in the Eurovan is awesome. All the windows have curtains and there are accessory curtains for the windshield so you can make it entirely private if you, um, want to do private things. With all the doors and windows open it’s airy and comfortable, and sitting on the rear bench seat with a lemon soda out of the fridge and a bowl of blueberries on the table, reading a book, is almost decadent.

On the other hand if you really want to have the genuine sweaty and uncomfortable camping experience you can shut all the windows and does get really hot and stuffy inside fairly quickly. If you’re really lucky you can trap a couple really angry yellowjackets inside. Your choice.

All Hail the Mighty Coffee Bean! – Wired News

Another Lore Sjöberg essay. I might as well just set up a Lore Sjöberg reposter for this blog because every single thing the man writes is totally brill. All Hail the Mighty Lore Sjöberg.

Step Two: Storage
All coffee lovers know that coffee grounds turn into the very dandruff of the Dark Lord himself if you leave them out for more than 145 seconds. Clearly I’ll need a way to store the grounds while I’m having each bean individually ministered to. The CafeStore 4000x creates a vacuum environment for the storage of the ground beans. Not just a vacuum in the usual sense of having very little air, but an ideal vacuum with no air, no black-body radiation, no zero-point energy, nothing but beans. According to the laws of physics, this is impossible, and as such may cause the universe to cease to exist, but isn’t that worth it for the perfect cup?

Bottled Pickle Juice.

Dill pickle juice. No pickles, just the juice. Bottled. 16 oz containers.

Really.

The Golden Pickle Juice web site claims that pickle juice makes a good sports drink (buh?) or as a mixer for cocktails (euh?). Their Drink of The Month: Golden Jager Blaster. Half and Half Pickle Juice and Red Bull. With a shot of Jagermeister.

Really.

And it is claimed repeatedly on the web site that Pickle Juice is not made by a troop of elves squeezing the souls out of pickles.

No Really. That’s what it says. Go look.

I got the link from Slashfood which refers to a BevNet post where Pickle Juice is described as smelling “like a bio lab during dissections.” I had this vivid mental image of big tubs of pickles bent in horrible shapes and you have to pin them down on the wax tray to get them to lie flat. I may never eat pickles again.

(I got it from Slashfood.)

As part of my ongoing experimentation with weird food, I discovered a new vegetable at the farmer’s market this weekend. It was stacked up between the broccoli and the kale and it didn’t have a label. I had to ask the hippie girls behind the table what it was, and the response was: it’s orach. Its an heirloom spinach, they said. I bought two bunches.

From googling I learn that Orach (Atriplex hortensis), is not related to spinach, but its used like spinach. Its sometimes called mountain spinach and is one of the oldest cultivated vegetables. The romans grew it and considered it an aphrodisiac. It was prized in the kitchen gardens of the American settlers and documented in John Lawson’s History of Carolina in 1714.

The plant itself is kind of bushy and weedy, with thick woody stems so you have to clean it (which is kind of pain). The leaves are thin but there are lots of them; it also has a whole lot of tiny flowers clustered at the end of the stem that are kind of bushy raw but the bushiness goes away once they’re cooked and have kind of a crunchy texture. Overall orach has a stronger taste than spinach, but not quite as bitter as chard. Its good. I like it.

For future reference, however, one’s spouse may be somewhat apprehensive if you come home from the market brandishing a pile of weeds and proclaiming excitedly “Look! I bought a strange vegetable for dinner!”

I went to Whole Foods a couple weeks ago and came home with a turkey reservation. I hadn’t planned to get a turkey this year because we were going to a potluck t’giving dinner with friends and there would be turkey there. And besides, its just me and Eric in the house, and Eric is vegetarian. The thought of having to eat a big old turkey all my myself is kind of overwhelming (turkey leftovers until JULY). They’re making little itty bitty miniturkeys now, which are easier to handle than the twenty pound frozen cannonballs you normally see at this time of year, but at any rate I was figuring on giving the whole thing a pass.

