What’s in a license

The sun is streaming through the window at Avalon Bakery and I’m decompressing after the last hour of meeting with two MDA inspectors, re: getting my food business licensed.

I have long had the intention of sharing the process of getting licensed with my readers, and after this morning’s meeting, the value of that became ever more apparent.

I applied for a license about 2 months ago, after a surprisingly encouraging conversation with the inspector that covers the area where the kitchen I’m hoping to work out of resides. She told me that applying was a first step, and that we could sit down and talk about what I would need once the process was underway. This was surprise number 1: the inspectors were willing (and even happy to) consult with me. A government agency seems to want me to succeed? and they’re willing to talk to me face to face? whaaa?

So, two months later I’m seated across the table from the area inspector and a senior inspector (who is able to advise re: fermented foods). As I expected, one of the first things to come up was that I was going to need to have procedures and lab tests for each item I wanted to sell. Expected or not, I still found myself balking at the prospect of having to guarantee the process and ingredients for each individual product.

My thinking: I’m planning to work closely with local growers, I need to have flexibility built into my process, and needing to guarantee that the same veggies and spices are always used dramatically curtails my capacity to be flexible. Also, I am a pickler because I like to experiment with flavors. No surprise that the MDA doesn’t have a structure for encouraging experimentation.

Their thinking: Every vegetable is different-each starting with a different pH, taking in salt and fermenting at different rates, and fermentation length varies based on technique and personal preference. The only way to guarantee that I know how to make safe products is to test each different product I make one time, to guarantee healthy microbial populations, to guarantee pH below 4.6, and some other guarantees that happen in a lab.

After a bit of back and forth, it became apparent that there isn’t very much wiggle room in this, but that the inspectors can understand my concerns about the ways this system fails to address my needs. The most positive outcome was the fect that by being in conversation about these laws and how they affect a small/local/seasonal processor, I get to express my needs, which (the more I -and we- ask) can eventually move towards change. slowly. So, conclusion #1, i’ll be getting some products lab tested, and then we’ll go from there.

The second interested thing to arise was my conversation about sales. I explained that I want to sell direct to consumer. I’m not looking to wholesale and I don’t have a retail location, so my primary goal is to sell at farmer’s markets. This raised another interesting issue. As a limited processor, I would be licensed to produce a product that could then be sold to a business and sold (by them) under their license. my desire to sell direct to consumer (making myself a retailer as well as a processor) would require me to get another license to sell at the market of my choosing.

If you’re reading this I hope you’re thinking, “wow, our food system is a serious mess.” There isn’t much that says bureaucracy quite like needing to get 2 licenses simply because you want to sell to people yourself, instead of through a separate institution. Networks of accountability this day in age is a funny, funny thing.

Nonetheless, we plodded through the conversation (commiserating over the fact that things definitely need to change, but that change will take quite some time) and at the end of it, I had a list of tasks to embark on in preparing myself to get licensed.

1) write my process for each product I make

2) lab test each product I make

3) write my ‘safe operating procedures’ and ‘safe sanitary operating procedures’

4) develop and articulate a retail process.

And so, the fun begins. I’ll keep you posted!

Please, feel free to ask specific questions.

Cucumbers, Part 2

Just a quick update for those pickle fans who have been nagging me about classic dills…

I had my first “substantial” harvest of pickling cucumbers just the other day! My plants look healthy and if all continues I should get few gallons worth of pickles out of all this:) It may seem minor, but it’s a start.

Here is a photo of my plants in the growing trays before I transplanted them:

And a photo of the very first cucumber I spotted from amongst the leaves!

Hopefully that’s enough of a teaser to get you excited. I’m still waiting for details to fall into place before I am able to announce where I’ll be processing and selling my pickles this season.

’till then!

Thyme for Radishes

This past sunday was the pickle club’s END OF THE SEASON FEAST!

more than 20 members and guests were in attendance and the menu– a season twist on Jewish brunch foods– fit the day splendidly.

Smoked whitefish spread with preserved lemon, mock chopped liver, bagels by the DIB, homemade assorted cream cheeses, Delicata Sunshine Rhubarb chutney, an enormous salad with lettuce from my garden, brother nature, and rising pheasant sunflower shoots, and, the coup de grace– this season’s first pickle: THYME RADISHES!

