Quite a Pickle We're in: Radish Edition

A person walks into the doctor's office. 

A banana stuck in one of their ears, a radish in the other ear, and a carrot stuck in one nostril. 

The person says, "Doc, this is terrible. What's wrong with me?" 

The doctor says, "Well, first of all, you need to eat more sensibly." 

Radishes are far from everyone's favorite vegetable. They're bitter, tough, and not pleasing to many palettes. I'm personally a lover of radishes in most any form. One form I had never tried before was pickling. I love pickles. I love radishes. What better way to enjoy my two favorite things than by joining them together?

Both pickling and radishes date back quite a bit so this is all prospectively period (other than keeping it in a mason jar, of course). Radishes are documented back during the Roman Empire and were said to have come in a variety of tastes, sizes, and colors - much like they are today. Pickles were believed to be made by Mesopotamians in 2400B.C. - and thus a very period, and pioneer food discovery.

It only takes 24 hours for radishes to pickle. So cut them up on a Friday afternoon, and they're ready by the time you have lunch at that camping event on Saturday.

I cheated a little and used pickling spices in this mixture. My next attempt will utilize something a little less easy, but I'm sure they'll still be easy to make nonetheless.

I started with a 32 oz mason jar and filled it with thinly sliced radishes. Every few radishes I placed a smashed clove of garlic, and at the end I topped it all of with white vinegar and pickling spices. That was it. There is indeed a recipe below for your use. I'll also have an upcoming post as well regarding a variation of this same recipe. It's something easier to document ingredients for and seems it might be even tastier, and more period.

Elvira's Pickled Radishes

1 32 oz. Mason Jar

2 Bundles of Radishes

3 Large cloves of Garlic

Handful of Pickling Spice *

Vinegar to Fill

Slice your radishes thinly and place in the mason jar.

Every in to 2 inches place a smash garlic clove in the jar.

Once full, place your pickling spice in the jar.

Fill with vinegar.

Let sit for 12-24 hours.

Viola!

Cheesiest Post Ever - Homemade Farmer's Cheese

Can you see why I needed to make this?
It's even more delicious in person...

There's an SCA event coming up and I wanted to go a little outside of my comfort zone for meal planning. There's a slot of time that I, and three other friends will cook a small "second breakfast" sort of meal and I just wanted to kick it up a notch. Farmer's Cheese was my idea. I had never made cheese before, and didn't know how easy it could be!

Who doesn't love cheese (other than folks that are allergic, of course)? Cheese has been around for over 4,000 years and I've always wanted to try making my own. This event seemed like the perfect opportunity. First, I had to test it though.

It's only takes three main ingredients, and a few commonly found items in your kitchen.

1/2 gallon of whole milk

1/8 cup of vinegar

 A dash of Salt

Those are all the ingredients you need. That's it!

You materials should be the following:

Large stock pot (big enough to fit a half gallon / whole gallon of milk in)

A colander

Cheesecloth

A large spoon for stirring, and scooping

Large bowl for colander (to reserve whey) - Optional

To bring all these together to make yourself some delicious cheese... follow these steps.

Place your milk (either half gallon at a time, or all at once depending on your pot size) in your pan, and turn it to medium heat. You don't want to scald your milk, but you do want to bring it up to temperature.

Some folks like to use a thermometer when making cheese, but I don't think your run of the mill Kitchener in the middle ages had one.. so I didn't use one either.

You'll want to stir this pretty continuously while the milk heats up. A large slotted spoon or ladle works best for this.

Keep this up until your milk just starts to steam and simmer. You don't want it to get to a rolling boil, but it should be steaming a good amount and bubbles should start coming to the top on the sides of your pan.

Once this happens, add your vinegar! Your milk will immediately start to separate. Make sure to stir as it does this, so that you get all that vinegar throughout your milk.

Once lumps (soon to be cheese) start to form, scoop them into your lined colander and let them drain. It only takes a few minutes, and you can gently squeeze it to urge it along. You can place your colander in a clean sink, or in a large bowl to reserve some of that whey! Whey can be used to make a lot of things, so it could't hurt.

Once your cheese has drained, place it in a storage container and add salt. You can also add whatever spices you prefer as well! I tried a small batch with herbs and garlic - it was divine. I'm not sure how long it keeps, I just made it yesterday afternoon. I you like what I've posted here, let me know and I'll be happy to follow up with other techniques and flavors! Thanks again for reading.

Completed cheese - Ready for eating! 

Mead!: The Adventure Continues

So back in November I posted about our first attempt at making mead. It was a traditional sack mead with a lot of honey and apples. I added some vanilla too which certainly came through during our recent tasting!

Now, when we did our tasting recently we had more than just our sack mead. We had actually done an additional five flavors shortly after the first! Of course we have our ingredients for each one, and wanted to get opinions on flavors before sharing the findings of each.

