Fermented (?) Vermouth Hot Sauce

So I found this chili head message board on the internet and someone on there had a post about fermenting chilies in white wine. I assume, over the several weeks it was supposed to take to make this, that the wine would convert to vinegar as it was exposed to air. I never have white wine laying around, but I always have vermouth. Now vermouth is a fortified wine; it is a higher percentage of alcohol, and it is also infused with a variety of herbs. I didn't know if the higher proof would slow down or destroy that wine to vinegar conversion but I gave it a go anyway. I also think this is more an infusion of chili in booze to make sauce than truly fermenting chili.

I used Carpano Antica, which is a higher end vermouth with a bittersweet, very herbaceous profile. The end result is very tasty but perhaps not the best use of expensive vermouth. While there is some herby undertones, the chili heat really dominates. Which, I suppose, is to be expected because it is hot sauce. I think if I made it again I would use very mild chiles like anaheims so the vermouth could be noticed more. I think this is more an infusion of chili in booze to make sauce than truly fermenting chili. So, being hopeful, I added raw pickle brine as a starter to maybe get things fermenting...

When I decided it was finished, I blended it all up. This was very annoying because there was so little of it. Stopped to scrape down the blender every second. No matter what, all the seeds never ground up; so I strained it. This gave the sauce a smooth consistency and it wont keep getting hotter while the seeds sit and infuse in the sauce while its refrigerated.


Vermouth Hot Sauce

(this was all done with a scale, based on how many chilies I had, with 2% salt and vermouth to cover)

84g chili (mix of yellow jalapeno, tabasco, habanero and mostly cayenne)
2g salt
187g vermouth 
1Tbl raw fermented pickle brine (from green bean pickles- haricot vert, salt, garlic)




Chop chilies and combine all ingredients in a jar. Stir or shake every few days for a few weeks. I ended up doing 3 full weeks in a cool fall philadelphia. 

 Blend it. 

Strain it. 

Bottle it. 

Baba Ghanouj

I've been roasting eggplants lately. I have lots of late season eggplants in the garden still and tons of parsley, finally. (If you dont love parsley cut it back by half or omit entirely but I think it helps tame the raw garlic flavor and goes really nicely with the lemon.) I think the texture is greatly improved if you put out the effort to pick out the seeds. They all grow in little clumps and most of them can be removed easily. Its not necessary to pick out every single one but eggplants can have so many seeds that the texture is clumpy and crunchy and gross if you dont deseed them before making baba. Enough warning, do what you will. This is how Ive been making it lately:

Baba Ghanouj

3 eggplants; roasted, skinned, seeded 

(Yes 3, and yes "normal" big eggplants, I generally grow black beauty)
2 Tbl  tahini
2 cloves  garlic
1  lemon; juiced, about 2oz
2-3 Tbl  olive oil
1 1/4 tsp  salt
1 C  parsely; leaves only
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cumin seed; ground in a coffee grinder first




Grill, bake or broil eggplants until skin is blackened and blistering away from the flesh. I cut them in half and broil them, skin side up. I set the broiler to low and cook for between 20 and 30 minutes, moving them around so they cook evenly. I juice the lemon with a citrus reamer and pick parsley off the stems and grind up cumin seeds while they roast.

I keep the eggplants in a strainer over a bowl while peeling
 and picking out seeds. That way the majority of liquid in the
finished dip is from  lemon and olive oil.

When they are blackened all over and the flesh has softened and deflated, remove them from the oven. Flip eggplants over to help them cool and release moisture. Once cool, the skin should peel off very easily. The next part is messy but worth it for improved texture: With your hands, dig out the clumps of seeds. It doesnt need to be perfect but try to get out as many as possible. Put the remaining eggplant flesh into the blender or food processor. (The recipe is wet enough that I usually pick the blender because it is easier to clean...) After you pick through the eggplants, add everything else to the blender EXCEPT olive oil and parsley. Once the garlic and cumin is all chopped up and distributed evenly, slowly add the oil while it is blending on low. Finally add the parsley and mix it in briefly. (My last batch I forgot lemon until the end and really blended up the parsley so the baba had a greenish tint) Makes a big batch but it keeps well for at least a week. Dip bread and veggies in it or do anything you might do with hummus...