But then I saw that WF had heritage turkeys on the menu. Hmmm.

Here’s the scoop: the common market turkey, a variety imaginatively called the “Large White,” is a product of years and years of industrial breeding. Buyers prefer white meat, so turkeys have been bred with these enormous breasts (giant! turkey! gazongas! er…sorry). Those turkey breasts are so huge that common turkeys can’t fly, can barely walk, and they can’t breed on their own — they have to be artificially inseminated. And of course there’s the standard story of turkeys being so stupid they stand out in a rainstorm and look up into the rain and drown. Compare and contrast with the wild turkey I saw wandering across my lawn a couple of times last year, which was positively svelte, fast, and smart. I’ll bet that turkey has no problem getting laid (or coming in out of the rain).

The common turkey is snow white because white feathers mean white skin and paler meat, also preferred by most turkey buyers. Its a fast-maturing turkey, meaning more of them can be bred and killed in time for the holiday rush. Unfortunately, the common turkey is also pretty much tasteless. And, like most poultry breeding in the US, most turkeys are raised in huge packs in enormous industrial farms and crowded conditions and dosed with huge amounts of antibiotics to keep the poultry diseases that result from overcrowding from killing all the birds before they can be sold. Yum. Organic free-range turkeys solve many of the ethical issues, of course, but you’re still starting out with the velveeta of poultry. Bland, processed, engineered holiday food product.

I first heard about heritage turkeys five or so years ago when I got a membership in Slow Food, a kind of snobby but nonetheless interesting organization dedicated to growing, preparing, and eating really great food. And I was really interested in trying a heritage turkey, but I would have had to order one, and that would had cost me upward of $140 for the bird including Fedex shipping. I like to try new foods, but there is only so far I will go, especially since its just me still working through the leftovers in July.

Heritage turkeys, in comparison to the Large White, are old-fashioned turkey breeds, turkeys closer to the original wild turkeys. They have breed names like Narragansett, Bourbon Reds, and American Bronze. They look like turkeys are supposed to look. They have normal turkey feathers and normal turkey breasts. Because only us curious rich yuppie foodies buy them, they’re raised on small farms and unpenned, and they roam and fly like wild turkeys, so they’re tougher and gamier than market turkeys. But: they have taste.

(that’s a Narragansett. Pretty, isn’t he? Picture from The New Farm website)

So there I was in Whole Foods, not planning on a turkey, when I saw they had heritage turkeys for order. All my plans for no turkey this year went right out the window. I stepped up to the table and put in my order for the smallest possible heritage, which was still going to be 14 pounds. The woman at the table was really curious. “Have you ever had one?” she asked. “I hear they have lots of dark meat.” she said, in a tone that sounded like “I hear they make you break out in sores.” I replied brightly that no, I had never had one, but I like dark meat, so that’s a good thing. “You’re the first person to order one,” she said. She had a stack of about 400 turkey orders next to her. Of course the heritage at $3.49/lb is difficult to compete with a traditional turkey that’s only a third the price or less, but still. The first one? Where is anyone’s sense of adventure?

While I was at Whole Foods I also saw they had some romanesco cauliflower, which is probably the most fascinating vegetable ever so of course I had to get some. The girl at the checkout exclaimed “Have you tried it? You’re the first person to buy some!”

I am apparently the only food experimenter in my neighborhood.

But that brings us up to today, when I picked up the heritage turkey. (like I was going to pick it up before thanksgiving with the other 400 of my neighbors? I think not). I had the meat counter at WF joint it for me (cut it up in pieces), which will make is less lovely to roast but means I can freeze most of it for cooking and eating later (leftovers. leftovers. leftovers). At home as I wrapped up the turkey pieces I noted that the heritage is definitely different from a normal turkey:

• As advertised, the turkey has smaller breasts and larger legs. It looks pretty much proportionately like a really large chicken. A really, really large chicken.
• The meat is DARK. The breast meat is much darker than normal turkey dark meat, and the leg and thigh meat is a deep, deep, red, almost beef red. Almost purple.
• It has feathers! The pin feathers on the wings are black. There are only a very few of them so its not a big deal, and I assume that there are leftover pin feathers on every bird I’ve ever bought — I’ve just never noticed because they’ve been white and they blend in.
• The meat is definitely…meatier. Its not squishy like normal turkey or chicken. This is a bird that actually moved around in its lifetime.

