Miso Madness is almost over as the Munchkin is starting to feel twitchy over our dwindling supply of soap…
…which means that our run of frenzied fermentation is coming to an end and the previously, prematurely terminated Soap Marathon is going to have to resume (yeah, our soaps are really popular and people just can’t get enough of them; this is A Good Thing, she tells me ;-P).
After the frenzy of rice koji making and the resulting shinshu and shiro misos, we are ending our run with a couple of pig tail buckets of hatcho miso. The first bucket was made two days ago, however, it turned out to be about a gallon short because I held back some of the black bean koji to reinoculate the next batch of beans. There was a slight set-back with that particular batch (yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Great Bean Bungle…let’s move on…) and to make a long story short, another batch had to be introduced into the equation. Anyway, back to the short bucket: I just “happened” to have a gallon batch of miso from last year which was made with cacao beans and while very aromatic, the chocolate taste was just too overpowering (yes, chocolate-lovers, this is actually possible!). So, we emptied all of the containers, mixed them together again with the addition of bird peppers (Korean-style??) and a generous handful of black peppercorns.
Mixing Black Beans, Last Year’s Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns.
And voila’, the first full bucket of Belizean Style Chocolate (Cacao Bean) Hatcho Miso (with chilli and black pepper) was born:
Just the other day, Gnome had mentioned that we seemed to be eating beans everyday. Like a good Chinese woman, I blinked once and then placidly ignored his comment. I am sure that all of you out there will understand that once in a while, especially during wild intense times of fermentation madness, one can get rather tired and have little energy left to cook fanciful foods daily. Hence the reason why I haven’t been posting up recipes lately.
However, Gnome added insult to injury and did a big whopper of a bungle. During Hatcho Miso preparation, he over-cooked a tonne of black beans which could not be used for miso making. He left me with 40 cups (22 lbs or 10 kgs) of mushy black beans and urged me to “make them go away, please.”
Over-cooked Black Beans.
And so with a teeny little ounce of creativity which I squeezed out by sheer willpower, I managed to create a recipe with the excess black beans. They are bean burgers made with home-made coconut flour and rice flour; they are especially spicy with whole black peppers and chilli peppers. I have called them Bean Bungle Burgers.
Bean Bungle Burgers.
When we sat down to eat last night, Gnome rather sheepishly said, “the beans are good.” I smiled and gave him a Chinese woman approving nod.
Making Coconut cream and flour involves quite a few steps, a little muscle, time and diligence. When you do everything from scratch, you realise the value of what you are actually making. The making of the cream and flour go hand in hand as you will see from the following steps:
Firstly, Gnome has to climb a coconut tree to harvest and then he de-husks them. Next, he splits them in half and grates the flesh with a shredder attached to a hand-drill.
Grating Coconuts.
The next step is to squeeze the liquid out of the coconut. I usually add some boiling water to the coconut and I squeeze the shredded coconut through a muslin cloth to get all the milk and cream out. This is done in small portions in order to maximise the quantity and once all the milk/cream has been extracted, the shredded coconut is placed in trays and laid outside to sun-dry.
Coconut Meal Ready For Drying.
Meanwhile, the liquid is placed in the fridge and as it cools down, the milk separates to the bottom and the cream forms a layer a the top. The cream is skimmed off the top, a number of times, and poured into these bags for selling:
Coconut Cream For Sale.
Each bag contains the fresh cream of one coconut. Belizeans like to cook rice with this; a Belizean cook in Punta Gorda told me that he just needed one of these bags to cook a 5lb pot of rice. Another great way to use this cream is to indulge in a pina colada or blend with fruit to make a yummy coconut “shake.” You can even use it in bread making to give a silky texture to a loaf.
Usage and Storage of Coconut Cream:
Our coconut cream is sold in the frozen state. Store in the freezer. When you are ready to use, simply use it in the frozen state. If you only require a small amount, cut off a chunk with a knife and store the remaining cream in the freezer. The shelf life of this product is 6 months if stored properly in the freezer.
Anyway, back to the shredded coconut; it takes about 6 to 8 hours for it to completely dry in the sun. Once dried, the coconut is put through a stone mill to grind it into flour. You end up with a fluffy meal which is perfect for breads, pancakes and muffins and it is has the added bonus of being gluten-free.
