Korean Mexican Italian

I’ve begun the long journey into learning how to preserve food. Our freezer is humble, so methods that don’t require refrigeration are prized. The garden is starting to produce things in such quantity that if they don’t get eaten or preserved, they’ll end up in the compost.

First, I’ve made my first batch of kimchi. If you don’t know it, it’s a Korean pickled cabbage delight, where the pickling is done entirely with salt and fermentation, not vinegar. It’s not a long process and the kimchi is almost finished, having started the process on Wednesday evening. I couldn’t resist tonight, though, and had a few mouthfuls. (Garlic ginger chilis onions radish cabbage and of course salt: how can you go wrong?) I’m very pleased with it and am hoping it will become a staple in our house, or more precisely in my office, where I’ll go to it at 3:00 pm when I have the munchies.

Second, we roasted a good 25 jalapeño peppers today in the solar cooker. They took on some good charring and will be used in all kinds of things. They’re coming in like gangbusters.

Third, with the oceans of chard and Kathy’s eggs, we made ravioli. From scratch. It’s a long, meditative process. The chard, onions, walnuts, and garlic were from the garden; we opted for tofu over ricotta, mostly because of its texture. Ravioli, we can freeze. I’d forgotten how delicious homemade pasta was… And I’m so grateful I didn’t ditch the hand-cranked pasta roller or devote its energies to Fimo millefiore.

New item for the drawer devoted to the goddess Anoia: a crinkle-cut pasta cutter.