From left: Sack Mead / First Born, Pear Hydromel,
Golden Delicious w/ Wildflower Honey, Raspberry w/ Turkish Honey,
Pear Hydromel w/ Cacao Nibs, and Golden Delicious w/ Blueberry

 We really wanted to take the opportunity to try multiple flavor pairings and just go from there. We thought about what would taste best together and we were both pretty happy with the results. As were our lovely friends who helped give invaluable feedback.

The one thing that all the recipes we created have in common is that they were all brewed using a white wine yeast, a Cote de Blanc. Our next few attempts will be done with different yeasts and ingredients. Each batch was done in a one gallon carboy, and wielded two 32oz bottles and a one or two smaller "test" bottles. The test bottles from each were what we used for the tasting.

We started with our Hydromels. We had two, the simple Pear Hydromel, and the Pear Hydromel with Cacao Nibs. Even that one ingredient made all the difference between the two.

Pear Hydromel w/ Cacao Nibs

We started with the simple pear hydromel. What gave it the "watered down" quality of a hydromel was making pear juice instead of putting cut, raw pear in it. We then blended that pear juice with our honey.

Once that was done fermenting, we bottled two different batches to build different flavor profiles. One batch was done with cacao nibs, and the other with hops (not shown).

The Pear Hydromel with Cacao had beautiful clarifying on it. We were both really pleased with the color. It had a dry flavor and, as Hydromels tend to go it was incredibly light. There were also slight, very mellow after tastes of chocolate. A nice surprise. I certainly wasn't expecting to get that much of a hint of it.

 Anjou Pear Hydromel

The Anjou Pear Hydromel had no mellow after notes to it. It had a nice, light flavor of a dry white wine without the chocolate. It lended itself a more tart aftertaste than the cacao version, but was just as enjoyable. I made the suggestion of using it in a sangria. Even if sangria isn't your thing, with both of these hydromels they should definitely be enjoyed chilled. Neither seemed to need much more aging, and were quite lovely being so new.

Next up were our two Golden Delicious flavors. We had a simple golden delicious apple with vanilla; and we had a blueberry version. Both were also made with a local wildflower honey. Both of these were melomels and didn't involve us making our own apple juice. That'll be an upcoming attempt when apple season comes around.

The Golden Delicious w/ Vanilla

The golden delicious had a golden opaque color. Not as successful clarifying as our melomels, but for obvious reasons. These were done with small bits of apple instead of a sifted juice. Still a lovely color nonetheless. The aroma was very sweet, as was the initial flavor. There were certainly some tart notes after the fact with a noticeable alcohol flavor at the back of the throat. Nothing too intense, but just enough to remind you you're drinking.

The Golden Delicious w/ Blueberry

The blueberry version was a little different. Still our same base of wildflower honey, golden delicious apples, and vanilla - but this mixture included blueberry syrup and a dash of orange blossom water.

The aroma was very sweet with this one. The clarity was a little higher as well. Possibly because of the additional re-rack to separate them for the different batches. It had dry, fruity notes with no alcoholic aftertaste. My second favorite flavor of all six.

My absolute favorite among all six was the Raspberry with Turkish Honey. Firstly, turkish honey has a gorgeous golden color. That was the first thing that drew me to it. I also love raspberries. There was only one solution here, and that solution was mead. I added some cinnamon to it as well for a little something extra.

The Raspberry and Turkish Honey

The color was stunning from the get go. The combination of bright honey and bright fruit made for a very colorful mead. Slightly cloudy, since raspberries can be very pulpy. Next time some extra filtration might not be such a bad idea. The flavors were perfect (at least to me). A noticeable alcohol aroma, but not too overpowering. The flavor of alcohol was much less intense than the smell. The flavor was sweet with a smooth finish. This one I'm going to let age until Pennsic and enjoy it then.

Oddly enough, our "First Born" mead was my least favorite of all of

Sack Mead "First Born"

them. It was much much sweeter than I personally prefer, but the feedback we got on it was much more forgiving than I had anticipated. Since it was so overly sweet, it was suggested to use it more like a flavored syrup for foods and other drinks. That seemed like the best option to me, personally and depending on how it works in cooking we'll be brewing more and more of it. I think I'll be attempting a chicken recipe with it during an upcoming camping event.

If you happen to find me at an SCA event this summer, please stop me and talk brewing with me! This is a very new venture and I really would like to pick as many brains as possible. I'll also do my best to carry around something to share, but I'm limited on what I have in stock right now. I'll share it if I've got it, though. I look forward to making more and sharing them all! Thanks for reading, and if you do end up trying my mead let me know what you think!

YIS

Lady Elvira Violante Ballesteros