Coconut Flour.
The coconut flour has a nutty flavour which adds texture to all kinds of foods. 1lb (454g) of this flour contains the meal of about 6 to 7 coconuts.
Usage and Storage of Coconut Flour:
Coconut flour is highly nutritious so should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer. The coconut flour can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Otherwise, it can be stored in the freezer for up to 6 months. We usually deliver this product in the frozen state; in order to thaw this product, simply place in the fridge for 24 hours.
We are currently selling coconut cream, stone-ground coconut flour and rice flour within Belize. The coconut cream can only be sold within Punta Gorda. However, flours can be transported anywhere within Belize. Please check out The Apothecary for our Health Food prices.
As l contemplate the Miracle of the Resurrection, like all good Catholic Gnomes do, I decided to dedicate and make a gesture in Celebration of this Time by humbly naming my latest fermentation effort: Resurrection Metheglin. As all mead drinkers know, a metheglin is a type of mead that has herbs and spices added to it in order to alter the taste and/or properties of the basic honey and water ferment.
In this particular case, I have used liquorice root, star anise and Ligusticum wallichi, also known as Chuanxiong Rhizoma in Traditional Chinese Medicine and also as Szechuan Lovage. The star anise and liquorice root add that sweetish, unctuous and mouth-coating flavour while the Rhizoma adds a more earthy, complex and spicy aroma that has hints of fennel and celery.
Liquorice Root, Star Anise and Ligusticum wallichi used to make this year’s Resurrection Metheglin.
The rest of the recipe is made with our usual Rainforest Honey and Toledo Rainwater adjusted to our (mild) preferred strength of 4-5% alcohol content, the final intention being to have a sparkling product closer in character to beer rather than champagne. Oh yes, I’ve used the lager yeast that I have been babying along all these months in an attempt to “evolve” and adapt to our local honey and high temperature mead conditions.
May we all find some measure of Enlightenment at this time.
Good Friday to all and a Good Fermentation Friday too! We just got our first active blub from the melomel…this is when it starts bubbling through the air lock. It is a very important milestone in childhood…oh no, I mean fermentation development (another Doctor joke)! With experience, the Blub Blub comes in different pitches and this one is rather tinkling, melodic and rather loquacious. Gnome says it sounds like it wants another sibling…oh no, he means another fermenting bucket for company!
Anyway, let us get give you an update on our fermentation adventures: Firstly, we had to sadly dump the two gallons of coconut shiro miso, which we had so joyfully made up last week. This was on account of the dreaded Bongkrek. Last week, we read an article on Tempeh Bongkrek which is a variety of tempeh prepared with coconut. This food has now been banned because it can get contaminated with Burkholderia gladioli which leads to the release of bongkrek acid which is lethal to humans. Being doctors, we started thinking about this a whole lot and wondered if we had made Bongkrek Miso! And Gnome said that it would be really embarrassing for the demise of two doctors in Belize to be attributed to coconut miso (death by coconut)! After that comment, I decided to use the coconut miso as compost around the farm!
Gnome wants to ask a question to any microbiologist out there: is there any risk of bongkrek with miso (made with coconut) which has already been innoculated with Aspergillus oryzae?
To make up for this unfortunate mishap, we made some shiro miso today…just with regular black beans…nothing too exotic.
Mixing Shiro Miso.Shiro Miso Ready in 8 Weeks!
We had a look at our bucket of soya sauce which was started in July 2014 and gave it a whizz with the paint stirrer:
Paint Stirring Soya Sauce.
We felt that the soya sauce was rather thick and paste-like in texture and therefore we made an executive decision to just use it as miso. It tastes similar to miso, a bit more acidic and fruity but nonetheless palatable. This solves the problem with the miso shortage until the new shiro miso is ready in June.
Another jam-packed day of fermentation!! This is really a Gnome post but I will make a serious attempt to chronicle the day in the same enthused manner as Gnome.
Well, we started the day off by bottling the mead, which never cleared. Gnome gave me a glass to sample and I promptly scoffed it all down and told him that it was very palatable.
