Recipe: Fermented Garlic Paste

I love garlic.

Before I started fermenting, I would cook garlic in everything. When I discovered that garlic is antibacterial and antiviral, I started eating it raw to get rid of my colds (which works for about 12 hours, by the way, but still it's generally better than most OTC medicine).

But then I fermented garlic, and yes, I feel I have stepped my garlic game up in a serious way.

I just sort of made this one up as I couldn't really find any garlic paste recipes out there that I liked. It's really simple. Some people leave it to sit out for 6-12 weeks, but I got impatient and sampled it after a week. It's strong and absolutely incredible.

Maybe don't attempt this if you don't like garlic.

But then again, I've heard people say that fermenting garlic makes it much more mild. Maybe those are the people that let it ferment for 6-12 weeks.

Ingredients
Lots of garlic
Sea salt
Filtered water

Preparation
Peel all the garlic. I know a lot of people who claim this youtube video is helpful, but it did not help me. I peeled it all by hand, and I started to question whether it was all worth it. Trust me, I'd peel more if I had to.

Dissolve your sea salt in the filtered water to make your brine. I used a 2% brine or about 1 tablespoon of sea salt.

Add the garlic to the brine and let it sit for about a week. Blend it up when you're ready to eat it.

Have someone ready and waiting when you swoon the first time you smell it. Be prepared to put it on everything!

Recipe: Avocado Cream Pasta with Bacon

This is the perfect recipe when it's warm out. Or whenever, really. I found the inspiration for this recipe at the Realistic Nutritionist and I've been making my own version ever since.

This recipe involves an avocado cream sauce with pasta. I substitute milk kefir for cream which gives it another level of flavor. However, it's tricky to warm this up without burning the avocado (or the cream/kefir) which is why I tend to only make this during the summer months. 

My trick, in case, you're having problems yourself, is to time the pasta and bacon to finish at the same time and then add the sauce - the sauce warms up a bit because of the hot pasta and bacon and it all evens out in your mouth.

Ingredients

2 avocados

1-2 cups of milk kefir (or cream)

small squeeze of lime or lemon 

4 pieces of bacon

1 small onion (or 3 shallots)

Monterrey Jack cheese

Cheddar cheese

garlic paste (or 3-4 garlic cloves)

1 tsp pepper flakes (or cayenne pepper)

salt

pepper

oil 

2-3 cups cooked pasta

Preparation

Cook your pasta. 

Cook your bacon. (I prefer to put mine in the oven at 400 for 15-20 minutes.)

Put some oil in a pan and saute your onions. If you're using garlic cloves, add  them to the pan after a few minutes as well. Cook until the onions are translucent - about 5 minutes.

While everything is heating up, peel your avocado and scoop it into a blender or food processor. Add the milk kefir/cream, a squeeze of a lemon or lime, and a teaspoon of hot pepper flakes.

When the onion mixture has finished, add it to the blender and pulse until smooth. If you want your sauce a little thinner, add more kefir/cream.

When the pasta is finished, spoon it into your bowl. Pour the sauce on top. Crumble your bacon and add it on top as well. Top it off with some cheese. Salt and pepper to taste.

If you're using garlic paste, put a small bit on top - perhaps a quarter of a teaspoon.

Enjoy! 

Total time: 30 minutes
Serving: 2-3 people

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Recipe: Fermented Cranberry Sauce

I never really liked cranberries growing up. They're pretty sour, and let's be honest, my mother wasn't buying the fresh fruit anyway. If I saw cranberries, it was at Thanksgiving and it was this weird cranberry jelly from a can.

Since I've been doing my own Thanksgiving, I decided to try again with the cranberries. (Also, the boyfriend insisted that he wanted a cranberry dish.)

I'm so happy I made this! And yes, for those wondering, I made this back in November of 2013 and it's still fresh - one of the joys of fermenting foods.

I found the recipe originally on Oh Lardy and it's probably perfect exactly the way she wrote it, but I modified it to reflect ingredients I had on hand. The cranberries in this are not sour, but they're very sweet and the cinnamon really helps balance the whole thing.

Ingredients

4 cups of cranberries

1/2 cup walnuts

1/4 cup honey

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 cup whey

1/2 cup kombucha vinegar

1 tsp cinnamon

3-4 cloves (ground, if possible)

Juice from 1 orange 

Juice from half lemon

Preparation

Mix all ingredients together in a food processor or blender and pulse until desired consistency. I left mine mostly chunky - you can see some of the whole cranberries that I left.

