My grain/lentil/bean of the day today is whole Mung Beans. How I love their earthy flavours. I made an Indian style soup using a recipe for whole mung bean dal that I've made before. Just cooked it longer with more water. Lots of onion, ginger, garlic, chilli, cumin, etc etc. Needs salt! I cooked it in the IP. Oh boy it is good (I am on my second bowl).

Mung beans always taste so comforting and nourishing.

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Dal made for dinner with red lentils (masoor dal), moringa leaves and other greens from the garden, spices, souring agent, onion, garlic. So Delicious! Red lentils are under-rated.

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I have had fun today and last night playing with semolina flour (rava) that I fermented. While this is am unusual idea in most parts of the world it is definitely not in India, particularly the fermented pancakes and related dishes of South India. These are usually freshly ground batters that are fermented without using an extra starter.

🌾 What I did was a little different to India, in that the rava was fermented on its own using yoghurt as a starter, which worked really well. I was inspired by reading about fermented soy flour and later about one of the techniques for fermenting oats.

🧑‍🍳 From the fermented flour I made a sort of upma, some rava dosa and some rava utthapam. And OMG, the utthapam was amazing! 💃💃💃 (It is the same batter as dosa, cooked smaller and thicker and topped with finely chopped chilli, onion and tomato. I had cumin seeds and chilli in the batter as well.)

It is a good start, and fermented flours might become part of the Kitchen's repertoire.

One day I want to make pasta with fermented semolina flour.

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Lovely radishes straight from the garden this morning. I love them just sliced with salt. Fresh radish leaves are also delicious so I made toasted sandwiches with onion-miso spread, radish leaves, chopped herbs from the garden, and tomato slices. Delicious!

Also this morning, 2 large jars of eggplants are now nicely fermenting with onion, LOTS of garlic, garden herbs. It's a 2-3 week ferment. The recipe is from Kirsten Shockey (she got it from some friends) called Garlic Eggplant Wedding Pickles. They call it that as they often make a batch when they are invited to weddings and gift the lucky couple a basket of different ferments in little mason jars with labels they have printed.

I see lots of raw fermented babaganoush and baigan bharta in my future.

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I made a couple of things today, to feed my friend who was helping with the garden.

Very early I made a the yoghurt vine leaf pie that I have spoken about before. My name for it is "Baked Yoghurt Encrusted with Vine Leaves". It is a yoghurt mix with onions, many herbs (mint, tarragon, fennel, parsley, dill), onion, and rice flour to thicken the yoghurt.

This mix is placed (a thin'ish layer) in a terracotta dish that has been lined with grape leaves. The leaves are wrapped around the side and over the top of the yoghurt, and an extra leaf or two are placed on top. The top is brushed with oil and sprinkled with some breadcrumbs or polenta, and sesame seeds, then it is baked before being slightly cooled and cut into wedges. It can be eaten warm or cold.

Because the oven was already on I baked some leeks at the same time. This is a slow, foil-covered bake until the leeks are very tender and delicious, and then browned slightly on top.

The lunch spread was completed with a simple garden salad and some ferments.

***Recipes: The yoghurt pie appears in a couple of places. It is called "Yoghurt and fresh herbs wrapped in grape leaves (Asmapitta)" in The Foods of Greece by Aglaia Kremezi, and in The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean by Paula Wolfert. Ottolenghi has a version in Plenty - a whizzed up version for sure. He calls it "Vine leaf, herb and yoghurt pie".

The leek recipe comes from the 30-day Fermentation Challenge by Shockey - she encourages the eating of leeks, onions and other onion-related veg as being very healthy for us. (This is not a fermented dish.)

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Potatoes are in the instant pot, cooking so I can make a Gujarati potato curry. It's a dry curry, meaning no sauce. Just cubes of potatoes and peas sauteed with
onions, chillies and a beautifully balanced mix of spices.

It reminded me of a comment on my blog years ago, from an irate gentleman. He started to cook one of my Madras curries which was also a dry curry, and he wanted to know where the sauce was, and it wasn't a real curry and so on and so on.

Ah well.

The recipe I am making is from To Gujarat with Love by Vina Patel. It is all in the spice mix 😋

To have with the Dal with Greens I made yesterday.

Come round 🍽️

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#Kimchi

While I was steaming the tempeh last night I taste-tested the kimchi where I had 3 jars of exactly the same kimchi but fermented for different times.

The first jar was fermented for 1 week, the second for 2 and the third for 3. The weather is very hot, so of course these will ferment quicker than in most other countries or in different seasons.

First of all, all three were still very crisp and delicious in their own right. (Perfect amount of salt in the brine.)

1 week kimchi: tastes light and fresh, very nice

2 week kimchi: noticeably more tang and more complex flavours coming through, yum

3 week kimchi: the best tasting. More complex flavours. The umami added by the inclusion of nori is detectable.

All were far far better than any store-bought kimchi.

Next time I will do a 3, 4, and 5 week kimchi.

Of course the fermentation time can be adjusted to your preferences and mood. Light and fresh can be very good in Summer, longer fermentation in Winter.

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I finally made that ratatouille - I got waylaid by tiredness and other urgent things before. I made a huge pan of it, and it is delicious! Nothing to do with me, the combo of eggplant, onion, garlic, zucchini, capsicums and tomatoes with olive oil and a tiny amount of herbs is just *so* special. I added some fermented green capsicums and it's given the dish a lovely tang.

I always make it in a no-fuss way. It tastes just as good as the fussy recipe. Stovetop, rarely in the oven.

A lovely clean-out the fridge dish. #noWaste

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I made 3 jars of kimchi recently. It has been very hot here (so ferments quicker), so I wanted to try for various lengths of time to compare taste. I opened the first one a week ago, and it is great. I opened the second one yesterday, and it has such a lovely acidity, the bite of the chilli has mellowed a bit (in a good way), and the flavours are somewhat more complex.

I'll open the third jar in another week or so.

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