pantsfarm

I was talking to a coworker today about this youtube video, If Doom was done today where some guys did a doom level in the style of modern FPS games.

In this conversation, I said that the last time I built a computer to play games with, the only games I was worried about playing were half life and quakeworld.

Then I realized those games came out in 1998.

So actually it’s not quite true — I upgraded in college but the fact is my pc gaming days basically ended at half-life 1, a game that is now about 14 years old.

With the optimistic plan to keep adding new posts as my fermenting projects go well, I’ve added a Ferments page, which you can see linked at the top of the site.

After some measure of success with breeding Melvin from nothing but flour, water, and air, I’d gotten it into my head that not only is fermenting delicious, but also easy.

I was introduced to nukazuke by a friend of mine who’d spent a lot of time in Japan. A bit of reading led me to believe that I could probably manage to pull off this kind of pickle, but then for years that’s where I was stuck.

I never actually got around to finding where to buy rice bran, or getting a container I could use to pickle in, or really doing any sort of actual prep or execution towards making these pickles.

Finally last weekend things came together and Cin and I managed to have time and supplies to get started.

I pieced together a plan from a variety of guides online.
Wandering Spoon‘s post about Nukazuke
Joi Ito‘s guide to Nukamiso
A post in the egullet forums by helenjp
The Black Moon‘s page on Tsukemono

Here’s what I came up with:

1kg of rice bran (米糠 mǐkāng)
670 ml of water
330 ml of tsingtao
150 g of salt （盐 yán）
a 2.5×5 piece of seaweed, soaked in cold water (海带 hǎidài)
1 slice of bread
a handful of cabbage, about 100g (白菜 báicài)

I also decided to try adding:
a few dried red peppers （干辣椒 gānlàjiāo）
a few dried mushrooms （干香菇 gānxiānggū）
a couple cloves of garlic, peeled （大蒜 dàsuàn）

These ended up buried in the mix.

I was going to do twice as much, but as I was weighing out the rice bran, I realized that it was a lot more voluminous than I’d expected.

The first step was to toast the bran. This proved not very easy to do in our limited kitchen, so we did it in a lot of batches. In our case, toasting meant mainly getting it hot, scorching the bottom, then making a mess trying to stir more. The end result is a very uneven toasting.

Next up, boil the water, salt, and beer. Then we broke up the bread and dropped it in and waited for it all to cool down.

Mixing up the bran and water to achieve a consistency something like wet sand.

After this, though we neglected to get pictures as our hands were covered in bran at this point, was burying the starter cabbage and then finally wiping down the sides and setting it down to wait for a day.

Some other (crappy) photos of this process are on my flickr set.

back to Ferments

Way back when, just after having started the sourdough project and maybe even before I first heard of these nukazuke, my friend and then-neighbor Sarah mentioned to me that she’d found this great little store up the street that sold all kinds of flours and grains. I filed it away at the time and totally forgot about it.

Later still, while living at the corner of Dongzhimen Beixiaojie (东直门北小街) and Dongzhimen Nei (东直门内）I came across a reference on a friend-of-a-friend’s blog (via a tweet of Beijing Haochi) about where to find specialty flours for bread making, and yet somehow I never actually made it 100 meters down the street to check it out. I even got my bike repaired next door!

Finally, last weekend I managed to swing by and check the place out, having already struck out trying to find rice bran at another grain type shop up near the Lama temple.

The place is kind of a mess inside, though the couple running the shop were pretty great. They’re from Dong Bei and offered me some really tasty hazelnuts. They mentioned that all sorts of foreigners come looking for special flours and brown rice and such, as well.

[Map]
19 Dongzhimen Nanxiaojie, Dongcheng District (150m south of Gui Jie)
Tel: (010) 8401 7569
东城区东直门南小街19号

A long time ago (well, 2008) I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to start my own sourdough culture. I had easy access to an oven (counter-top) in my own apartment, and I figured if the need arose I’d make use of my parents’ oven (a real one).

So I did what any reasonable food-interested nerd would do and started searching for how to get a sourdough culture started.

After reading a few different guides, most of which seemed intimidating and complicated, I decided “to hell with all that!” and got started loosely following the instructions on this very approachable guide.

I had an empty jar that previously contained bottled spaghetti sauce, a large bag of Chinese all-purpose flour sitting in a larger box that used to hold frosted mini wheats, and as much Beijing tap water as I needed.

I mixed together equal parts by weight of water and flour, and let it sit out for a couple days uncovered. After that, I started regularly “feeding” the culture, which involved stirring it up, pouring some out, and then replacing with new flour and water.

After a few days, you can imagine my surprise when I noticed that it was bubbling up and had a not unpleasant smell. I’d expected some kind of foul spoilage with colorful mold and putrid odor. (All of these I have been treated to since in other failed attempts to start a culture.)

It was only then, culture alive and bubbling, that I decided to give it a name: Melvin. I think my sister Cara and I were hanging around on the roof and possibly drunk when we came up with that one, but either way the name stuck.

I started trying to use Melvin to make bread, and the first few loaves turned out a little… flat, but with repeated effort I was eventually turning out tasty little loaves.

Eventually though I moved to a new apartment with no oven, and I gave Melvin to my mother, where he continues to thrive and provide delicious local Beijing sourdough flavor to those fortunate to be a guest to dinner when my mother entertains.