60: Stick It In A Jar
For the past couple of months, our kitchen has become a home for putrifying vegetables. Or more accurately, it's become a teetering collection of odd jars and bottles filled with various ingredients slowly transforming into biodomes of biocultures. I spoke about this briefly last week. Tom has become obsessed with fermenting and pickling things, and I've become obsessed with eating the fruits of his labour, so now every shelf in the kitchen is packed with fruit and veg, all slowly fizzing in their own decomposing juices.
So far, as I mentioned last week, his pickled turnip has been the clear favourite. But I've also loved the fermented green beans, his spicy, funky kimchi made with local white cabbage, his sauerkraut (which I chopped and put into omelette -- delicious) and his pickled shallots, which manage to taste almost exactly like the pickled onions my nan used to make, without filling the house with the autumnal acrid scent of boiling vinegar.
The jars make me feel secure. They are slow and steady -- the umeboshi made with Victoria plums and greengages (so... Vickyboshi? Greengageboshi?) won't be ready for months, probably. They represent storing and saving and carefulness and thinking about giving yourself something to enjoy in the future. They are packed with alive things thriving in harsh, salty environments. They are delicious, and they will stay that way all winter until we eat them all. Is it annoying that I can't get to my cookbooks anymore, the shelves being so packed with bubbling veg? Well, sortof. But having a recycled jam jar bacteria botanic garden is more important to me right now.
If you want to get into pickling and fermenting like Tom has, we can recommend the following books:
Fiery Ferments by Christopher and Kirsten Shockey (who also brought out a cider book last week)
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz
The Noma Guide To Fermentation by David Zilber and René Redzepi
Other Stuff
Please support your local food bank (or donate to the Trussel Trust), continue to speak out against anti-immgiration and anti-asylum-seeking sentiment wherever you might come across it and please, if you can, consider donating to the Refugee Council if you're in the UK. It is frankly a disgrace that people in need are dying because of our Government's negligence, ignorance and cruelty.
Brian Eno's investigaive journo skills leave every other journo's rep in tatters. Told by ChewnZine, original, excellent piece on Brian Eno's favourite music here in The Quietus.
This week's J'adore le Plonk on ordering wine in restaurants and bars is so good and helpful and well worth a read. And then because it's so consistently good, you should sign up for the newsletter too.
If you love beer, please sign this petition to reverse the change to Small Brewers Relief. Even if you don't know much about the beer world, if you like drinking beer, I can assure you that these changes will affect you by ensuring your favourite smaller brewers close down. It's that serious. So please have a read and sign it!
When I started this newsletter I was characteristically oblivious to the bubbling scene of exceptional newsletters that are actually out there. And there are SO MANY good ones! This piece in Taste covers foodie ones specifically, and I was happy to see Vittles and Alicia Kennedy in there, but there are newsletters on every subject under the sun if you go looking for them. I recommend it.
There have been a fantastic couple of posts on Vittles about decolonising British food criticism and food PR over the past couple of weeks, but you can only read them if you're a paying subscriber. I really recommend signing up for it, I look forward to finding inspirational, thought-provoking articles by them every week in my inbox.
I love Jemma Beedie's friendly, conspiratorial way of writing like she's talking to me, and only me, over a pint in the corner of a pub. Her piece this week for Pellicle about the hauf and hauf (and lots of other fascinating Scottish measurements and international drinks orders besides) was a cosy quarter of an hour of pubchat I definitely needed.
I enjoyed learning about Jakarta Records on Bandcamp this week, I've put basically everything on this list onto my wishlist.
My Stuff
ICYMI: I wrote about what good changes might happen post-Covid in pubs (spoiler alert: people wash their hands after going to the toilet now)
I've been working on a short story that made me cry while I was writing it so look forward to that I guess
"I'll Hauf What They're Haufing" -- by James Albon for Pellicle