(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe, or Cultural Fun.)
I’m well and feeling pretty jolly for various reasons.
Firstly because this morning I watched a squirrel sit on top of a fence and have a good go at eating an entire fatball. It had somehow managed to unhook a (supposedly squirrel-proof) bird feeder from the pergola, open the lid and extract the ball before carrying it up onto the fence. Squirrels are irritating sometimes but you have to admire them.
Props to this guy/gal!
Secondly, the weekend just gone was a really nice one. I’ve been trying to institute a regular monthly “at home” thing, an attempt to get back in the habit of pre-Covid-style entertaining. I gave the latest event a visual art theme, laying out plenty of paper and pencils and the instructions for a few of the drawing games I found most inspirational from the 30 day drawing challenge run by Wendy MacNaughton in January. (P)arty games.
I thought letting people spend a few minutes at a time on the doodle game, blind contour portraits or making single word stories would be fun and relieve the pressure to make small talk. I think quite a lot of them got taken home but I was left with some lovely examples of all three.
Attempting to think of semi-themed food I could serve was an issue though. Googling “food in art” mainly gave me still lifes (still lives? What is the correct plural here?) of raw ingredients. And I didn’t think a big pile of Cezanne-style apples would cut it with the hungry masses. Leonardo hasn’t given Jesus & Co much more than bread rolls on the table in The Last Supper (apparently there’s some eel and orange in there too but that wasn’t what I was after either).
It was James who suggested Warhol’s soup which was perfect. I made a giant vat, bought some downloadable labels from Etsy and felt suitably pleased with the craftiness of my catering.
I hadn’t realised until afterwards when my friend Carla sent me this photo that I had inadvertently dressed as a Warhol soup can too. In for a penny…
And, last but not least, I am happy because In Good Taste in one year old. Or will be on Saturday. I sent out the first issue - with a recipe for pink pickled turnips - on 30th March 2023 and have really enjoyed writing and sharing the newsletter in the 12 months since.
Many, many thanks to all of you, whether you’ve been here since the beginning or are laying eyes on IGT for the first time just now. It genuinely means a lot to me that you’re here and I’m really excited about all the fermentation knowledge and recipes I have to share and the things we will learn together over the course of the next year. I hope you stick around!
To mark this auspicious occasion, I’m giving recipe for my signature hot sauce, previously only available to attendees of my in-person classes. I’m excited. I hope you are too. But first…
Seasonal Fermentation Course at Home Farm in Oxfordshire
I had a great response to last week’s announcement of the new courses I’ll be running at Home Farm House in Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire on June 7th and 28th.
They’ll be full-day affairs, from 10am to 4pm, so we can really get into it. We’ll cover “wild” lacto-ferments like kraut, kimchi and pickles and also cultured products: vinegar, kombucha and kefir. We’ll be using super-seasonal and hyper-local veg, picked straight from the field next door where Worthy Earth run a regenerative market garden. Lunch is included and attendees will go home with a bag of their ferments and starter cultures and a detailed recipe and info booklet.
The vegetables we'll be picking in a few months time and the beautiful kitchen we'll be fermenting them in.
I won’t do the hard sell on you again but just wanted to remind you that there’s an early bird discount for In Good Taste subscribers if you book before April 1st: just enter the code IGT30 at checkout to get 30% off the June 7th class.
Chillies are one of my all-time favourite things to ferment. And not just because I sometimes feel a bit bored by food that isn’t borderline painful*. It’s because chillies only get better the longer you leave them.
We’ve talked before about how, once the lactic acid bacteria have produced enough acid to lower the pH, your fermented pickles will never really go off. But how they might go past their best: get mushy or musty or oxidised or metallic-tasting. That’s why it’s important to check on your krauts and pickles and kimchis and sample them regularly. So you can eat them at their peak.
But chillies don’t really do that. Texturally they’ll start to break down but flavour-wise they’ll just get more interesting and complex the longer you leave them to ferment.
You can obviously make hot sauce from any peppers you like (even dried) and we’ll return to the subject in the future with some specifics, but today we’re going with the easiest to get hold of: those standard-issue bullets that Sainsbury’s doesn’t even dignify with a name beyond “red”. Plus some Scotch bonnets.
