Wednesday, June 1, 2011

new sauerkraut and kombucha

I got a bok choy in my CSA box last week. Bill spent a couple of weeks in China and Hong Kong a few years ago, and he has since not been a big fan of bok choy (really the only food he has an aversion to). When I was pregnant with Penny, bok choy for some reason completely repulsed me, and it still does somewhat (really the only food I have an aversion to). I decided to, of course, ferment it. I got the inspiration from a recipe that an acquaintance sent me that used seaweed. I happened to have some seaweed in my cabinet--Molly loves to eat dried seaweed--so I decided to give it a try. I just chopped the bok choy, added one sheet (minus a few bites taken by Molly) of nori, and a teaspoon of salt.



Molly mashed it all for me, and we packet it into a jar.



Thanks to my friend, Abacus, I have been doing some experimenting with kombucha. I made strawberry-raspberry kombucha first, and now I have some blueberry kombucha fermenting. I put three bottles of the strawberry in the cabinet for a secondary fermentation (also on the suggestion of Abacus). I will try it tomorrow. I only had three bottles in which to put the tea for the secondary fermentation so I got to drink some fresh. It was DELICIOUS!!! I can't wait to try the stuff in the bottles, which should be extra bubbly. The blueberry should be ready on Saturday or Sunday. I made the same basic recipe, except I added fresh fruit when I added the tea bags, I added less sugar because of the sugar in the fruit, and I let it ferment for four days rather than seven or eight.

3 comments:

Nikki said...

How do you make flavored kombucha? And why do you think you guys will like the bok choi better fermented??

Abacus said...

I put a sheet of seaweed into my most recent batch of fermented vegetables. I got the idea from a fermenting demonstration we attended.
I like bok choy; I'm surprised that neither of you do.
I am going to try this kombucha recipe next! Thanks for the idea.

Krista said...

great question, Nik! I was really just trying to use up the bok choy. And I can just add it as a condiment to other dishes--hopefully the taste will be sufficiently salty to be acceptable. :)