We have been talking extensively about the modern western economic system in Men’s Group recently. Suffice it to say we have a few critiques. I thought about sharpening up my pitchfork, but decided to make sauerkraut and read “Cathonomics” instead.
Man invented usury, but God gives for free.
I wonder if we can make wine with these grapes.
With the dry weather, the last two red cabbages cracked across the top, so we had to come up with a plan to use them before they started to spoil.
We pulled the crock of sauerkraut out of the fermentation fridge in the basement. The last one had been fermenting 12 days, this fermented 16 days. The 12 day kraut was a little crunchy, this was just a tad soft. at 2% salinity and 68 degrees ambient temp, I reckon 14 days would be about right.
There was a rubbery residue on the ceramic weights in the crock, that pealed off readily. It did not smell spoiled, and texture-wise reminded me of nothing quite so much as a kombucha scobe.
The kraut itself was completely mold free, with delightfully sweet/tangy flavor, a little on the soft side.
But of course, we don’t want to use all our cabbage on sauerkraut, particularly when there are so many other wonderful Swiss and German recipes using red cabbage.
Like stir-frying it with onions and apples, then simmering it in a red wine reduction for an hour, and letting it chill for 24 hours, then frying it in duck fat to re-heat it…
But that only used one of the heads, and the other one needed to be used, so…
2.5% salinity this time. And we added some nutmeg and carraway because Mommy wants more flavors.
The dry late season cabbage doesn’t produce much brine so we added some 2.5% brine to make sure the leaves were completely submerged. That will be ready in two weeks.
So while the cabbage and apples were chilling, and the kraut was waiting to go to the basement, Seppi and Daddy were busy.
Why Seppi and Daddy?
Because we were planning on hosting Saturday evening Lord’s Day and the girls all had a baby shower to go to.
That’s okay, Seppie’s got this.
Rich squash pie, from the Boston School of Cooking Cookbook, by Fannie Merrit Farmer. If you have never had this pie, let me tell you, you are missing out.
Next we had to prep the duck.
We don’t have any cooking twine, but aluminum foil works just as well.
I love how it puffs up in the oven. The little hand apple pie we made from the excess crust leaked a bit. Should have put parchment paper under it.
But it turned out beautiful anyway, once the burned sugar was scraped away.
We had to leave at this point, so it took a little creative refrigerator jenga to get everything situated.
We had to go pick up the potatoes.
This is the part everyone looks forward to in these food blogs. The part where we explain that we served all this delicious food (roast duck, mashed potatoes, and red cabbage stirfry) and it was amazing and beloved by all but…
We forgot to take a picture of it.
You’ll just have to take our word for it.
Little Farm in the Big City 