These little jewels, grown at Streetside (the place where my cucumbers are going to live out their days) were ripe for the pickling last week and when little miss delicata sunshine completed an experiment and offered me a sample, I decided I had to try my hand at them as well. The radishes are assorted varieties, but one of my favorite things about them is that their red coloring dies the brine a flourescent pink color which ultimately permeates the whole radish– sort of a blush wine pickle:)

Thyme for Radishes

enough radishes to fill a 1/2 gallon jar mostly full

4 cloves garlic

5 sprigs fresh thyme

tsp black peppercorns

3 Tbs pickling salt

1 quart water

Cut the stems off the radishes and scrub the roots (I chose to leave mine on but made sure to clean them well). Add radishes, garlic, pepper, and thyme to a 1/2 gallon jar. In a quart jar mix your brine (making sure to dissolve the salt completely) and then pour the brine over the radishes until completely submerged. Add a weight (I use a ziploc bag filled with water). Allow to ferment at 65degrees for one week. enjoy!

The thyme radishes were so well received that I put down another gallon last night. I might even sew some more radishes and try to make a bigger batch in a few weeks, radishes are one of the faster growing vegetables.

While the pickles rounded out the brunch fare with a zing, i didn’t want to send anyone away without dessert. Lucky for them (and me:)) I had put down a batch of cultured root beer sometime in February and it’d been chilling in the fridge ever since. So, I served up cultured root beer floats! Because we had the whole brunch in the garden under a blazing hot sun, you can imagine that the sweet and tangy root beer floats were very well received:)

Future Plans, Part 1: CUCUMBERS

The pickle club season has officially come to a close. As of mid-April, the last of six pickle pairings were distributed to club members, and with only the promise of an “end of the season” feast before them, many have asked, “what’s next for Suddenly Sauer?”

Well.

Lots of growing is in the works… but instead of focusing on growing the size of my business, I’m focusing on growing the quality. Starting with growing my own cucumbers for pickling!

Many times since I started Suddenly Sauer last August I’ve had requests for pickles. When I’ve smilingly replied, “sure, what kind,” I’ve often been met with confusion. What kind? Old dill? New dill?

“ah, I see…” I’ve been known to retort knowingly.

As a pickler, I spend a lot of my time working against the assumption that a pickle is a pickle; that is, that a pickle is anything other than a tart and tangy cucumber.

But for most contemporary picklers, pickles are so many things! Kimchi, kraut, and any other fermented vegetable under the sun can be lumped together within the broadly defined kingdom of “pickle.”

That said, I couldn’t handle the disappointment in the faces of my “fans” when my list of products fell short of including Classic Dills. My reasons for not including them? One grower in my network who was able to get me some cucumbers lost his plants to powdery mildew shortly thereafter. No other Detroit or SE Michigan growers brought pickling cukes to market (besides the wholesalers and conventional growers), and I simply didn’t want to compromise.

At ADAMAH we made our cucumber pickles from cukes that were grown a mile down the road from the pickle kitchen. Cucumbers were almost always picked the same morning they were pickled, or, at least the same day. So, needless to say, I’ve been spoiled. And I believe one can really taste the difference.

So as of this morning, I have 60 cucumber seeds gently tucked into a germination tray. They’ll spend the next 5-6 weeks being coddled and then out to Streetside they’ll go!

Tomatoes, Bachelor Buttons, and Cucumbers under the grow lights

As long as everything goes according to plan (which it rarely does in farming), I’ll have Suddenly Sauer Pickles as early as JULY.

keep your fingers crossed:)

the perfect shmear

I recently wrote a blog post for the Jew and the Carrot about the cream cheese I’ve been making for the Detroit Institute of Bagels for the past few weeks.

check it out here

Maple Juniper Gravlax

Salmon brined and ready to cure

Making Gravlax has been a long time coming. Since December, I’ve been fixating on the idea of having homemade lox, homemade bagels, and homemade cream cheese. As of the past couple weeks, the second and third of those wishes have been on their way to coming true.

Not only did I make my own batch of sourdough leavened Hampshire Farms Spelt Flour bagels (which were dense, delicious, and not a whole lot like “true” Jewish Bagels), but I’ve also been inching toward my goal of learning to make cream cheese. So far, the technique that has worked best for me follows:

8 cups whole unhomogenized cow milk

1 cup cultured buttermilk

5 drops liquid vegetable rennet

Warm the milk and buttermilk to 90 degrees. swirl 1 Tbs water together with 5 drops of rennet, add the the warmed milk, stir briefly. Cover pot and let sit for 6-8 hours, until milk has curdled together in the center of the pot and is surrounded by whey. The more rennet you add and the longer you let it ferment the drier the cream cheese will be. Pour the curds into a strainer lined with cheesecloth and let drain 24 hours in the fridge. When it’s reached desired consistency, add salt and whatever other seasonings and blend with an immersion blender.

It’s also important to note that while my bagels were OK, a person hoping to start a downtown bagel shop recently wandered into my life and where my hearty bagels taste a bit like health food, his are doughy, crispy on the outside, and superbly flavored. Can’t WAIT to see what he does with these beauties.

