The Garlic Issue! 🧄 | Summer Break | Recipe: The Garlic Tripleheader
Issue No. 52
We’re taking a short (3-week) summer break. But we leave you with three lovely garlic ferments 🧄😋
Please take a couple minutes and fill out our Sunshine + Microbes 1-year anniversary survey. It’s short and anonymous, so you can really spill the beans! Thank you! 🤗
If someone shared this newsletter with you, subscribe below.
I’ve always felt a kinship with garlic. It’s polarizing, potent, and versatile. It has a whimsical quality out in the field, with its curly-cue garlic scape dancing skyward. But it’s also undeniably sturdy, lasting for months, if not years, after harvest. I cook with it daily, suck on a clove when I’m feeling a cold coming on, and even have a stalk of it tattooed on my leg (the vision for which came to me in a dream 🔮).
I have a few family members that have a garlic “allergy”. When they smell it, they immediately make an “oh how disgusting!” face. If they discover that something they’re eating contains garlic, it is miraculously no longer edible. Fishy if you ask me!
But over the last year, there’s been trouble in paradise between me and my beloved allium. On multiple occasions, too much garlic, particularly raw, has resulted in an intense and lingering upset stomach. Am I inheriting the Vitale family garlic “allergy”? Is this my punishment for doubting them? Or do I have acid reflux because I am aging and that’s kind of normal? Or did I just fly too close to the sun, eating so much garlic for so long?
Whatever the reason, I’m fermenting my way around the issue. It seems like when my microbial friends do their work on the garlic, the tummy troubles I’ve been experiencing with raw garlic disappear. Even though I don’t understand the chemistry behind this even a little bit, my gut tells me I’m onto something. Like the many people that can’t drink milk but can still eat hard cheese. Fermentation is magic! So is garlic.
Today I’m featuring a tripleheader of techniques for fermenting and preserving garlic — fermented garlic paste (the most important ingredient in my kitchen), garlic fermented in honey, and black garlic.
Matt and I will be taking the next three weeks off, so this is the last newsletter until after Labor Day. We’re taking a little summer break before returning for the start of Florida’s growing season🌱 So now you’ve got plenty of time to peel all that garlic!
Each of those recipes takes at least a couple weeks to ferment. So give it a try over the hiatus, and think fondly of us as the smell of garlic permeates your kitchen. If you do make a garlic ferment or anything scrumptious over the next few weeks, please share your pics with us! We love to see what readers are cooking up.
garlic breath kisses,
Jackie
P.S. — We’ve had more than 50 responses to our survey! Thanks for participating. Our goal is 150 responses, so If you haven’t yet, pretty please fill it out! 📝
Workshops
I can’t believe it’s Jackie’s homemade yogurt
Jackie hosted a yogurt demonstration over the weekend for donors to the Grow Roots Miami fundraiser. Watch along and learn all the best homemade yogurt-making skills.
Donate, then get in touch, and join any/all of these sweet, live workshops:
Upcoming Workshops
Koji at Home with chef Alex Henao | Sunday, August 16th at 4 p.m.
Wicked Jack Hot Sauce with Sarah Arrazola of St Pete Ferments | Monday, September 7th at 10 a.m.
Fermenting Veggies with Susan Cartiglia of Radiate Kombucha | Saturday, September 12th at 10 a.m.
Fresh Links
🇲🇾 The Mesmerizing Geometry of Malaysia’s Most Complex Cakes | Atlas Obscura
These kaleidoscopic cakes called kek lapis Sarawak look almost too pretty to eat. They’re a sugary work of art made on the coast of Borneo. The name translates to Sarawak layers cake, and these intricate layers require patience, a steady hand and a little bit of geometry to bake.
