In Good Taste #49: Charred Cabbage Kraut
A smoky kraut to prepare for (or on) a barbecue; a rare opportunity to order my ready meals; James Acaster may tolerate hecklers but I don’t
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 recipe or Cultural Fun.)
I had a wonderful weekend teaching a tentful of people how to make sauerkraut at the Great Exhibition Road Festival. It was lovely to work with Dr Maria Valdivia Garcia again who talked about her research into gut health whilst I did the hands-on cabbage-based stuff.
The workshops I usually teach are attended by ferment-curious folk who have bought tickets (or been bought them) and presumably know what they’re getting into. These sorts of big public events are a slightly different beast: some people have read the programme and are there deliberately but others wander in to see what’s happening or just want somewhere to sit down for a bit. There was a child dancing down the front at one point!
But it was loads of fun: great to meet, teach and speak to such a wide range of people and - of course - to send them all home with a jar to look after.
Events
I’m now deep into prep for my supper club at Lizzy’s on the Green this weekend. I’m busy dehydrating kimchi to sprinkle on devilled eggs, blending homemade vinegar into dressing for leeks vinaigrette and so forth. Saturday’s supper club is sold out but there will be snacks to take away on the night (including those devilled eggs which are going to be incredible) if you fancy popping down for a glass of something and a bite on Newington Green.
And there are still tickets left for the 20th July. They are £42.50 per person for a multi-course feast of snacks and sharing plates and include a welcome cocktail. Do come along!
There are also a few places left for my second full-day, field-to-ferment workshop at Home Farm House in Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire next Friday. Just look how lovely the first one was:
Tickets for this are £150 and includes lunch. We’ll hear about Harrison Fannon’s no dig Worthy Earth market garden project, pick our vegetables straight from the ground and turn them into krauts, kimchi and pickles.
We’ll also enjoy a delicious home-cooked lunch made by Home House Farm’s owner Anita and then investigate vinegar, kombucha and kefir before you go home with jars full of goodness and detailed instructions on how to look after them.
(Slight) return of the ready meals
OK. Truly the last bit where I try and sell you stuff. So. For many years I was offering freshly-made ready meals. They were the only bit of my business that functioned during COVID time when all the teaching and catering work shut down and I carried on doing them for private clients and local shops (including the lovely Fridge of Plenty in Crouch End) until earlier this year. I was really proud of the recipes I created and loved hearing how happy it made people to have home-cooked food in their freezer. Sadly the rising cost of ingredients and the stress of wearing too many metaphorical hats meant I stopped production a few months ago.
But, like a grizzled detective, I have been persuaded out of retirement for one last job…
Next week I will be cooking a limited menu. Some of my most-loved dishes, available on a who-knows-when-the-next-chance-will-be basis:
my famous (competition winning!) “No Smoke Without Fire” Slow-Cooked Beef Chilli
the equally good Black Bean & Butternut Vegan Chilli
crowd-pleasing Chicken, Bacon & Leek Pie
fan-favourite Lamb & Feta Meatballs in tomato, harissa and pomegranate sauce
They are £8 per double portion, plus a flat £5 delivery fee to N4 and the surrounding area. Or pick up for free from Harringay. If you want in then move quick! Email me at clare@sycamoresmyth.com by Sunday afternoon. Put “ready meals” in the subject, tell me which dishes you want and how many and I’ll send you a PayPal link and add you to the list. Food will be delivered or available to pick up on Monday 1st July.
Recipe: Charred Cabbage Kraut
Makes one 750ml jar
I don’t want to jinx things by pointing it out, but [whisper] the weather has been kind of summery lately.
Summery enough anyway that my mind has turned towards barbecues.
Today’s recipe would be a good thing to serve at a barbecue - its smoky notes a nice compliment to grilled meats or veg - or you could use your first grilling opportinity to get it underway. Up to you.
I was inspired by a recipe in the recent 10th anniversary edition of Fermented Vegetables by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey. Charring the cabbage creates great flavour but, since you’re only cooking the surface of each quarter, there are still plenty of surviving microbes ready to get the fermentation going.
Ingredients
2 hispi cabbages
2 carrots
1 onion
a few sprigs dill
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp cracked black pepper
sea salt (use half smoked salt if you like)
Method
Prep the veg. Cut the cabbages into quarters, peel the carrot into ribbons using a peeler or mandoline and slice the onion very thinly.
Char the cabbage. Using a griddle pan or barbecue char the cut sides of each cabbage quarter until they have a good amount of dark brown colour on them. Set aside to cool.
Chop the cabbage. Remove the cores from each quarter and slice the cabbage into ribbons. Mix it with the other veg, add the spices and weigh everything together.
Add the salt. Calculate 2.5% of the weight of the veg and add this amount of salt. Use up to half this amount in smoked salt if you want which will marry nicely with the charred flavour on the cabbage. Leave for 30 mins or so for some brine to develop.
Pack the kraut into a clean jar. Make sure to push it down well to eliminate any air pockets. Pour in any brine left in the bowl.
Weigh it down and seal the jar. Use a couple of pieces of cabbage core or pickle weight to ensure
Leave, burping and tasting regularly, until the kraut reaches your preferred degree of tartness. For me this took about 10 days. Then move to the fridge.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
Hispi is very much the cabbage of the moment isn’t it? (In fact, since it involves Hispi cabbages, charring and lacto-fermentation, this recipe is probably the hippest thing I have done since my twenties.) Cheaper, less fashionable sweetheart cabbage would work too. Any cabbage would work really but if it’s a denser sort then maybe cut it into six or eight wedges before charring.
I did the charring on a griddle pan. But you could totally do it on a barbecue. This would also make a good side dish for a future barbecue. Either as it is, dressed with a little lemon juice and olive oil or incorporated into a slaw of some kind with a creamy dressing (more on this in future newsletters).
Cultural Fun
We went to see James Acaster on Monday at Hackney Empire. I’ve been a fan since I first saw him performing Recognise 10 years ago (! - time flies etc. etc.) The show (in its 2018 Netflix incarnation, as part of the unprecedented four-part Netflix special Repertoire) still stands up really well. In recent years he’s moved away from the whimsy of his earlier stuff (pretending to be an undercover cop/run a fraudulent honey business etc.) to more personal material and I liked that too.
In the past he has been very sensitive to hecklers, latecomers, talkers, people checking their phones etc. This whole tour is supposedly a quest to not let the audience ruin his evening by being too loud/too quiet and, therefore not to let him ruin theirs for berating them for it.
There was a fair bit of “audience participation” on Monday. I don’t know if the hecklers ruined James Acaster’s evening, but they certainly spoiled mine. I think I’ve been lucky when I’ve him previously as (barring some talkers who were entertainingly told off during Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999) I’ve always seen pretty much the full show we were expecting to see without interruption.
Some of the Hackney hecklers were incorporated entertainingly into the flow of the show, which is essentially an exploration of why he performs and why it makes him so anxious. But others totally ruined the rhythm and dragged things out. I hope they are unwelcome again on the next tour…
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.
Oooh, charred cabbage kraut. Definitely one to make this summer...
This I am definitely making!!