So all of these accomplishments/excitements converged to impel me back toward my goal of making lox. Traditional lox (at least, in my understanding) are salt cured and smoked… a bit of an endeavor. Gravlax, another norwegian curing technique, involve no smoking and a salty sweet brine. Needless to say, this intrigued me.

I found a recipe calling for a Juniper and Maple Syrup brine, and after discovering a cache of “ornamental” juniper bushes lining a parking lot near MGM GRAND casino (on grand river just NW of downtown), I knew I had to get my hands on some salmon and make it happen.

Please note that wandering into whole foods looking for sustainably fished salmon was a challenge– not because there is a dearth of options, but because living on the great lakes means there is an abundance of local fish, salmon not amongst them, and at least a few metro detroit fishmongers. BUT, while my ultimate goal is to learn to brine Michigan Lake fish, I wanted to start with salmon, and I wanted my salmon to be happy. Coupled with the fact that I’m only in the burbs on sundays and Superior Fish in royal oak wasn’t open on sunday– I found myself pondering the positives and negatives of gill vs. troll netting in the shiny biomes of the whole foods seafood section. I can honestly say by the time I pointed and said “I want that one,” all that was driving my decision was the price tag.

But my guilt has little to do with why you’re reading this post, so back to the good stuff:

Crushing 1 tsp Juniper Berries harvested from the MGM Grand parking lot

Grinding the Juniper Berries and 2 Tbs Sea Salt

Mixing salt and juniper with 2 Tbs Grade C Maple SYRUP:)

Stirring.

Spreading.

After mixing the brine, all that was left to do was spreading the mix over the 1.5 lbs of rinsed and patted dry filets. The recipe book I was using Full Moon Feast says to wrap and weight the fish, allowing 48 hours of pressing in the fridge for 1 inch thick filets and 72 hrs in the fridge for 2 inch thick filets. Because I’m an extremist, I’m pressing my 1 inch thick filets for 3 days. yum.

SO now my gravlax are sitting in a pan in my fridge with a glass jug full of water pressing it down. Supposedly, tomorrow afternoon (the 3 day mark) the skin will be very red and I’ll clean the brine from the fish’s surface and gleefully enjoy it– on a bagel. With cream cheese, red onion, and capers.

Alternatively, I may try to recreate the wildly successful lox pizza my neighbors made during the snow day 2 weeks ago. Either way, a feast is forthcoming!

Russel (pickled beet) Borscht

This month’s Pickle Club is receiving a pickle that has a story attached to it, and I thought it was worth sharing that story here.

At the beginning of the summer, I wrote a post about Whole Baby Beets. These pickles were good, but I tweaked the recipe over time and ended up liking them enough to make a big batch of whole beet pickles for the pickle club. While they were in the fermentation chamber (much less fancy than it sounds), I happened across a true gem of culinary history at John K. King bookstore (the largest used bookstore in Michigan). This book:

This RELIC has since resurfaced in my daily life two times… and the reason it has anything to do with this post, and with pickles (beyond the inherent connections between Jewish food and fermented pickles) is that there turns out to be a traditional Jewish fermented beet pickle called “Russel.”

As the story goes, there was a tradition of placing whole washed/scrubbed/topped beets in a crock covered in boiled-then-cooled water. no salt (what? no salt? I can’t figure out why… any suggestions welcome). These beets would sit for 4 weeks in a warm place. When they were done, the beets and the vinegary brine were used in a beet borscht known as Russel Borscht:

I’ve adapted the recipe and provided it to my pickle club as follows:

Russel Borscht

(adapted from Love and Knishes, By Sarah Kasdan)

1 jar beet brine and 1 jar Russel beets (shredded)

1 lb fresh beets, shredded

3 cups water

½ onion, diced

1 tsp salt (or, to taste)

½ Tbs honey

Additions: sour cream, hot boiled potatoes, hard boiled egg, minced parsley

Bring all ingredients to a boil, simmer for 15 minutes. Can be chilled then served with hot boiled potato, or served warm– you decide! **note: boiling the pickle brine will pasteurize it, if you’re seeking the probiotic power of pickles, add the pickle juice only after the soup has cooled to 110 degrees.

Hopefully this brief trip down memory lane has been as interesting for you as it was for me. And If you do choose to make a foray into the realm of traditional Russel Borscht, post news of your experiences here!

Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar

If you like food and you’re eager to see what’s on offer in your neighborhood, start by checking out the upcoming Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar

to be held at Whitdel Arts Center: 1250 Hubbard (entrance on Porter at garden level) from 7 pm – 12 am on Friday, December 10th

I’ll be there with special gift wrapped pickles, along with savory appetizers from Angela Newsom of the Corktown Community Kitchen and Sara Steenbergh’s delicious candies and sweets!