*Incidentally, if you are also slightly addicted to chilli heat, this is a great piece by Jordan Ezra King about what’s happening physiologically when you ingest the hot stuff.
We’ll do this in two parts. This week a basic recipe that is good in and of itself. And next week a way to zhuzh it up. These quantities makes a litre jar and will fill about three or four standard 200ml sauce bottles once blended. Scale down if you like but you’ll be sad when you’ve run out and not even started fermenting your next batch…
Ingredients
400g red chillies, stalks removed
100g Scotch bonnets, stalks removed
1 bulb garlic, separated into cloves and peeled
2 sticks celery (including leaves if possible)
1 bunch coriander, stalks only
5% brine (see notes)
Method
Roughly chop the chillies. Maybe wear gloves if you have them? Or at least be careful not to touch any sensitive areas afterwards. Also chop the celery into inch-long pieces.
Put celery, garlic, coriander stalk and chillies in a very clean jar and pour over the brine. Add something to act as a pickle weight and keep everything submerged. If you don’t have glass or ceramic weights a sandwich bag filled with water (or brine) works well, as does half an onion. Seal the jar.
Leave to ferment, burping occasionally, until your desired level of funkiness has been reached. They can be ready in as little as a week but for me, this usually takes about a month.
Remove your pickle weight and drain the chillies, garlic etc. reserving the brine. Put them in a blender with about 100ml of the brine and blitz to your desired consistency. Usually I like to make it as smooth as possible (about 10 mins blending - you can strain through a fine mesh sieve to make it even smoother if you like) but sometimes it's fun to keep the texture rough, like a salsa. Add more brine if necessary to get a consistency you like. Don’t breathe in too deeply around the blender whilst this is happening. It’s a little bit tear-gassy…
Taste and balance the flavours with a little more salt if needed. Then return to the jar or divide between smaller bottles.
Keep refrigerated and eat on everything.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
For the brine, I used 500ml filtered water and 25g sea salt. This was enough to cover all my chillies etc. with a little bit left over. Alternatively you can place the jar containing the veg on a scale, add water to cover and calculate the specific amount of salt you need (divide the weight of the water by 100 and multiply by five). Add the salt, seal the jar and give it a good shake to dissolve the salt.
Mix the chillies with chopped red bell peppers or cherry tomatoes for a milder sauce.
If you don’t use gloves to chop the chillies then rub some oil into your hands before washing them with soap. Capsaicin (the substance that makes chillies hot) is fat soluble (that’s why drinking milk is a better way of calming a chilli-burned mouth than water) so the oil will help get it off your hands and lessen your chances of a painful incident later.
Cultural Fun
There’s been all sorts of fuss over the Banksy’s latest mural which popped up last week. It’s on Hornsey Road, north London, not far from me at all. But by the time I went to have a look a look it had already been defaced and is now partially covered and difficult to view from the street. Almost as sad as the poor tree it was highlighting.
It’s the account of John Barker, a Shropshire-based psychiatrist obsessed with precognition and whether dreams or visions could truly predicts the future. Following the Aberfan disaster in 1966 he collaborated with the Evening Standard to set up a central repository for people who had premonitions of disaster which could later be checked for accuracy. No conclusions are drawn but it’s an intriguing question (even to a sceptic like me) and a compellingly strange bit of recent British history.
On a jollier note, I have been enjoying the audiobook of Be Funny Or Die by comedy writer Joel Morris. Morris, who has worked on all sorts of things including Mitchell & Webb’s sketch show, the Paddington films and various Charlie Brooker projects, does what you’re always told will ruin jokes: takes them apart and looks at them to see how they work.
He gets technical about how jokes are constructed and psychological about what role they play in society. Plus he’s amusing whilst doing so, telling jokes of his own and reminding you of plenty of classics. If you are or ever have been a comedy geek then you’ll find this fascinating.
Bye! See you next week!
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In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal. You can also find me on Instagram or visit my website to find information about my catering work, cookery lessons and upcoming events.
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