Add mixture to a mason jar.

Leave at room temperature for 2-3 days to ferment.

Enjoy! Refrigerate to preserve.

Total Time: 2-3 days total, about 10 minutes active work
Serves: Many!

Seriously, in addition to Thanksgiving and eating with meat, I love putting this on my sandwiches. Here it is with some brie right before I grilled it - and you could easily add some spinach as well!

Recipe: Fermented Hot Sauce and Hot Pepper Flakes

While I prefer most of my foods to be plain, or seasoned with, say, basil or thyme, there are a whole lot of people out there who need a bit more spice. Hot sauce is really popular where I'm from, and I've even known a few people to carry small bottles around with them. 

I'm starting to come around to loving spicy flavors, but until I do, I've made hot sauce and hot pepper flakes for the boyfriend so he can season his food as he sees fit.

Best of all, it's fermented! So it takes awhile to make, but it lasts forever! Unless you pour it on everything of course...

First up is the actual hot sauce. I found the recipe at Killer Pickles (who, yes actually, has the BEST pickle recipe). I found all of my hot peppers at the farmer's market. It was the end of the season so my particular farmer was selling bags of peppers for $1.

I threw in all of the assorted peppers I was lucky enough to score (plus a few more from the regular market), mustard seeds, and garlic in brine for 4-5 weeks. Then I soaked some sun-dried tomatoes in the brine before blending everything up and pressing through a sieve. 

(Original recipe here.)

And it's great! Assuming you like hot sauce, of course.

Of course, I can't just throw away all the bits that don't make up the sauce. I saved the seeds and little bits of pepper and, thanks to Phickle, decided to use them as I would hot pepper flakes. 

I don't have a dehydrator to make a proper dried spice, but that's okay. I left it as a paste and I stir it into soups and stir-fries where hot sauce would be a little strange. 

(Is hot sauce ever strange in foods?)

Anyway, let me know if you try making your own!

Recipe: Healthy Macaroni & Cheese with Butternut Squash

This chilly weather has me longing for comfort food so of course I needed to whip up some healthy macaroni and cheese.

I know what you're thinking. There's no such thing as healthy macaroni and cheese. But I assure you this is!

I suppose you could also make the argument that this isn't really macaroni and cheese, but despite the random ingredients used to create a cheesy sauce, it tastes like it!

This recipe is modified from the Whole Foods Diet Cookbook, an excellent cookbook that's all about whole, natural foods. The secret to this recipe is that you're not dumping gobs of cheese in the pan; you're creating a sauce with beans and butternut squash as the basis that is then flavored with cheese.

Don't worry, there's still a good amount of cheese in there.

If you have picky eaters, don't tell them the ingredients. They'll love it as long as they don't know.

Oh, and of course I tossed in some other vegetables to make it a more satisfying dish. This is a little more hands on than some of my other recipes, but it makes a big batch and I think it's worth it!

Ingredients

1 15-ounce can of cannellini beans
2 cups butternut squash, cut into cubes
1/4 cup kefir cheese (or cream cheese)
3/4 cup milk kefir (or milk)
3 shallots, diced
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced
3 cups chopped shiitake mushrooms, diced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Pepper
Salt
1 tbsp flour
1/2 cup milk kefir (or milk)
1 cup cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup Monterey Jack, grated
One tbspWorcestershire sauce

3-5 cups of cooked noodles
1/2 cup parmesan, grated
1/2 cup flax, ground
Oil

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Rinse and drain the cannellini beans. Place them, along with the butternut squash, kefir cheese, and 3/4 cup of milk into a blender or processor and blend.

Heat a large skillet over a medium flame. (I used a cast iron skillet because this is also going in the oven - less dishes to wash!) Put a bit of oil in the pan and saute the shallots for 3-5 minutes. Add the sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and thyme and saute for another 3-5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Remove the vegetable mixture from the skillet and set aside. 

(You should probably start boiling the water for the noodles around this time. If you're not sure how to cook your pasta noodles, follow the instructions on the box.)

Place a tablespoon of oil in the large skillet, along with a tablespoon of flour and stir until it thickens into a nice paste. Add the 1/2 cup of milk kefir. The sauce should continue to thicken over the next 3 minutes. If necessary, add more milk kefir to form the sauce.

