Early dinner because we have an evening bell rehearsal at church. I didn't have any meat thawed so when I went into town today to get the mail, I also bought a pork tenderloin roast. I slathered it with the mustard pesto sauce and baked it for about 75 minutes.
While it was baking, I got started making sauerkraut, following the instructions in the book "Fermenting Vegetables" by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey. I got one medium head of cabbage at the grocery store today, rinsed it, reserved some of the outer leaves, cored it, and sliced it into my big salad bowl. I sprinkled one Tbsp of Morton's Pickling Salt over it and massaged the salt into the cabbage until it had gotten pretty wet. Then I covered the bow with a kitchen towel and let it sit.
While it was sitting and wilting, I made our vegetable side dish to go with the pork. I heated up about 1/4 cup of konbudashi and added some dehydrated diced onions and granulated garlic, then spooned in some of the seasoned chicken broth from when I made chicken with the mustard presto sauce. I added a couple handfuls of garbanzo bean sprouts, and a few handfuls of lentil and mung bean sprouts. I also cut up two medium carrots and one small zucchini and added them in, too, as well as a couple spoonfuls of the pickled mushrooms and onions. I seasoned it with fresh ground pink Himalayan salt and black pepper, plus an Italian Seasoning mix I picked up at our local Farmer's Market.
The veggies and pork turned out really well! And there's still about half the tenderloin left over for future meals.
After eating, I turned back to my sauerkraut. The cabbage had actually wilted quite a bit.
I transferred the cabbage into my E-Jen Fermentation Container which I got from The Crazy Korean:
Then I pounded it a bit with my cabbage pounder and covered the cabbage with the outer leaves I had reserved earlier. This helps keep the bits and pieces under the brine, which is really important because fermentation is an anaerobic process. Any bits that stick out of the brine are affected by aerobic bacteria and spoil. Yuckiness ensues.
After that, I put the inner lid in the fermenter and pressed down really hard until the brine was over the top of the lid, then put the plug into the lid.
Look how much brine there is! I didn't add any water; this brine comes from the liquid inside the cabbage, brought out by the salt. It's like magic!
Just to be on the safe side, I decided to add a weight on top of the inner lid to help keep everything submerged. It turns out that one of my wide-mouth pint-and-a-half jars fits perfectly inside the fermenter! I didn't want to fill he jar with water because I don't want it to leak and dilute my brine, so I put some pie weights into a ziplock bag and stuffed it into the jar.
It then occurred to me that people used to use dried beans as pie weights, so I also poured some dried beans into the jar.
And then put the filled jar (with lid) into the fermenter.
Then put the lid on it.
I'll need to check it tomorrow to make sure everything is still submerged in brine. I may be able to remove the weighted jar in a few days, once enough brine builds up to keep it all reliably covered.
On our way to rehearsal, we stopped by Juliette's house to deliver her jar of mustard pesto sauce. I love giving these food gifts to people and donating them to the church bell choir bake sale. I find it so soothing to make this stuff and I'm just glad people seem to like it!
While we were eating, I pondered out loud to Brianne if I should try making this sauce with my fermented honey mustard rather than store-bought Dijon. She thought for a bit and then said that part of her thinks that sounds amazing, another part thinks why mess with perfection? Lol! I might try it anyway just to see. And maybe I'll make my own Dijon and see how that turns out! 😊
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