A Day In The Kitchen

Some fermentation and fretting.

There is trouble brewing in my vegetable drawer. This is not a euphemism. A forgotten cucumber has liquified into a viscous pale green slime at the bottom - I know this because I accidentally plunged my fingers into it. It is sharing the space with desiccated carrots and an abandoned pak choi. Potatoes have softened and wrinkled, gnarly roots sprout from the tubers and they have taken on the pallor of my face the morning after one glass too many. Little foil wrapped crescents nestle amongst the mess - these could be lemons, could be onions - I don’t remember putting them there and they are now rather squidgy. Ends of things that I had fully intended to use - broccoli stalks, beetroot and cauliflower leaves, lay in limp despair.

  A while back, I spent a very productive Saturday morning on a fermentation workshop with Olia Hercules, the Ukrainian chef and food writer. She assured us that you can ferment pretty much anything with some simple rules, a bit of imagination and some common sense (if it tastes awful, you probably don’t want to eat it). Surrounded by baskets overflowing with vibrant herbs and fat garlic bulbs, bowls of ripe scarlet tomatoes, bunches of carrots, plump cabbages and pumpkins, we chopped, grated, brined and chattered. I trotted home happily with an armful of beautiful jars stuffed with jewel coloured ferments positively glowing with goodness, filled with knowledge, hope and good intentions. Oh yes, I felt I was master of my kitchen, a conjuror of culinary tricks to prevent waste. And here I am now, shamefully tipping wasted vegetables into the bin.

  Using one of Olia’s recipes from the workshop, I rally and stuff some cherry tomatoes with garlic, celery and chilli, adding herbs and a brine and leave them to ferment for a week or two. For some inexplicable reason, I keep thinking I have not got any celery and this always stresses me out. I am not entirely sure why but probably has something to do with it being a kitchen basic to me and in the event of the apocalypse I will not be able to rustle together a decent mirepoix/soffrito. Goodness. As I now have three bunches I am going to use some to make a soup. Perhaps a little autumnal, but no real evidence of summer yet in this pocket of East London so it seems like a good solution.

  A friend arrives with bunches of herbs from her allotment and as she is far more proactive than me, we set straight to work using them. I have a barrel of extra virgin olive oil still to be used up - it is an old batch and the oil is rather flavourless now, although not rancid. We heat some of the oil to 40° and add a mixture of thyme, rosemary and sage and leave it to infuse for a few days. We make another batch with rosemary and roasted garlic cloves which can sit next to my stove and be liberally applied to just about anything. Fingers of scarlet and green chillis are added to another jar or two of oil and we  leave that to infuse for a couple of weeks.

I have four writing projects on the go at the moment. If I wanted a neat segueway from the previous paragraph, I could tell you the ideas have been fermenting but this would be a stretch. Fermenting implies some sort of action and I have done bugger all with any of these pieces of writing for months. I have put them on Scrivener - a writing tool which arranges stuff into chapters - in order to fool myself that I am doing something with them, but you can only lie to yourself for so long. They are the literary equivalent of the bottom of my veg box…abandoned, neglected. Time to try and put them to some sort of use I think.

******

A Celery Soup In A Desperate Bid To Be Less Wasteful

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

300g celery stalks, finely chopped

150g potato, finely chopped

50g apple, finely chopped

½ tsp fennel seeds

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

650 ml vegetable stock

50 ml milk

Salt and pepper

Method

Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan.

Add celery, potato and apple and sauté until softened, approximately 5 minutes.

Add the fennel seeds and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes.

Add the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 20-25 mins then blitz with a stick blender or food processor until smooth. Stir in the milk and season with salt and pepper to taste.

******

Writing this made me think of these:

Olia runs online, as well as in-person, workshops.

https://oliahercules.com

Some excellent books for preserving inspiration;

And some books on using stuff up:

For anyone who is somewhere warm. I haven’t tried this yet, but the moment I see a patch of blue sky…

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/4780-cold-celery-soup-with-pink-radishes