Samantha Chong writes that the kek lapis originated fairly recently, in the 1970s and 1980s. They’re a more complex twist on a similar Dutch-Indonesian cake called lapis legit. The desserts combine “spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and star anise into a fluffy batter of butter, flour, and eggs, which bakers cook in multiple brown and beige layers.” And the layering — with that colorful batter — can take four to eight hour
🍽️ How 50 inmates inside a Michigan prison prepared a feast to celebrate the life of George Floyd | The Counter
Michael Thompson wanted to host a gathering at the Muskegon Correctional Facility in Michigan — where he’s currently serving a 40- to 60-year sentence for selling marijuana*. The event would be a tribute to George Floyd and a call for respect for Black personhood. But to do so, the meal would have to be cooked with “flimsy plastic knives, a single microwave, and empty popcorn bags.”
Through Thompson’s organizing and the cooking knowhow of three cooks serving time in the prison, they pulled it off. And the celebration of Floyd’s life resonated throughout the facility. A number of the prisoners shared letters about how much the meal meant to them. One spoke of the joy of tasting soda pop for the first time in years. Others felt pride in joining a solidarity movement for social justice.
The cooks recalled going through dozens of plastic knives just to cut the meat and vegetables donated for the meal. Tana Geneva reported on how one of the cooks, Parker Sineora, put together fried rice on bagels, his recipe that had been “inspired by the limitations of incarceration”:
Sineora woke up at 4:15 a.m. on June 22, the day the men had selected to dine. He procured the empty popcorn bags he needed in order to “fry” the rice in the microwave, carefully rotating them “so everything cooks evenly,” he said. “Do not burn the rice!” his written cooking directions caution future testers. He added seasoning and butter. Meanwhile, Cannon worked on the sliced summer sausages, adding brown sugar to create a sweet crust around the edges. He prepared cup-container soup, and chili with refried beans, and mixed all the ingredients together in a large bag. Then, he heated 53 bagels, added cheese, spread the soup and chili mixture on top, and finished with a sprinkling of crushed Doritos. The process took 4 hours.
The men in the prison were not allowed to congregate to dine together. But after returning to their cell with the meal, each person waited in silence for 8 minutes and 56 seconds before beginning to eat.
*Marijuana has been legal in Michigan since 2018. Earlier this month, the Michigan AG recommended Thompson’s sentence be commuted. Thompson, 69, has served 25 years of his prison sentence. However, an update on the story said he is currently in the hospital with COVID-19.
🎣👐 Sharing Food, Building Resilience | Hakai Magazine
Lauren Kaljur travels to coastal indigenous communities in Alaska and British Columbia, where fish (and sharing fish products) are essential to life in the region: What can these communal traditions teach us about well-being?
Governments have been looking for new ways to measure society’s well-being. We’ve been stuck with hopelessly superficial measures like gross domestic product, which can’t address many of the crises the world is facing. Research consistently shows that “belonging and connection” are essential to human societies. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs places them just above “food, water, sleep and safety.”
So there appears to be a wonderful lesson in communities where sharing food is so deep-seated:
Many of us have experience with the sense of well-being tied to sharing food with friends and family or sharing service through volunteering. These interactions don’t just feel good—they keep communities going. Libraries, care homes, food banks, and school boards can barely function without gifted labor and goods. Researchers in Japan found that food shared from home gardens in rural areas with family and friends enhances nutritional and social well-being, and even resilience to natural and economic disasters. They found less sharing and fewer relationships in urban areas. Like other social scientists, they hope that emerging forms of sharing facilitated by smartphone apps might help sustain sharing culture—and maybe even remedy the dislocation and isolation so apparent in urban centers around the world.
Threats like colonization, covid-19 and climate change have threatened resources, including the fish supply, in indigenous lands in Alaska and British Columbia, and, at times, depressed community well-being. Still, subsistence fishing remains crucial to identity there. And sharing has another benefit. It encourages better stewardship of resources — to keep ensuring there’s something to share.
