Celestial Roots

Primary fermentation is complete, so it’s time to add the spices to give this pickle that true Indian flavour. First the fenugreek, mustard, and fennel seeds are dry fried, crushed with a mortar and pestle, then the other spices are assembled.

These are fried in coconut oil, and then added to the fermented lime and turmeric mix when they are cooled as per the instructions in the original post http://celestialroots.tumblr.com/post/84301057498/indian-lime-pickle

This will need to ferment for a further two weeks out on the bench. After that, it is ready to enjoy. For a little sweetness, some raw honey may be added at this stage, or after the secondary fermentation.

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This recipe makes a silken textured, rich and flavoursome mild chilli sauce. The flavour and heat delivery is smooth and consistent, with a luxurious mouth feel. This is one tasty and smooth operator. At the same time, we will also make a chilli chutney by adding apple and onion to the same recipe.

250 g chillies (yellow, red, and red Thai) roughly chopped, seeds left in

400 g tomato paste

6 cloves garlic

1 tbsp salt

2 tbsp raw honey

¼ cup fish sauce

1 tbsp mango vinegar (substitute apple cider vinegar)

1 tbsp pineapple vinegar (substitute pineapple or lime juice)

1 tbsp tamarind paste

Place all ingredients except the tomato paste into a food processor and mix to a paste. Add the tomato and blend together. Spoon out 2/3 of the mix into one jar, and 1/3 into another. To the second jar, also add 2 granny smith apples (peeled and cored, then finely chopped), and one small onion, finely chopped. Cap both jars and ferment for 7 days, stirring every day.

Spoon the contents of the first jar (the one without the apple) into a strong sieve resting over a bowl. Add one third of a cup of mango vinegar to the jar, shake to get the remains of the paste, then pour slowly onto the sieve. Push the mass of sauce through the strainer, using the vinegar to liquefy as you push. This will take a fair while, and you will be left with a pulp of chilli seeds and skin. The pulp may be added to a jar with some pineapple vinegar to flavour it. Steep for a week, then strain. Meanwhile, in the bowl is our chilli sauce ready to be bottled. This makes enough for a standard sauce bottle with a little left over.

Add any leftover sauce to the second jar, along with a quarter cup of mango vinegar. Mix, and then transfer to small jars.

Keep both the chilli sauce, and the chilli chutney in the fridge.

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How easy is it to make butter? Very easy is the quick answer to that. As easy, in fact, as lifting a quote from James Bond – shaken, not stirred. If you have some “good” cream, a jar, and 10 minutes to spare, you are only 10 minutes away from butter heaven. Note the glorious yellow colour of the butter in the picture above – this shows that the cream comes from cows that eat fresh pasture grasses, not grain or some other unnatural fodder.

Step one is putting your cream in a jar.

So, we start with “good” fresh cream. Fill a sterilised glass jar a quarter to a third full of creamy goodness, then seal the lid tight. Now comes the James Bond bit, a nice 10 minute workout shaking the jar. We want to shake it so the cream hits the top and bottom of the jar in fairly rapid succession. It’s hard work, and the fuller the jar, the harder it gets. Our muscles get used to it though, and it’s a great way of toning arms!

Step two is keep on shaking until …

The butter will all separate out from the buttermilk over the course of a few shakes. We know it’s done because the foamy cream no longer coats the side of the jar, we are left with the thin, delicious buttermilk, a mass of golden health-giving butter free from any additives, and a real sense of satisfaction.  

Strain off the buttermilk from the butter. Place the butter in a clean glass or ceramic dish for serving or storage. The buttermilk, well, I like to drink it straight away - fresh buttermilk is a real treat for me. Otherwise, it goes well in pancakes and baking. The butter we have just made is softer in consistency than shop bought butter, so will spread better in cooler weather.

Nutrition is not about compiling a shopping list of desired vitamins, minerals and food groups, and then filling it. Optimal nutrition relies more on the quality of our food, rather than the elements that are nominally contained within it. Having said that, I would be remiss in not mentioning that butter made from the raw milk of pasture fed cows is very high in the essential vitamin K2, which is vital for optimal human health, and which is mostly missing from the typical Western diet.

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It must be Mother’s day! I see pancakes, fresh whipped cream, succulent fruits, and my wife still in pajamas. Love to all the world's mother’s - show your kids this recipe, they can make it for you next Mother’s Day. Or maybe next week!