Grand Autumn

Here is my favorite new fall drink! I found it on St Germain's facebook page. It seems weird that they are a real company and dont have a website, just facebook. But whatevs, I learned this great recipe from them and saw a few more that looked promising.... I know this doesn't sound that autumnal but it does have a nice leaves-changing-colors kind of look to it.

Grand Autumn

2oz Rye (Russels Reserve)

1oz Elderflower liquer (St Germain)

3/4oz Lime juice

3oz Ginger Beer (Reeds)

2 dashes Angostura

Shake Rye, St Germain, lime with ice. Strain into a collins glass with ice. Add ginger beer to taste and bitters on top. The bitters are a great addition. Sweet/ sour/ floral/ spicy. Excellent.

{I do love all things involving ginger beer. I pretty much always use Reeds extra ginger. Its very spicy, pretty sweet, and very citrusy.}

Gin Basil Smash

So good. do it.

Way better than the "normal", barely-has-any-mint-in-it whiskey smash, this is a drink worthy of your muddling. I heard about it at a bar I forgot and then searched the internet until I found a few recipes. I've been slacking on the blog the past 2 weeks and I came across a picture of one of these I made months ago and realized I had never posted about it. There are lots of recipes on the web and they vary pretty widely, make it to your taste, altering lemon and sweetener to your liking....

Gin Basil Smash

2oz Gin
1oz lemon juice
1/2oz simple syrup
tons of basil! (at least 5 leaves, upwards of an entitre shaker full..)

Muddle basil and simple syrup. Add everything else and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or on the rocks in an old fashioned glass. You should probably make a stiffer drink if its going in an old fashioned glass though because the ice will melt and water it down while you sip it... I did several sprigs of basil because I had tons in my garden. The drink turned a lovely green color with a few specks of basil that I did not mind but could be double strained out.

The Sfozando

 This month's Mixology Monday jawn is smoke. Its being hosted by Elana at Stir and Strain, check it out. For the smoke theme, I was thinking about cocktails made with Scotch or Mezcal. I tried getting weird and not using smokey booze but was mostly unsuccessful. I made a super gross old fashioned with barbecue sauce, a pretty decent manhattan with liquid smoke and finally an acceptable paloma with mezcal. My experiments that were actually drinkable just felt like normal drinks that were unnecessarily smoky, and while that wasn't bad it was no better than the original drink. So I starting looking through my cocktail diary for anything tasty I had made with Mezcal and found this recipe which I really loved.

Mezcal is the smokey cousin of tequila. Well, technically tequila is a kind of mezcal but to most people in the US anyway, mezcal is the weirdo, scotch-like relative of tequila. Both are made from the agave plant, but tequila is only from blue agave grown in Jalisco. Most mezcal Ive seen is from Oaxaca but Im under the impression it can be from any state. In that regard, it is similiar to brandy and cognac, with cognac having a protected desgnation of origin. The majority of Mezcal we can even find here in the US is made in the traditional methods where hearts of agave, a big sorta cactus like succulent desert plant, are roasted in smoldering pits for days?, maybe. This lends a very smokey character to the finished distillate. You can find unsmoked mezcals also though.

I never heard of this drink before seeing it in Mr Boston. It was conjured up by Eryn Reece, whom I know nothing about. It contains 2 of my favorite liquors, rye and mezcal, and uses weird bitters that I have, chocolate. The only references to it on the internet are to the Mr Boston cocktail book. Its really good though and you should make it.

The Sfozando

1 oz mezcal (San Perderra)
3/4 oz rye (Russels Reserve)
1/2 oz dry vermouth (Noilly Pratt)
1/2 oz benedictine
dash chocolate bitters (Fee Brothers)
orange twist

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange twist.

I normally dont like chocolate and orange stuff. The combination of orange and chocolate are subtle, there is an herbal note from the benedictine, a spicy flavor from the rye and a smokiness from the mezcal. All together it makes for a deliciously balanced cocktail that I highly reccomend.

