In Good Taste #25: Lacto Blueberries for Breakfast
A fruity ferment and some porridge to put under it; my latest dish crush; confidence trickster podcasts
Well, hello there! How are you?
Good I hope. Thank you so much for being here.
(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipes or Cultural Fun.)
I’m in a good mood. I’ve been for a walk in some wintry sunshine and, although I know it’s not quite December, I’m feeling my festive-o-meter reading creep up by the day. And looking forward to opening the first window of our puzzle-based advent calendar tomorrow.
My in-laws were down at the weekend weekend and we had a twinkly time visiting the Tower of London. Back in my newspaper journalism days I used to do a lot of first-person experience features and once spent a day there, corsetted-up and taking part in various historical recreations with Mark Wallis, founder of Past Pleasures, “the UK's oldest professional historical interpretation company”. Fortunately I can’t find the pictures online but it was great fun (if I remember rightly, Mark even offered me a job?). No time to play tourist through so I was glad to have had a proper look round this time.
We had a tour from a Beefeater (Yeoman Warder Spike Abbot) and a good gawp at the crown jewels. Shiny. Plus we saw a little cat sitting in a tree and looking like it owned the place. An excellent day out followed by an excellent meal at Les 2 Garcons in Crouch End.
Do you ever get a crush on a restaurant dish? Eat something you can’t stop thinking about afterwards? That you actively pine for between visits? I’ve had it a handful of times.
The spinach fatayer at Del Parc, a wonderful tapas place that used to be in Tufnell park but has since moved to St Leonards, was the first I can remember. A lovely filo pastry thing filled with spinach and feta but elevated with the sourness of pomegranate molasses. Our romance took place before smart phones and social media so there are no photos of us together but I miss you spinach fatayer!
Then the Spicy Cumin Lamb Hand-Ripped Noodles at Xi’an Famous Foods in New York. I was so smitten by these noodles the first time I ate them that, four years later, I planned a whole day out in Manhattan around the idea of eating them again. I still think of them fondly and often.
The most recent of these food crushes was the baba au rhum at Les 2 Garçons (my photos from the evening are awful but you can see it bottom left in the Instagram post below). This light-but-decadent cloud of boozy deliciousness blew me away on our first visit last year and I haven’t been able stop thinking about it since. So I basically used my in-laws’ visit as a chance to get reacquainted with my crush and it was every bit as wonderful as I remembered: filled with chantilly cream and flambeéd at the table. I can feel myself turning into the heart eyes emoji just thinking about it.
Do you have a crush on a dish? Whisper it to me in the comments…
Fermenting Fruit
Let us turn to less decadent delights and talk about fermenting fruit. In most ways it’s exactly the same as fermenting vegetables. You salt it, weigh it down and leave it for a bit. It’s not hard at all. But I find it requires slightly more vigilance.
Fruit generally has higher sugar content than vegetables so the lactic acid bacteria get going quickly and do their thing pretty vigorously. If your aim is to eat the fruit whilst some of that sugar remains, you have to be very aware of what’s going on. Fermenting fruit is like waiting for pears to ripen: the window of perfection is small and you have to make sure you catch it. Too soon and you just have salty fruit. Too late and all the sugar has turned to lactic acid, negating the point of using fruit rather than veg in the first place.
Regular tasting is crucial if you are to hit upon that literal sweet spot. If you commit to the chore of checking your fruit every day, you’ll be rewarded with something sublime: a complex, tangy sweetness that works well with all sorts of things.
I find vac-packing these blueberries gives me better results than doing them in a jar but if you don’t have a vacuum sealer then just make sure they’re weighed down well. My other tip would be to rinse them before eating or they’re a bit too salty still.
In the summer I love them for breakfast with yoghurt and/or kefir and a bit of muesli. In the chill I have swapped muesli for porridge.
Recipe: Lacto Blueberries
Makes 1 medium jar - enough for about 6 breakfasts. But scale up or down as appropriate.
Ingredients
300g blueberries
6g sea salt
Method
Put the blueberries in a bowl and mix in the salt.
If you have a vacuum sealer, transfer to a pouch and seal. If not, add a couple of tablespoons of water, just to dissolve the salt, and put everything in a jar.
Seal and leave at room temperature. After about two days start tasting (if you vac-packed, you’ll need to seal up again afterwards). Mine usually take about five days but it will depend on the warmth of your kitchen. Don’t miss that window of perfection!
When they have reached a balance of sweetness and acidity that you enjoy, rinse the berries and keep them in the fridge. They’ll continue to get a little sourer but will be good for at least a week.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
I like these just as they are but some thyme and/or lemon zest in the jar as they ferment is lovely too.
Not such a great seasonally appropriate suggestion but these make a fab addition to homemade frozen yoghurt.
Recipe: Fancy Porridge
Serves 4
This is my current favourite thing to eat under my blueberries. I like a small bowlful topped with a large spoonful or Greek yoghurt and some lacto bluberries then surrounded buy a moat of kefir. I enjoy the contrast between hot and cold but it’s your breakfast so enjoy as you please. It’s a bit lazy, I know, but I’ll make a pan at the beginning of the week, eating the first portion straight away then reheat the rest on subsequent days, stirring in a little extra milk to loosen.
I’m also aware that porridge is an intensely personal thing. I’m aware that my version is basically heresy for porridge purists. If you eschew everything but water and pinch of salt with your oats then that’s fine too. I’m basically just trying to court favour with my Zoe app. I have bad blood sugar response and it gives me better scores when I add nuts and seeds to everything.
Ingredients
80g oats
200ml water
200ml milk
pinch salt
1 apple, grated
1 tbsp chia seeds
50g flaked almonds
50g sunflower seeds
Method
Put an empty dry pan over a high heat and add the oats. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to smell slightly toasty, probably about 3 minutes.
Add the rest of the ingredients and lower the heat. Cook, stirring continually, until thickened. How long this takes will depend on your oats anywhere from 2/3 mins for fast cook out to more like 10 for pinhead oatmeal.
Cultural Fun
Podcast-wise, I have been enjoying both Carrie Jade Does Not Exist and Walter’s War. I’m not sure why but I’ve always been fascinated by confidence tricksters. I used to be obsessed with the story of Anthony Godby Johnson, (fictionalised by Armistead Maupin in The Night Listener). I don’t think I’m alone in this. We all wonder if we’d be taken in by the same stories as they grow taller and taller. Both these podcast series played on that idea: plausible people creating webs of deceit.
The settings are very different. Sue Perkins and Katherine Denkinson told the story of a woman who faked her way through various small Irish towns, making up charitable connections, fiancés and a Huntington’s diagnosis as she went. Then Tortoise’s series followed Oliver, a dashing diplomat-turned-defence contractor who wasn’t quite what he claimed to be. But the questions are the same. Who are they really and why did they do this?
Both were interesting but neither quite get to the bottom of things. That’s usually the way. The frustration and continued fascination of cases like this. Only the confidence trickster themselves can ever know what they hoped to gain.
Bye! See you soon!
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In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal.
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