I wish I could end this post with a taste test, but to be honest: I had an enormous amount of turkey yesterday on turkey day, and I am sick to death of turkey right now. I have a leg and thigh of the heritage turkey in the fridge and I will roast it up in a few days and follow up then.

Gobble gobble.

Presumably you have already seen the Gallery of Regrettable Food. In that vein comes the Company Cookbook.

Amy, the author of amalah.com where the cookbook lives, explains:

I work for a financial publishing company. Which means that sometimes, I get some random swag from companies, brokers or mutual funds. Usually pens or those little squeezy stress ball things. That stuff sucks.

But one time, a company sent me their employee cookbook. It sucks, but in a completely awesome way.

Basically: its a collection of lovingly arranged and photographed company potluck dishes, with Amy’s incredibly funny mockage to go along. Cheese plays a major role.

(I got it from Slashfood.)

Have I posted about Steve Don’t Eat It! yet? (searching) No! I have not!

There’s a long tradition of eating really horrible things and then writing about it on the Internet. I would search for the good examples from the past but I am lazy. However, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it done quite so well, or horribly, and with pictures, as with the long-running sequence Steve, Don’t Eat It! over on thesneeze.com.

In past installments of Steve, Don’t Eat It! Steve has eaten and reported on potted meat food product, Beggin’ Strips, breast milk, natto, and cuitlacoche. (The last two are fermented soybeans and moldy corn, respectively. They are real food and not spoilage). In the most recent installment, he tries canned silkworm pupae. I am not certain this was actually supposed to be food, but Steve says so, so I defer.

See the Steve, Don’t Eat It! archives for previous installments.

Steve, author of Steve, Don’t Eat it! also completely fascinates me because in the same blog he can write something as perverted as this review of the Olsen Twins Toothpaste, and then turn around and do a completely excellent straight up interview with the graphic designer who did the Fedex logo. Luv him.

(I can’t remember where I got it originally, but the silkworm pupae and thus the reminder came from slashfood)

Slashfood, one of my new favourite blogs, has a fun article up about the business of mushroom marketing and how mushrooms have been renamed to make them sound exotic. Exotic means they can, of course, charge more for them.

It goes like this. You have agaricus bisporus, the common button mushroom. In these parts they run about $1.50 a pound. The more flavorful brown variety of the common button mushroom is the crimini. It is the same mushroom. It just tastes a little stronger, and, well, its brown. Criminis, however, run you about $2.50 a pound.

If you let a crimini grow too big, you get a portabella. Same mushroom. Same flavor. Just bigger. With a fancy name. $4 a pound.

And Slashfood mentions, and I’ve seen these in stores, the latest gimmick: baby bellas. Young portabellas! At $6 a pound. Except a young portabella is, of course, just a crimini.

Food marketing: a good job for ex-politicians.

(I got it from Slashfood.)

Summer is pesto season. Every year I grow a whole lot of big-leaf basil just for making loads and loads of pesto. Some for eating, some for freezing, just so we can have pesto year round.

Last week I harvested a big load of basil and was cleaning it in the sink when suddenly one of the basil leaves wiggled at me.

This very large green bug had stowed away on the basil I had harvested. The camouflage was perfect; the bug is precisely the same color as the basil.

I of course maneuvered the bug to a better location so I could take pictures and then let him go.

It’s persimmon season. Yum.

They didn’t have persimmons back east where I grew up. Or if they had them, I never saw them. When I first moved out here I saw persimmons in the store, and people told me oh, persimmons are wonderful, you should try them. So I bought a persimmon at some exorbitant supermarket price, brought it home, sliced it into quarters, and put one in my mouth.

