CSA Cooking: Tabouleh

Tabouleh is esssentially a peasant food from the middle east.  We got extra parsley in our share this week, and we have the addition of most of my mother's share (some was given to friends!) while she is out of town, and I chose oregano and a mint for our respective herb choices.  Plus a bunch of baby bunching onion scallions gave us this: 

I was going to dry the herbs for winter use.  I really really was.  I took them to the dehydrator and I just couldn't do it.  They smelled so good!

So instead I made a Tabouleh variation.

First, boil/cook bulghur (a form of cracked wheat, essentially).  Leaving it a little chewy is best.  I used twice the water to the dry bulghur, and it was too much water.  It basically cooks like rice, but quicker.

Chop all of your herbs and onions.  The 'real' recipes for this that I have seen call for a couple tablespoons of parsley and a teaspoon of mint with chopped onion and tomato.  Well, I didn't have tomato, but I did have baby onions with long scallions.  And really, this dish ought to be all about the herbs!  I love traditional peasant foods because they are so easy to make variations: they were born out of whatever happened to be available, and so they are very forgiving :-)

So I added oregano, and used up ALL the parsley!

Toss it together in bowl with the (cooled) cooked bulghur, and pour on generous amounts of good olive oil and lemon juice.  Stir it some more so that its all stirred together and coated in juices and yummy.  Salt and pepper if you wish (I do!).

Its good immediately or the next day.  Like tonight when I get home after teaching class...

Homestead Eating: Beet Kvass ... and other ferments

So, about fermenting.  I found something that I can reliably ferment successfully.  Two things actually, if you count the lacto- pickles.  The key to it, for me is to drown the foodstuff in water and either kefir culture or salt, so that the brine far far far overwhelms the food.  One day I will be able to ferment in a crock, rather than only being able to ferment in a mason jar.  Oh the sweet sense of success!  But I digress.  Beet kvass is bad ass.

Chock full of pro-biotics,  and the fermenting makes the beety amazingness of vitamins and minerals and micro nutrients that much more accessible to the body.  It tastes good too, if you like the sour of real fermentation and the earthiness of beets.  Fortunately I love the latter and am falling in love with the former.

The 4th 2-quart jar of the stuff is currently fermenting on the counter, and I've got about a quart in the fridge.  a 1/4 cup twice a day is recommended as a tonic for the digestive system and the blood.

I use the recipe from Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions," though Nourished Kitchen also has a recipe.  I haven't actually been using salt in mine.  I started the first batch with some whey from kefir (though you could use other whey, or even the clear juice - yes, that's whey - that collects in a container of good live yoghurt), and the subsequent batches with some of the previous batch :-)

In fact, my success with the kvass has been so heartening that the other night I cleaned out my moldy crock, and started a brand new batch of Kimchi (vaguely following Wild Fermentation's recipe) - being liberal with the brine, which I hope will keep the whole thing from imploding into green spores.  So far so good, this morning, the brine above the lid/plate was thickening and starting to smell ferment-y!!!!  I used one half of  (last week's) GINORMOUS head of Napa Cabbage from the CSA.  I have another one from this week, so am anticipating possibly plenty more of the same!

And I threw together a kohlrabi dill pickle ferment: pictures and instructions to come in a CSA Eating post later this week.

YUM.