Today I was inspired as I set slabs of bacon to cure in my fridge. I actually took my son out for Japanese food for lunch today. More on that later.
I know what a lot of you are thinking - there's a lot of sodium in them thar foods. It's true of you ate nothing but cured food you'd be in salt overload but that's not how I eat. These foods are condiments or sides designed to make other food taste good.
Well known cured foods include ham and salami and lox.
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| Some of my favorite cured foods |
Curing is the rubbing or soaking food in substances that remove moisture from the cells of the food and through osmosis replaces the moisture with a solution that is downright inhospitable to bacteria. Usually it's sugary or salty. It's a method that has been used for thousands of years to preserve and improve food.
Pickled foods are almost always cured. Pickling is the action of acetic acid (vinegar) on foods. Some pickles don't list vinegar as an ingredient. In that case the vinegar comes as a result of the action of beneficial bacteria created in the salty environment.
My mom used to make great pickles in a ceramic crock in the garage. She's British and the spiciest thing I ever saw her eat is ketchup - except for those pickles, which she cured with jalepeños.
Here we have some of my favorites including my ubiquitous peppers and onions, boquerones, salt-cured capers, Trappey's pickled tobasco peppers and my mother's recipe for quick cucumber and onion pickles.
Salt cured fish are wonderful. Not only do they have a wonderful flavor but the enhance the taste of other food. These boquerones aren't too fishy, like some anchovies or oilier fish like herring or mackerel.
These fish also bring umami to your food. Umami is the mouth-watering flavor that seems to have the effect of bringing out the savory qualities of other food. It's found in many seafoods including oily fish, clams, seaweed, etc.
Trappey's pickled tobasco peppers
are a nice treat. They are spicy but not really frightening. The liquid they come with is a handy seasoning, a little bit spicy and sour from the vinegar. I love to eat them with fried chicken or well cooked meats.
Capers are a fun food, at once flowery and salty. They are the unripe bud of a small bush. I planted two of these in my backyard last month. It will be years before I get any buds. The ones in the picture are salt-cured, just packed in salt with no water or vineger. They taste more flowery than the ones packed in water or vinegar.
Of course you see one of my favorite cured foods,
onions and peppers.
The cucumbers on the plates here were pickled overnight in a solution of salt and sugar. I make it like my mom did, simply slicing the cucumbers and onions and adding salt and sugar to the water until it tastes right. I've never measured it but you can tell when you taste it if is right. There was almost always a bowl of these in the fridge when I grew up.
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| Slabs of my home cured, hot almond smoked bacon |
Note: For lunch my wife and son and I went to one of our favorite local restaurants, a place serving Silicon Valley for many years.
Tomisushi has the usual Japanese menu items but the qualtity is there in everything.
It's the kind of place where everybody at the table says 'you have to try this' when the food arrives. Even the miso soup is delicious. Chicken teryaki tastes smoky and not too sweet. The sushi is always high quality and the fried foods come out greaseless and crunchy.
I sauteed some onions and tomatoes in olive oil, threw in some peas, rosemary from the garden and some thin slices of home cured and smoked pork. The salad is just apple and walnuts with a little walnut oil and lemon juice and black pepper. Dash of salt on the salad but the ravioli didn't need it.
mushrooms. It simmered while I made the turkey. When the potatoes and mushrooms were soft I used a stick blender and pureed it. Add some salt and pepper and it's ready. I garnished it with a little of my home smoked pork belly.