It was like eating a handful of bitter flourescent orange dirt. The persimmon immediately sucked all the moisture out of my mouth. I would have said “Bleah! argggh!!” if I had been able to talk, which I couldn’t, because my lips had sealed themselves shut and unfortunately the bite of persimmon was still inside. I staggered around the house waving my arms and knocking over furniture looking for something with which to pry open my jaws. I was eventually able to expel the persimmon and with enough water and time eventually I regained salivary equilibrium. The remainder of the persimmon went into the trash.

I confronted the person who had recommended persimmons to me at work the next day. She laughed at me. “They’re kind of astringent if they’re not ripe,” she explained.

Kind of astringent. Right.

Suffice it to say this experience did not make me want to try persimmons again, ever. It was only later I found out that there are two kinds of persimmons: Fuyu and Hachiya. Fuyus are round like an apple and yellowish-orange. You can eat them the day you take them home from the store, even if they’re still hard and not very ripe, although they’ll taste better if they’re just a little squishy. In either case fuyus are supposed to be crisp and slightly crunchy.

And then there is the hachiya. Hachiyas are acorn-shaped, with pointy ends, and a much brighter orange than fuyus, They are sold hard in the stores. And unless you actually want to have a horrible mouth-sucking experience like I did when I tried one, you cannot eat them when they are hard. With a hachiya persimmon, you have to leave it out on the counter to blet. That is actually the correct technical term: bletting, and its actually a decaying process. No, really. The hachiya doesn’t become riper, but it does soften up and the tannins that make it, well, astringent, go away as it blets. The softer the hachiya, the better it will taste. A hachiya persimmon is not really ready to eat until it has the consistency of a water balloon. You can also quick-blet a hachiya by freezing it and thawing it, but that only makes the persimmon edible without giving you much of the flavor.

And the flavor is everything. Ripe hachiyas have a rich, honey-like flavor. They are thick and sweet and sticky and kind of messy to eat, but they taste wonderful. Because of the mess a lot of people use hachiyas for cooking but I like to eat them with a spoon and my fingers and lick off the plate. Fuyus are good and enable instant persimmon gratification, but it is the hachiyas that I really like.

I used to resist buying persimmons even after I found out how to eat them because they were so expensive in stores. $1.49 each: no. And then I found I just wasn’t talking to the right people. Persimmon trees are fairly common around here; they are a fast-growing tree that doesn’t need a lot of water or a lot of care. After the leaves fall the fruit stays on the tree, like bright orange christmas ornaments. They’re pretty to look at. The problem is that they can grow to be very large trees, they bear really heavily, and once the fruit gets ripe you have to harvest it all because otherwise the water-balloon effect works against you and whatever happens to be standing underneath the tree. It can get kind of icky. Thus, if you own a persimmon tree generally you have way more persimmons than you know what to do with. Owning a persimmon tree is kind of like planting a lot of zucchini: you begin to look around for neighbors with unlocked doors.

So around this time of year I start mentioning in casual conversations that I like persimmons. I bring it up at the gym, at jobs where I’m working. I sigh dramatically and mention the high price of persimmons at the store. And invariably someone will perk up and say “You like persimmons? Thank god. I will bring you some.” And then the next say or so I have a giant grocery bag of persimmons. Or two or three. It never fails.

I usually eat all my persimmons out of hand but one of these days I will cook with them. Persimmon pie and persimmon pudding seem to be popular. Epicurious has a whole bunch of persimmon recipes, including persimmon salsa, persimmon feta and hazelnut salad, and persimmon cardamom sherbet. Yum.

Its enough to make one want to plant a tree.

I really love stinky cheese (much to Eric’s horror). And now, thanks to the good folks at the BBC, I have a shopping list. At Cranfield University, UK they have discovered the world’s smelliest cheese. It is Vieux Boulogne, a soft washed-rind cheese from Northern France.

It comes as no surprise to me that the French were the best at making stinky cheeses. Mmmm. Camembert.