Buckwheat, kefir milk and honey pancakes

1 ½ cup buckwheat flour

1 cup kefir fermented milk

¼-½ cup honey

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

1 egg

Combine the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the kefir milk and stir, then add the honey and stir, then finally the egg. Give it a good whisk, then leave on the bench for 30 minutes. Cook the pancakes with butter on a low to medium heat. Turn them with care, they are not as resilient as wheat pancakes, or even other buckwheat pancakes.

Use your judgement with the quantities, because kefir milk can range from thin to thick. The batter wants to be more or less the same consistency as conventional pancake batter, and it should be bubbly (see photo above for a nice bubbly batter). Try also a little sourdough starter as well as the kefir milk. Other useful additions for buckwheat pancakes are corn flour, corn meal, chickpea (gram or garbanzo) flour, corn kernels, chia seeds, and more! Let’s be honest, few people really like the taste of buckwheat in a big way, so when we make the pancakes, always add seasonings or other tastes.

Finally … always put love into the food you prepare for your family. This is especially important for Mother’s Day breakfasts!

Love

This meal is also full of raw earth love - the fermented milk is raw Jersey milk from pasture fed cows; the whipped cream is from raw Jersey cream; the butter is home made from raw Jersey cream; the honey is raw and local, the fruits are grown by neighbours; the egg is from what are probably the happiest chickens in existence; and all the other ingredients are natural and organic.

Love cooking is not just about how we cook - just as importantly, love cooking is about what we choose to cook.

www.celestialroots.com

Spice it up

4 days ago, I posted my Indian Lime Pickle recipe

http://celestialroots.tumblr.com/post/84301057498/indian-lime-pickle

The limes were salted, pulling juice from the segments, turmeric and a little home made vinegar was added. The result was a fairly liquid brine that as you can see, after 4 days has begun the transformation to a thick condiment. The flesh of the limes and the pectin drawn from the skins have combined with the limey brine, and we can see the beginnings of nice, gelatinous Indian-style pickle.

Stay tuned for further updates.

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One of the benefits of the community ethic is that produce can be shared. This increases the available diversity of foods, and is environmentally sound. Today I swapped a few things with our neighbours, who have a very prolific lime tree. In exchange for some milk, some kefir fermented milk, some turmeric and a little ginger I was gifted a nice pumpkin, some lovely dragon and star fruit, and a big bag of limes. Time to make some Indian lime pickle methinks. I am starting with the long fermented pickle first, and will make other shorter ferments using different tastes when more limes come on line. So without further ado, here is the long fermented lime pickle.

We will need …

1 kg of organic limes

3 tbsp Himalayan crystal, pure sea, or other quality salt

1 tbsp mango vinegar (substitute any other vinegar)

¼ cup finely diced fresh turmeric root, skin on (loosely packed)

1 cup coconut oil or ghee

¼ cup mustard seed

¼ cup fenugreek seed

1 tbsp fennel seed

2 tbsp cayenne pepper

1 tbsp asafoetida powder

6 black pepper corns, roughly crushed

6 or so hot chillies, diced, seeds in or out to taste

6 or so curry leaves (substitute 2 or 3 bay leaves)

3 cloves of true garlic, finely diced

What do we do with that stuff?

• Wipe the limes with a damp cloth, then cut into 8 wedges each
• Place in a bowl and add the salt, massaging the salt into the limes
• Add the vinegar and turmeric, massage again
• Place the mix into a suitable sized glass vessel (about 1 litre capacity minimum) with a lid that can be sealed. Pack the limes down hard, brine will be expressed, and when all are tightly packed, pour in the brine and any diced turmeric remaining in the bowl.
• Seal the jar and place somewhere it can be seen daily, because it will need a shake or stir every day (or few days at least)
• This needs to lacto-ferment for four weeks, by which time the peels will be nicely softened, and the mix will be full of beneficial probiotic organisms, amino acids, enzymes, electrolytes and vitamins

And then what?

• In a small pan dry fry the seeds until the fenugreek has changed colour and mustard seeds are just thinking about popping
• Let the seeds cool, then crush them briefly using a mortar and pestle
• Heat the oil or ghee in the same pan to a moderate heat, then add the seeds, the asafoetida, the crushed pepper, and the cayenne pepper. Stir frequently until the aroma of the spices have been well released. Asafoetida is aptly named, if you are unfamiliar with it don’t worry, it’s supposed to smell that way
• Add the diced chillies, stir briefly, then add the curry leaves (or bay leaves), again, stirring briefly.
• Turn the heat down low, add the garlic, and cook until the garlic is pale brown
•  Allow the mixture to cool, remove the bay leaves if used, then pour into the jar of limes and shake or stir the contents well
• Let the jar sit out for two weeks of further fermentation to set the flavours, shaking the jar every few days. After this, store it in the refrigerator for a year or more.