After the sauce has thickened, add the butternut squash mixture and vegetable mixture into the pan. Add one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce. 

Slowly stir in the grated cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses and stir until melted, about 5-10 minutes. Add the cooked pasta noodles.

If you're cooking this in a cast-iron or otherwise oven safe pan, that's awesome. If not, pout your macaroni and cheese into an oven safe pan.

Mix 1/2 cup parmesan with 1/2 cup of ground flax and a bit of oil in a separate container. This is your "breadcrumb" topping! Sprinkle it on top of your mac and cheese.

Bake for 10 minutes. And enjoy!

Total Time: about 1 hour and 15 minutes 

Serves: 4-8 people

I Made Sour Cream!

So for some reason, I'm on a condiment kick. I've made ketchup and hot sauce, I'm currently making Worcestershire sauce, and I'm looking into mayonnaise... But this post is about sour cream!

I love sour cream, but I rarely ever have it in the house. I tend to substitute yogurt in most of my Mexican dishes, but when I realized from Phickle that all you needed to make sour cream was a little cream and a couple of milk kefir grains, I got on it immediately!

I only have access to ultra-pasteurized cream so I wasn't sure it would work perfectly. I bought the smallest container of heavy whipping cream and hoped for the best.

I took a few of my small but growing grains and I tossed them in the container. My normal fermenting time is 24 hours so I shook the container throughout the day, per normal, and the next morning I woke up and it just felt different.

I tried shaking it and nothing moved. I was terrified, but when I opened it, I had thick, wonderful sour cream!

I figured there would be no way to separate my grains from the thick mass so I decided to sacrifice them. (After all, eating grains is really healthy!) However, it turned out to be incredibly easy to spot my 3 grains because they look so different than the rest. Two were on top and the third stuck to my spoon so the grains have been saved for now.

And as for the taste - it's creamy and wonderful! The boyfriend was nervous and told me I was "living dangerously" as "dairy should always be refrigerated," but then he tasted it and changed his tune completely, calling me a genius and "ahead of the crowd." So there. 24 hour sour cream. Boyfriend approved.

Recipe: Stuffed Bell Peppers, Vegetarian Style

This is one of my favorite meals and I'm so excited to share it with you. It's vegetarian. It's very cheesy. It's a little spicy. It's worth the wait. And if there are any omnivores out there worried about not eating meat, fear not. You'll be very full and hopefully more than satisfied.

I made this last night with a lot of fermented veggies I had in the fridge, and it was the best yet. Of course, you're not getting all the probiotics that way... Below is the recipe. Feel free to sub with fermented veggies if you have them, but it's great with fresh veg as well!

That said, it's not the prettiest thing to look at, but I tried to make it somewhat appealing!

Ingredients
2 red bell peppers
1 small red onions
1/4 cup of garlic brine (or 4-6 garlic cloves)
1 jalapeno (or 1 tbsp cayenne pepper)
1/4 pound of feta cheese
1/2 cup of another soft cheese (blue cheese or goat cheese are my favorite for this!)
1 tbsp dried paprika
1 tbsp dried thyme
1-2 tbsp of yogurt (or milk kefir)
grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup of quinoa

Preparation
Pre-heat the oven to 350.

Slice the bell peppers in half and remove the seeds/stem. Place them hollow side down in an oven safe pan. Put a little olive oil on them and cover with tin foil. Bake for 30 minutes.

While the peppers are roasting away, dice your onions, jalapeno, and garlic if necessary and toss them in a mixing bowl. (If you're using garlic brine, add that as well.) Add the feta cheese, your other soft cheese, paprika, and thyme. Mix well and add the yogurt - just enough to cover everything and really make a nice sauce. If you're using fresh vegetables, you might need to add up to 5 tbsp of yogurt to get everything properly covered.

Remove the bell peppers from the oven after 30 minutes. Take off the tin foil and turn the bell peppers over. Fill the bell peppers with the yogurt mixture and sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on top of each one. Place the bell peppers back in the oven for another 30 minutes.

While the bell peppers are roasting (again), it's time to start the quinoa! You can follow the directions on the packet or, if you don't have any instructions, just double the amount of water to quinoa. For example, boil 1 cup of water with 1/2 cup of quinoa and stir until the water has been absorbed.

And finally I place the stuffed bell peppers on a little bed of quinoa. Enjoy!

Total Time: Approximately 1 hour and 5 minutes
Serves: 2-4 people