Fermented Garlic Paste
Once this ingredient enters your kitchen, you will never be able to live without it again. I use the paste in place of minced garlic. It takes some time to peel all the garlic initially, but then all garlic prep is eliminated. Use this same technique with ginger, turmeric, or a mix, and feel free to add spices and herbs!
ingredients
as much garlic as you can stand to peel
salt
step-by-step
Peel the garlic. For maximum ease, smash each clove with the flat edge of a big kitchen knife. The skins then will slip right off.
Using a blender or food processor, blend garlic to a paste.
Calculate salt. Find a jar big enough to fit garlic paste and still will have headspace to weigh down the paste while it ferments . Place empty jar on scale, power on and tare so the scale reads 0 grams. Spoon paste into jar, try to remove air pockets as you go, and measure weight of paste in grams. Multiply the weight by .02 (2 percent). This is the salt quantity. (For example, if the paste weights 300 grams, use 6 grams of salt.) Sprinkle salt on top of paste.
Weigh down contents of jar. The easiest way to weigh down the contents is with a Ziploc bag filled with water.
Open Ziploc bag, and make sure there are no leaks. Put your fist inside, and press down onto the surface of the paste. Fold the outer edges of the bag over the sides of the jar. Fill the bag with water so it comes close to the top of the jar. Now place a rubber band around the top of the jar, which will keep the Ziploc bag in place.Ferment. Allow jar to ferment at room temperature for 10 days to one month or longer.
After fermentation, carefully remove the weight. Store in an airtight container in fridge, where it will keep indefinitely. Use as you would minced garlic.
Garlic Fermented in Honey
This simple technique provides preserved garlic plus a delicious garlic-infused fermented honey, which you want in your salad dressings, marinating your roasted veg, drizzled over pasta, and spooned into your mouth.
ingredients
as much garlic is you want
unpasteurized honey
step-by-step
Peel garlic cloves and place in a jar.
Pour honey so the cloves are submerged.
Stir in a teaspoon of water, which kickstarts fermentation.
Loosely cover the jar with a lid and allow to ferment at room temperature for at least a month. I’ve gone up to a year, and the results were wildly intense, almost medicinal. The cloves may float to the top, particularly at the start of the fermentation period, so be sure to stir the garlic back under so it doesn’t spend too much time exposed to oxygen.
To store, just seal the lid tightly and keep at room temperature, using the garlic and infused honey as needed.
Black Garlic
You are either the kind of person that is willing to keep a slow cooker plugged in for weeks at a time in service of delicious garlic, or you are not. This recipe is for those in the first camp. The results are most definitely worth it. If you like caramelized onions, you will adore black garlic. It’s sweet and deep and mellow- more candy than vegetable.
ingredients
as many whole heads of garlic as you can get your hands on
a slow cooker with a “keep warm” setting
step-by-step
Place whole heads of garlic in slow cooker.
Plug it in, place on lid, and set to “keep warm” (which should be around 135°F).
Allow garlic to slowly transform into black gold over the course of 2-3 weeks. Open and reseal the lid every day or so to release excess moisture. The garlic is ready once the cloves are soft and black.
Store black garlic in fridge in an airtight container. It will keep indefinitely.
Got any questions? I’ll still be around and love to respond to any inquiries. Send to sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com all your garlic and/or fermentation questions. And check out our other recipes:
We love a cranky-but-supportive dad. And we ❤️ Ratatouille (“Anyone can cook” 🐀)
Talk to Us
Send in your comments, mailbag questions, recipe mishaps, or cooking tips: sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com. Also do us a favor and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Visit our website and cook yourself something nice.
If you enjoyed this email, please share it with others. If someone forwarded this to you, click the button to sign up:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is a cook and fermentation educator in Stuart, FL. She is co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a communications specialist at the ACLU of Texas. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.
That garlic honey looks amazing! 2 questions:
1. Would you say for the first time, about a month or two is best for solid results?
2. How would you use the garlic after it's been in the honey? Do you cook it or just put it in things?