So, six weeks, start to finish, but the end result will be worth it.

I will ramble on about turmeric now, if I may. Turmeric is a real medicinal super food, and has been used in Indian and Chinese medicine for thousands of years. Science has finally caught up with what traditional healers have known all along, and more of the multiple health benefits of turmeric continue to be experimentally shown. The main active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin, a fat soluble compound that has been shown to be beneficial for: mediating the inflammatory response within the body, and so having knock on benefits for auto-immune conditions and immune system functionality; increasing the anti-oxidant capacity within the body by not only being a powerful antioxidant itself, but by also enhancing and increasing the activity of the body’s own antioxidant enzymes; delaying or even reversing age and trauma related decreases in brain function, including Alzheimer’s (by increasing levels of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, a kind neural growth hormone in the brain); reversing many steps in the progression of heart disease via multiple routes/effects; cancer prevention and treatment, by inhibiting angiogenesis and metastasis, and by inducing cancer cell mortality; reducing and combating depression as effectively as major anti-depressant medications; improving indigestion, and assisting in weight loss; fighting colds, flu and other infections; and the list goes on seemingly forever. Traditional medicine claims over 800 beneficial effects for turmeric, so it is most likely a spice we would to use.

As with any herbal medicine, turmeric must be organic to be fully effective. Fresh root with the skin on is best, just wash off the soil, dry and store. Root or powder must be cooked with fat to release the full benefits of turmeric, and consumption of turmeric with black pepper increases the body’s ability to absorb curcumin by 2000% according to one study. So turmeric is best fried lightly in oil or ghee or animal fat before addition to a dish. The only exception here is fermentation, which increase bio-availability of curcumin in much the same way as combination with fats does.

In the recipe above, the high quality fats coconut oil or ghee are added to the already fermented turmeric, so all bases are covered. Let’s all enjoy these delicious lime pickles, and enjoy discovering ways of bringing the healing power of plant medicine into our lives.

Pickle update 1 - 4th May

Previously, in Indian Lime Pickle: the limes were salted, pulling juice from the segments, turmeric and a little home made vinegar was added.

The result was a fairly liquid brine that as you can see, after 4 days has begun the transformation to a thick condiment. The flesh of the limes and the pectin drawn from the skins have combined with the limey brine, and we can see the beginnings of nice, gelatinous Indian-style pickle.

www.celestialroots.com   

Last nights dinner: organic, free range, happy pig baby back ribs in what may be the best ever barbecue sauce; dutch cream potatoes, skins on, boiled with sliced onion, carrot, peas, salt and a good dash of mango vinegar, then mashed with Jersey cream and pastured cow butter; green beans pan fried with butter and fresh oregano; and a tomato and tamarind sauce on the side.

This barbecue sauce is amazing. Here’s how to make it, bear in mind the ketchup and pineapple and mango vinegars are home made. My ketchup is fermented and includes fish sauce, fresh tomatoes, pineapple vinegar, tamarind and Davidson plum (in season).

2 cups ketchup

½ cup water

½ cup rapadura or dark brown sugar

¼ cup maple syrup

1 tbsp blackstrap molasses

Dash of soy sauce

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp pineapple vinegar

1 tbsp mango vinegar

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tbsp cayenne pepper

6 cloves Italian garlic

1 tbsp paprika

Put it in a pot, and reduce to a thick sauce.

Ketchup recipe

http://www.celestialroots.com/fermented-ketchup.php

Pineapple vinegar recipe

http://www.celestialroots.com/pineapple-vinegar.php

I love my sour dills. My neighbour grew these cute little Mexican cucumbers, and I reckon they’ll pickle up pretty well.

To a salty brine (3 tsp per cup) I added 2 lemon myrtle leaves, two bay leaves, a whole lot of fresh dill, about 12 cloves of garlic and a tbsp or so off yellow mustard seed. Then I put in a bit over a pound of the cucumbers, making sure the flowers were all removed. Failing to do this allows brine into the cuke before the outer skin can toughen. The result can be a soggy mess.

You can see by the fine bubbles on some of the cukes, this is fermenting well after only eight hours in the jar. They will take a few weeks, depending on the weather.

The only way to know for sure they’re ready is to taste, and I look forward to that day. Meanwhile, I still have some of my last lot of sour dill pickles to enjoy.

www.celestialroots.com