Next, Gnome attended to his Rice Koji in between all the bottling and brewing. He is trying to develop a new system of inoculating cooked rice with previously made rice koji. That way he doesn’t need to use up Koji starter and he can feel assured that he can keep on making rice koji without the headache of bringing in the starter from overseas. This experimental batch is going really well and the Aspergillus oryzae seems to have colonised well and formed a lattice network. This new system is called: Special Care Koji Unit (SCKU)…this is a bit of a Doctor joke so please bear with our awful sense of humour! As you can see from the picture, Gnome has fashioned incubators for his koji babies:
Koji Incubators.
And yes, we are making melomel which is mead which contains fruit; in this case sapodilla and carrot were added.
Sapodilla Fruit, Ready To Eat.
I won’t go into the technical parts of making melomel because this is going to be a Bored-in-Belize project (Gnome: I’ve added the recipe right HERE) so I will just give you a brief run-down of what we did. Firstly, sapodilla fruit was placed in a heated pot of water and allowed to partially breakdown. Next, the mixture was filtered and the pulp was squeezed through muslin.
Sapodilla Wort.Straining Sapodilla Pulp (Gnome feet prove that this really happened!)..
This part was a Munchkin job:
Squeezing Sapodilla Pulp.
After the liquid was procured, Gnome measured the specific gravity and added 6 quarts of honey to make up the alcohol content to about 12%. As we speak, Gnome is re-heating the whole mixture including the added honey; he will allow it to cool down overnight and then add yeast in the morning. More fermenting tomorrow…
It was really cold today…30C which is a drop from the usual 40C so we were both seeking some warming, comforting food. So, today I made steamed glutinous rice balls…I have deliberately not called them mochi balls because they are made Chinese-style ie. the way I watched my mum make them and she is Chinese. I note that mochi balls are made from steamed dough which is cut into rounds, filled and then ready to eat. My recipe uses uncooked glutinous rice flour dough, which is filled and then steamed. Instead of the typical red bean paste, I made sweetened black bean paste and because black beans are eaten here in Belize, I have called the recipe Belizean-style!
On this day the Miso Mission has been accomplished. The rice koji was ready and properly colonised and both of us were in the right frame of mind, with only a mild attack of filibustering on Munchkin’s part (she had very specific plans as to what she expected to do this morning), to tackle the mountain of beans and gallons of purple-black bean juice (from boiling said beans) required for the making of our Belizean-Style Black Bean Shinshu Miso.
The black beans were defrosted, boiled to tenderness (which thankfully doesn’t take too long with black beans), drained and then mashed. The use of words makes things appear so easy but while doing, it certainly seemed that there was a veritable mountain of beans. I left the temperature probe out of the rice koji and room temperature was 36C, so the mashing built up a bit of a sweat.
Starting to mash the beans.The Never-Ending Beans!
In the mean time, Munchkin, while muttering to herself that she needed to do other stuff, mixed the bean juice with sea salt, cooled it and added some commercial miso to the mix (for extra lots of beneficial microorganisms). Thank you, Adriana Guzman for giving us some for this purpose.
Black Bean Juice, Sea Salt and Old Miso to Make the Liquid Portion.
The rice koji had to be added to the beans and mixed well. Using a spoon did not work and I had to resort to using my hands…you can see the excitement that was gripping me at the time!
Adding the Rice Koji to the Mashed Beans.My hands convulse with excitement as I mix everything together!
After adding the liquid portion and mixing again, it was time to fill the prepared 5 gallon pig-tail bucket. This accomplished, a nice layer of salt was added on the top for protection against undesirable microorganisms.
Bucket-Full-of-Miso Ready for Sealing.Sealed Bucket…only have to wait 12-18 months now!!
What happened next was a total, super bonus for me, though it earned me this look from the Munchkin…
…there was still a whole lot of rice koji left and in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think of the 28-day Miso Countdown before we run out…the solution…shiro miso. This type of miso is made up mostly of rice koji, only half the salt and a little bit of beans (compared to shinshu). The beauty of it and the reason why it is of critical importance right now, is that it only takes four to eight weeks to mature. Bonsa…we have the answer to our miso shortage!
So, I figured we could make a test gallon of this sweet miso but after measuring out the required koji, realised that we used up all the beans in making the monster bucket; we still had bean juice left-over but no beans. Resolution: fortunately I had already grated the day’s quota of coconuts and Munchkin had already squeezed out the cream from them (for selling in town to people that don’t want to buy cans or powdered coconut cream) and we were left with the meal. We decided to experiment and replace the bean portion of the miso with de-creamed coconut meal. Once the cream is removed, what is left is actually quite high in protein and while not a legume, it might make a good replacement for beans (it also makes things Belizean and exotic!). We still used the left over bean juice though.