Foraged Fig Butter

This summer, while walking my dog farther than he wanted to go, we found a new fig tree. Well, its new to me anyway. Each time I've been there now that they're ripe, I see several people within 15 minutes. They pull over in their car, walk across the lot (its too small to call a field but its a big lot) and pick a small handful of the ripest figs. I had been checking on this tree for weeks and it seemed like they never ripened up. I know learned they are just well looked after. Except no one prunes it. Its a crazy jumble of branches that touch the ground on all sides. Its a 15 foot shrub.

Walter Crumpkin resting at the multi-trunked base of the fig.

The last time I went, a man offered me a few of his ripest figs and told me of another tree in the neighborhood. I thanked him in Arabic, which surprised him. (That is about the extent of my Arabic though.) He also told me I should climb into the tree because I am little and others didn't climb up. I took his advice and collected about 3 pints total. I gave a few of my ripest figs to the next man that came to check on the tree.

When I got home I sorted them. The very ripest I put in the fridge. These were all yellow with a purple blush. Some were greenish yellow but still fairly soft so I picked them, wondering how close they were. By the very next day, they were super ripe, they looked just like the ones in the fridge. Fruit flies were invading my kitchen. I was doing lots of food projects that day, so I decided to just cook them down into fig butter. I used honey and bourbon to make my small batch efforts even more worthwhile.

Honey Bourbon Fig Butter

1 quart fresh Figs
1/4 C Honey
2 Tbl Bourbon Whiskey
another splash of whiskey at the end to deglaze the pan, help preserve the preserves and add a tasty alcohol bite to the sweet gooey fig mush.



Destem the figs and cut into 1/8ths. Add to a pot with honey and bourbon. Simmer over medium low heat for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Turn down heat to low, mash with a potato masher and continue cooking for another 30 minutes. A this point you need to stir very frequently and it will start to stick to the pan a bit. Take off heat and add a big splash of high proof bourbon, if possible. Let cool completely and then put in a jar and keep in the fridge. I didn't even consider properly canning it as I only had one jar. Eat on toast or with cheese.

Fermented Salsa

                                   

I don't make salsa often. When I do, its usually summer and I need to use up an abundance of tomatoes. I generally dont use any recipe, I just chop tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro and chilis. Unfortunately, I didn't stagger my cilantro growing properly and all the mature plants have long been used up and all I have growing are tiny little slow growing sprouts. So, no cilantro. A little bit of acidity is really good at bringing out all the flavors, much like salt. Fresh salsa often gets lime juice and canned usually gets a little vinegar. I thought that making my salsa and then treating it like kim chi would be an interesting way to add that acidity. I put my salsa in a quart mason jar and let it sit out for 3 days, stirring twice a day. It was so good! There was lots of skins, which annoys me in salsa, because I used so many cherry tomatoes and after days of stirring and breaking them up they separated from the fruits. It was really tasty though. Also, I think we are growing yellow jalapeno? Who knew? One plant has chilies that fade to yellow and then get brighter and brighter yellow and never show any signs of a red blush. I didnt realize such a thing even existed...

after sittimg for a day

all stirred back in

Raw Fermented Salsa

~ 3C chopped tomatoes, tossed w/ salt and left in a strainer while chopping other veg
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 green pepper, diced
garlic clove, minced
2 yellow jalapeno, minced
1 Tbl brine from raw cumin beet pickles

Set a strainer over a bowl. Chop tomatoes and put in strainer. Salt heavily and stir a few times while preparing other ingredients. I was able to draw out about 5 oz of liquid from the tomatoes. This greatly improved the texture of the finished salsa. Combine all ingredients in a quart mason jar and stir with a chopstick. Put a lid on lightly, it doesnt need to be air tight. Stir every 12 hours until it starts to smell slightly sour. For me this only took 3 days in the low 80s. I expected it to be quick because everything was chopped small or was a soft tomato. Really good. Im going to make more before summer is over....