Farm share, week 11

[magid]

This week’s email let me know that there won’t be any ripe sweet peppers (only hots and green = unripe sweet peppers), because little worms that are the larval stage of pepper maggot flies showed up, and they nom on sweet peppers (but leave the others alone). Nothing to be done about them because the farm is organic, so if I want ripe bell peppers, to the farmers’ market I will go. (So lucky to have options!)

• 6 medium yellow onions
  
• 6 heads of garlic
  
• 6 summer squash/zucchini (I chose large-ish green zucchinis again)
  
• 8 medium eggplants (I chose a mix of Italian, light purple, and variegated purple-white)
  
• 2 pounds of orange carrots
  
• 2 pounds of Chioggia beets
  
• 2 big heads of romaine lettuce
  
• 22 medium-small tomatoes
  
• take-what-you-want herbs and hot peppers (I chose some of the two types of hots (jalapeno and I think cayenne), plus a lot of parsley, some red shiso, and a bit of sage)

First thoughts: can some crushed tomatoes. Roasted beets and carrots. Roasted eggplant and zucchini. Green salad (for romaine, I think I should get some Parmesan and make some croutons). Bulghur with diced tomatoes and parsley (hrm, if I have bulghur right now). A vinaigrette salad of some sort or another. Some kind of eggplant-based Indian dish?

Comments

[spiralsheep]

At least vampires won't attack your house this week. :D

[magid]

Heh. I suppose that’s helpful, since I don’t have any crosses or silver bullets about :-)

Actually, this is a pretty standard amount of weekly garlic this year; I have quite a lot I haven’t used yet, so I’m considering starting another batch of torshi seer (7-year garlic pickles).

[spiralsheep]

The best time to start a jar of seer torshi was 5+ years ago. The second best time is now. :-)

I've never thought much about vampire lore, but at an impressionable age I probably imprinted on the version in the Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric and they're repelled by the power of faith rather than any specific symbol that faith is invested into, which might explain why garlic tradtionally works: because people believe it should - the ultimate placebo effect!

[magid]

As it turns out, my first batch of seer torshi was just about five years ago! (Another project from the quiet days of 2020…) I thought I needed to wait until fall 2027 for them to wholly mature?

[spiralsheep]

I believe this is one of those things Persian grandmothers argue about, and it might depend on your local climate / the type of vinegar / which microbes get at the sugars / the age and type of garlic (i.e. quantity and types of sugars), but people I know who've run taste tests all seem to agree that there isn't much difference in taste from year 5-6 onwards although iirc the texture continues to change for a couple more years in most batches (which is presumably how people used to judge maturity back in the days when they couldn't afford to waste a jar by opening it prematurely). I'd guess there's also social status involved: higher status people can wait longer so their seer torshi must be bettererer or something like that. I've never made it, only unsubtle quick ferments.

[magid]

Clearly, I need to find some Persian grandmothers to poll!

I live in New England, so hot and humid in the summers, cool in winters (I have heat, but no AC). I always use cider vinegar, and the garlic is the hardneck variety grown by local farmers, though I’ve made batches with cured garlic and others with green/uncured.

The first batch is the smallest one I made (pint rather than quart or more), so I’m loath to use it up prematurely. The vinegar in that is so dark it looks like balsamic, and when I took the lid off, it smells of GARLIC, though not the mildness I hear about for mature batches, yet.

The one tip I have if you do decide to make some is that regular canning lids will rust through from the power of the garlic vinegar, but putting some plastic wrap between the jar and the lid has so far prevented this.

[spiralsheep]

It's amazing how much cheese can vary according to locational variables so I assume that's true to some extent of all fermented products. Outside a chemistry lab nothing is ever standardised.

When we got around to my nana's very mature chutneys they were inevitably rusted and fortified with iron, lol. Even some of her older jam lids went. But of course all the lids were ancient and, ahem, "pre-loved" as I believe we're supposed to call it these days. The village used to share jars depending on who was putting up big batches that year, as we all shared the eventual bounty too.

[magid]

I’m not certain whether these are actually considered fermented, since they start with (salted) vinegar, not salt/brine. But I agree that terroir can make a difference to so many food experiments.

I’m sad to hear that the memorial chutneys didn’t survive; that sounds like it would have been a wonderful memory trigger. What types did she make? (My first one was cranberry, and it’s still a favorite of mine.)

I’ve heard folks talk about re-using lids, but that is one thing I don’t do, because I’ve put enough time/energy into canning the stuff, and I’d like it to last (and the lids are still available and affordable; I don’t know what I’ll do if that changes). I’ve had some lide fail to keep their seal, but only for older jars (>5 or 6 years), so I figure that’s standard. (I can too much to keep up with eating it all, though I do try to gift lots of folks, so I have ones that are more than a decade old.)

[spiralsheep]

Technically not usually called ferments but the sugars inside do ferment, especially over long periods, unless you mince the garlic into the vinegar. Whatever. We know what we're discussing. :-)

Oh, we ate the chutney, even mouldy jam merely got the top layer scraped off, lol. We were poor and our local climate + my nana's preserves didn't have the risk of botulism that would make them too risky. My childhood gut microbes were farm-girl strength of healthy - I'd no doubt ingested worse than rust and mould. :D

Nana made preserves from whatever glutted that year + otherwise inedible cooking apples, blackberries, and sloes in gin. Chateau hedgerow was our terroir. They would've been terrible pickles but left to breakdown and ferment into unrecognisable brown sludge they were connoisseur chutneys. Probably the only pickler in our village using fruit, and definitely the only ones using fruit other than currants / sultanas / raisins. Fruit was strictly the preserve of jams and homebrew.

If you enjoy the process more than you have capacity to eat or redistribute then that's still a valid enjoyment of your pastime. :-)

[magid]

Your description of taking the top layer off and eating it anyway brought back memories of my mom cutting out the moldy spots on cheese (which I’d still do now, if I ended up with hard cheese old enough to mold), and also on bread (which I’d never do now, given how the filaments could be far into the loaf….).

And you make me feel better about my surplus, that even if I don’t manage it all, someone might. Thank you!

[spiralsheep]

Yeah, no, don't eat mouldy baked goods. Cheese is mostly fine unless it's got cheese fly larvae... then you need protective goggles. ;-)
Potentially kosher, surprisingly, but not with current production methods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu

Not all craft work is useful: some is for experimenting or practicing, and some useful craftworks are never used. I hate waste but not all food gets eaten. We don't live in an ideal or perfected world. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[magid]

Oh, hey, I just learned about toum, so maybe I’ll play with that (though the video I saw, rather than the linked recipe) insists that getting the germ out of each garlic clove is necessary, which is a nuisance).

[minoanmiss]

Alas for the peppers!

[magid]

I think it won’t be a total loss, in that they’ll harvest the green ones before ripening, rather than having to rip them all out or something.

I don’t love green peppers, but if I get a lot of them, I might try to make a chili, and use it as an excuse to try the chocolate-chili spice mixture I haven’t yet opened.