corvi

Juli and I have been enlisting tiny acid-excreting friends to make pickles! I wanted to note What I Did and How It All Went So Wrong here, for future planning and improvement.

Oi Kimchi (based on David Chang's recipe, substituting for what I didn't have on hand)

Two and a half large English-style (soft seeds) cucumbers, quartered and cut into 5-cm long batons
2 Tbs sugar
1.5 tsp kosher salt
1 Tbs kochukaru (Korean dried chile powder)
.5 tsp powdered ginger
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 Tbs soy sauce

Toss all ingredients together. Put in mason jar and put lid on loosely s gas can escape. Can be stored on counter. This is a lactic-fermented pickle, so the general idea is to make a brine that noboy except lactobacillus will enjoy, and let the acid-excreting friends make everything sour and tasty.
What went wrong: Delicious for five days. On the sixth day, the brine was muscilagenous and slimy and made huge disgusting strings between jar and spoon and starting threatening to engulf New York City.
Diagnosis: Not enough salt, the party acquired cheerful yeast friends in addition to helpful lactobacillus friends, yeasts were all, "you wanted slime, right? Like, lots of slime?" Likely because I left out the fish sauce and salt-dried shrimp the original recipe called for, without increasing the salt to make up for it.

Pao Cai (Based on Martin Yan's recipe)

2 and a half large English-style (soft-seed) cucumbers, cut in half and then cut into .5-cm thick half-moons
1 Tbs sichuan peppercorns
pinch fennel
1 black cardamom pod
4 dried red chiles
1 tsp kochukaru. Can't ever have enough kochukaru, even in pickle recipes from totally different cuisines
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 tsp sugar
1 tbs salt
.5 cup kvass
enough water to fill the mason jar

Toss all non-liquid ingredients together. Put in a mason jar with the lid on loosely to let gasses escape.
What Went Wrong Oh no, is this too much sichuan peppercorn? I can't feel my tongue. I can taste time. I no longer have a birthday, I have always been in a world of tongueless time-flavour, I have always been the tongueless time-flavour. Can you hear the singing?
Diagnosis: Too much sichuan peppercorn.

More successful fermentation experiments, which totally coincidentally happen to be

juli 's experiments, not that that means anything, what are you implying:

Ukrainian-style kvass, a very mildly alcoholic drink made from water in which stale rye bread has been soaked and apple juice. Sold in parks by vendors who have 50 gallon drums on big carts. Tastes like sunlight and summer. Russian kvass, at least the bottled stuff made by soda manufacturers for export, is made of molasses and tastes like lies.
Delicious curry leaf-flavoured carrot pickle