Red Shiso: Part 2--pickles

Red Shiso

I posted about my first harvest here. And now that I have all the red shiso that I need [I cheated, the chef at the restaurant supplemented me with a beautiful bag of leaves], I'm on the road to make shibazuke, japanese pickles. Shibazuke is pickled eggplant, cucumber and ginger in salt and red shiso leaves. One of my favorite tsukemono. I love to eat it on hot rice, it's salty, tart and crunchy.

I've only had store-bought shibazuke so I was so exciting to get the shiso plant and start planning what I could do with it. I found this recipe from Sojourner Food. It looked doable. The only item I didn't have from the recipe was the ginger buds, myoga. 

[Ha! I just googled the myoga and found a link on how to grow them. If you feel ambitious to grow your own, here's the link. I may tried this indoors this winter. This is what happens when you don't have a pet anymore. You look for other things to take care of.]

Back to the recipe, I just added little more ginger in it's place of the myoga. Here's some of the pictures of my first attempt at shibazuke.

This is the bag of shiso leaves from the chef. She still want to give me more. This was after I took out 40 leaves for the pickles. I don't know what she's thinking I'm going to make with these leaves. 

it starts out green then turns red on one side

I added the salt to the washed shiso leaves and tossed it together. I let it sit while I prepped the eggplant, cucumber and ginger.

pre-toss with kosher salt

Chopped the veggies into bite size pieces and the ginger into thin strips. Then salt and let to sit for 1/2 hour.

all chopped, waiting for the salt

After a 1/2 hour, I made sure that there was liquid from the salted veggies. Then I squeezed the shiso to get the purple-ly juice out. 

squeezed!

I added the juice and the squeezed shiso to the veggies and toss together. Taste a cucumber to see if the salt needs to adjusted. The recipe says it should be salty enough to pucker but not unbearable. I added a couple more unsalted shiso because I didn't think the juice was purple enough. [I hope it helps]

all mixed up, now to wait

I packed it up in tall-ish plastic container, put dish with a can of condensed milk in another plastic container on top of that to weigh it down and cover. Now to wait a week to it is done. On Sunday, I'll give a mix. I'll post the finish product later. Can't wait, smell great already. 

I still have a 1/2 a bag full of shiso and some ginger to use up. What to do. 

I decide to try out shiso wrapped salmon. The chef at the restaurant told me about this. She said her husband, who is Vietnamese, wrapped fish with the shiso and grilled it. 

I marinated the salmon in koji [store-bought] and grated ginger to keep with the japanese theme. I let it sit for about 1/2 hour then wrap the salmon with the shiso. skewering the leaves to stay on. Then I tossed it on the grill, turning it once, till salmon was done. Here's what it looks like. 

right off the grill

Taste? Pretty good. The koji gave is it that sweet and salty taste. The ginger went well with the koji and shiso flavor. The shiso still had the shiso flavor with a little bit of smokiness from the grill.  Would definitely do it again. 

What I'd do differently? Marinate fish longer with more koji and ginger, probably overnight. Cut up the salmon in smaller pieces so it is easier to wrap in the leave and use toothpicks instead of skewers. And lastly, don't grill in the dark. hard to see when the salmon was ready. I'll write up this recipe when I get the proportions right. Coming soon.

More shiso to use. Maybe some pickled ginger with shiso. Maybe I can dehydrate the leaves and make some furikake. Hmmm. That's a thought.

A Gathering of Random Llinks

P

chewy goodness! Lilikoi mochi!

Thought I shared some random links that you may like: 

-This post got me at "Miso". I've been obsesses about all things Miso or Koji. So why not Miso Sourdough Bread from Lucky Peach. They say the bread ends up "tasting like a cross between dark chocolate and pumpernickel in the final baked loaf." YUM!

-Although I look like hell these days, I still love fashion and I hope I get to this exhibit. Maybe one day I'll have the energy to dress like I care again. http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/china-through-the-looking-glass-2/

-Here's an article on Koji from SFGate with some recipes. You're going to want to try it.

-Teaching myself code to get the restaurant website up and running. Found this link about 6 sites that teach you code from Swiss Miss. You know what I'll be up to this summer beside baking, jamming, knitting/crocheting and sewing. [I got to get my etsy store up]

-And of course, I couldn't end with out mentioning lilikoi or mochi. Here's a recipe Lilikoi Mochi from Mauna Kea Tea Blog. I decided to make this recipe because it uses brown sugar and kinako. I need to make it again.

food inspired: 05.01.015

Some quick links to what been food inspiring me.

-Went to the library to find a book for my commute [Woo hoo! on book #3]. And found Bar Tartine: Techniques and Recipe. Been seeing this mentioned in a lot food blogs for a while. Lots of stuff that I've been wanting to do try: drying [been think of buying a dehydrator] and fermentation [I love koji]. There"s a recipe for apple butter that uses the dehydrator. Oh, I think I need to buy this book.

-One of the chefs at our restaurant has great organic garden. She gave me some garlic chives that she harvested. I decided to share some of it with my co-workers. Here's a couple of recipes from No Recipe Blog that I shared with them: Niratama (Garlic Chives Scrambled Eggs) and Oisobagi Kimchi (stuffed cucumber kimchi). The Oisobagi is so good--great umami taste with miso.

My Garlic Chives bounty

-The chef at restaurant has also been spoiling me by making some great vietnamese style salad. I found this chicken and cabbage version from the The Urban Poser blog on pinterest that I want to try for my lunch. Maybe add some kale. Or maybe just ask the chef to make me a salad because I'm lazy.

Vietnamese sausage, pork, shrimp, flat rice noodles with salad and Nuoc Cham