Mixing the coconut, rice koji and salt.
The bean juice gave everything a slight purple tinge (pretty cool, actually!)…
Bean Juice Added to the Miso.
Here it is packed into a gallon jar:
Coconut Shiro Miso.
You would think that this was enough…hee…hee…hee…but I got another look shot my way…
…there was still another lot of koji left to make another batch…so we did…
Five gallons of shinshu miso and two gallons of shiro miso…not bad for a day’s work!!
It is hot yet again, slightly more humid though, perhaps. Munchkin is keeping herself busy and has left me to my own devices. I was excited that today was THE day for transformation of the rice koji into miso; afterall, we did soak black beans in preparation and the big pressure cooker was cleaned and readied for action. However, upon close examination of the inoculated rice grains, I made an executive decision and decided to go for another twenty-four hours. The soaked black beans have been transferred into the freezer until the time is right.
While nicely colonised, cracking the rice grain open showed that the mold could still penetrate the grain a bit further. Also, deep inside my gnomish heart, that mad, self-sufficiency streak wants the Aspergillus mold to start fruiting (ie. make spores) so that I can collect the yellow-green spores and replenish my supply for future batches. While not impossible to bring into Belize, the starter cultures are difficult to order and then ship into the country without some hoops having to be jumped through (I’ve got a friend in Japan who feels like he owes me a favour but I don’t want to collect on his good will yet!). Being able to harvest my own spores would free me from this dependency on factors that I don’t have control over. Let’s see if I can pull it off…the plot thickens…
Colonised Rice Grains…not quite ready.
It is hard to assuage Fermentation Frenzy once it grabs hold of you so I had to find something to still my trembling nerves while waiting for the koji to continue its colonisation. I finally decided to rack some mead that has been sitting around settling and aging…I had been dissatisfied with the way this batch has been clearing and decided to do something I usually don’t do: use some gelatin finings to try and clear it a bit more. I was concerned that perhaps it had not cleared well because of contamination and doing this would also afford the opportunity to have a quick taste.
Racked Mead with Finings Added.
This accomplished, the moment of truth arrived: the presentation of a slightly cloudy glass of non-carbonated mead to the tasting expert, Munchkin. Fortunately and happily (for both of us) the sampling test was passed and I received a smile of approval from Missus Munchkin! Yosh!
The Taste Test.
Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow! Cheers to all!
It continues to be hot, dusty and windy…in Sardinia we would say that we are afflicted with scirocco, that wind that comes from the Sahara and North Africa…it feels very similar and makes one feel terribly miserable. Yes, you guessed it, headache is back today.
However, my life is not only bearable but actually exciting…the Spirit of Aspergillus has taken residence in the carefully prepared rice and the next twenty-four hours will lead to our desired goal…rice koji!
It is always nice to open the bundles and inhale the fruity, mushroomy bouquet of a successful inoculation.
The opened bundles.
The rice grains are covered with a white, cottony growth and you can feel the “live” heat (like having a cat on your lap) emanating from the rice. Everything needs to be transferred into bags as it will overheat and spoil if kept in a bundle.
Rice divided up into six 10 pound bags.
Time to flatten it all up, stick a temperature probe in and wait another twenty-four hours.
Nice neat stacks.
Keep an eye on the temperature…the bags make it easy to spread everything out if cooling is necessary (especially since I’m doing this in “summer” and you’re not supposed to ;-p).
Keeping an eye on the temperature.
This link takes you to the more detailed instructions I’ve written in making rice koji in the Bored-in-Belize Library if you ever want to do this yourself: Making Rice Koji.
Since we already know that we will be making some shinshu miso from this batch of rice koji, we’ve started the preparation of the beans: cleaning, washing and soaking overnight. We use black beans and not soy beans because a) they (soy) are harder to find and b) we are making Belize/Central American shinshu miso and we want to remain culturally appropriate.
Miso Madness is almost over as the Munchkin is starting to feel twitchy over our dwindling supply of soap…