I wanted to provide a preview of the gift boxes I’ll be selling, and let you know that you can pre-order your pickles by e-mailing your desired package to products@suddenlysauer.com

Each box contains:

2 jars of wild fermented pickles
a page of advice and recipes specific to each pickle combination
festive ribbons to match your holiday cheer!

Pickle options & prices are:

Dilly Beans and Hot Head Cauliflower: $12/box

Dilly Beans and Green Tomatoes Olive Style: $11/box

Cauliflower and Sauerruben: $11/box

Sauerruben and Green Tomatoes Olive Style: $10/box

I’ve got an assortment of ribbons to choose from!

Hope to hear from you! We’ve got a limited number of boxes so please, act fast:)

The Jew and the Carrot

I recently wrote a blog post for The Jew and the Carrot. I put a lot of energy into the post and it talks about a side of pickling that I don’t often choose to ruminate on in this blog, and that is how pickling I see pickling as a Jewish act. I’m including a preview of the post here and providing a link to it, in case you’re interested in reading a little bit more about my story from a different angle!

When people ask what I do, I usually smile widely before answering, “I’m a pickler.”

There are few things more intriguing, bizarre, or comical than a fairly average looking 25 year old purporting to form her career around being elbow deep in brine. This is undoubtedly because careers like “pickler,” and “farmer,” have become something of an anachronism for several generations. And although pickling wasn’t taught in school, and the closest my suburban upbringing came to homesteading was my mother’s nightly ritual of reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, preservation has truly become my daily bread.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/133480/#ixzz16npaP6lx

Butternut Squash Kimchi

Butternut Squash: Sliced and Waiting

Some of my favorite pictures came from making this pickle. I was originally inspired by the day I spent helping out at Cultured Pickle Shop in Berkeley, CA almost a year ago. While there, among many beautiful pickles, I had the pleasure of helping to prep a batch of Pumpkin Kimchi. I didn’t see much of the process, beyond chopping these enormous pumpkins Alex Hovzen carefully sliced, sampled, and deemed worthy. It was she who mixed the spices and sealed the pickles in brine, in the fermentation chamber, slowly bubbling away.

I was enchanted by the idea of a squash pickle, but I really had no basis for how to make one. The basic principles were a bit more difficult to grasp here: would I salt and sweat the squash or brine it? Would I add my spices whole as I do for my parsnip kimchi, or blend/mince them. Luckily, after buying 20 lbs of butternut squash from Royal Oak Community Farm, I found myself at Earthworks Urban Farm, discussing kimchi with Pa. I’ve never made traditional kimchi, only having been schooled in the ADAMAH (spring?) style. Among other things, Pa and Ma are fermentation enthusiast of the highest degree, and I knew that asking Pa’s advice on my kimchi conundrum wouldn’t lead me too far afield.

Together, we hatched a plan for me to brine the sliced squash for a few hours, drain it, then toss the brined squash with my mixture of spices. I decided to include Earthwork’s braising mix (a selection of hot asian greens) in the mix, and Pa suggested I blend it right in with the other spices.

Here are some pictures to help articulate this process:

Brined and Ready

Hot Peppers for the Mix

Scallions Sliced and Garlic, Ginger, and Hot Peppers Minced

Squash Tossed with Spices & Brining Mix

Butternut Squash Kimchi

20 Lbs Butternut Squash
2 Lbs Braising Mix
Bunches of Scallions
Hot Peppers
Garlic
Ginger
2.5 gallons of brine

Slice butternut squash as pictured (I used a food processor). Place it in a crock and pour brine over the squash. Let it soak for 6 hours. Pour off the brine (reserve it), rinse the squash in cold water if it tastes really strongly of salt.

Prep spice mix by pureeing ginger, garlic, and hot peppers, and slicing scallions.

Puree braising mix, raw, in a food processor.

Mix braising greens, spices, and scallions together. Toss with brined and drained squash.

Pack into a crock and press down until brine is covering squash. Add as little of the reserved brine as necessary to submerge squash (remember, it’ll continue to wilt in the first 24 hours). Add weight and cover.

I let mine ferment for only 4 days and it was almost too soft when I took it out. That said, the flavor was divine!

My adventures in butternut squashing were a marked success, and a few things I’ll experiment with next year will be adding less brine in the final stage and slicing the squash a bit thicker so it can ferment a little longer without going soggy. Otherwise, the flavors were right on the mark!

I’ve been enjoying my squash atop a slice of toast slathered with cashew butter. You may turn up your nose at that… but it just means you haven’t tried it yet:)

Suddenly Sauer