The death of my soya sauce provides a wonderful opportunity to both grieve and celebrate experimenting with food. Yes, you read that correctly, my soya sauce is dead. There will be no beautifully aged, complex tasting, umami-full soya sauce in my pantry, or in the pantry of any of my family members and friends. However, I learned a bit more about the varied and rich processes found in Asian cuisine, and that is the purpose of experimentation.
As my loyal blog readers may remember, my experience thus far with my homemade soya sauce was a bit unsettling and traumatic. It started out innocently enough, got a little bit creepy, and then turned downright Lord of the Flies. I was seeing it through though, putting up with its stank, settling in for the long haul.
Like a new relationship when you discover that your beau has obscenely stinky feet, but enough potential to make it seem not that bad. Until you discover that he is also full of bugs. And you just can’t put up with a man who is full of bugs.
Picture this. I was allowing my sauce precious house time. It sat there stankin’ up my living room, smelling like death. Seriously, it smelled like death. But the time came. I decided to peer in, pulling the cheesecloth aside for the last, fatal time. If I hadn’t looked closely, been willing to get down and dirty with my soya sauce, I never would have seen the awful truth – there were many tiny, tiny, tiny white crawlies using my fermenting soya sauce as a home.
It had to go. That was the final straw.
And my fantastically rustic ceramic pot that I bartered to get? The pot that looked as if it were made to brew soya sauce in?
Basil is funny to grow. It starts as a spindly plant, often with just a few leaves, so few in fact that to take any feels wrong. To snip a couple off for a tomato salad makes me worry that I might kill the plant. In the beginning I always straddle the line between wanting to taste and not wanting to ...
No. I'm not talking about a television show or a television audition. I'm talking about a real life food competition being hosted right smack dab in Vancouver on Commercial Drive. I'm talking about Slow Bites on the Drive, a celebration of the slow food movement, locally grown food and getting ...
Every once in a while I get lucky and today I got lucky. I am landscaping a section of my parent's garden, which means I have to go up to their place in North Van. If I have a car on my trip up there and it is the summer time then I always, always, always stop at Bob's fruit stand. This is esp ...
Stage one of mission soy sauce is complete and stage two is well underway. Stage two is the development of mold on the soya bean and wheat cakes. The original recipe called for wrapping the cakes tightly with damp paper towel and saran wrap. This didn't work for me. After about a week, I checked ...
As I started to write this post, I kept wanting to write: "Fermentation is not commonly used in the West." After I wrote it though I kept coming up with examples of fermented products - beer, wine, cheese, 'kraut, pickles, vinegar... etc. etc. We clearly ferment a lot of things. I suppose that in t ...
"An Englishman teaching an American about food is the blind leading the one-eyed." -A. J. Liebling I have often heard it said that the Vancouver restaurant scene owes its bounty to our large Asian population, that the expansive palate of Asian diners mirrors that of the French. Obviously Asia ...
My first batch of fermented hot sauce was so successful that I have two orders for more! Never one to rest on my laurels I've decided to experiment with the second batch. I'm starting off with thai chili peppers again. I've been reading up on hot sauces and for fermentation you want to use ...
"What would he not do for her, the daughter of the spice-seller; she who smelt of cloves and cinnamon, whose laughter had the timbre of ankle-bells, whose eyebrows were like black wisps of the night and whose hair was the night itself? For her he would cross the salt desert!" -Daruwalla My ...
So I volunteered again at the Farmer's Market with Klipper's Organics. Well I've volunteered several times but I don't post enough to detail every single volunteer experience! I am continuing to enjoy my time at the market, falling into the days rhythm of unpacking, stocking, re-stocking and pack ...
As my loyal blog readers may remember, my experience thus far with my homemade soya sauce was a bit unsettling and traumatic. It started out innocently enough, got a little bit creepy, and then turned downright Lord of the Flies. I was seeing it through though, putting up with its stank, settling in for the long haul.
