Rice & Pickles December 14 & 15

Rice & Pickles December 7 & 8

Rice & Pickles November 23 & 24

Rice & Pickles October 26 & 27

Rice & Pickles October 19 & 20

Rice & Pickles September 28 & 29

Rice & Pickles September 14 & 15

Rice & Pickles August 31 & September 1

Rice & Pickles August 24 & 25

Rice & Pickles August 3 & 4

Rice & Pickles July 27 & 28

Rice & Pickles July 20 & 21

Butter Lettuce Kimchi: The Preservation of Supple

We can view our work through a number of different lenses, but chief among them is that we are Preservers, and as perservers our job is to preserve flavor, to preserve color, and to preserve texture.  As preservers, our work is far more likely to highlight issues with the source produce than it is to mask, resolve, or compensate for them.

Over the last year, Alex has been making kimchi with Baby Romaine lettuce or Little Gems, with great success. If you think about it, it makes total sense. Romaine Lettuce has a very similar structure to Napa Cabbage, a thinner leafier exterior, and a denser core. Because of the delicate nature of lettuce, this seems counterintuitive to people; they assume that it would lose its structural integrity through the fermentation process and become mush, and they are often surprised by the Romaine Kimchi.

A few weeks ago, our Rice & Pickles bowl featured the Baby Romaine Kimchi, and a guest at the bar expressed their surprise at the fact that we successfully created such a product. I explained that Baby Romaine is far less delicate than one imagines and made my usual comparison to Napa Cabbage, conceding that it may not work so well with a more supple green like, say, Butter Lettuce. Alex perked up and said, “Oh no, I disagree entirely.”  She pointed out that, really, when it comes to fermenting leafy greens, it is much more of an issue if the greens are tough than if they are supple. Indeed, we have rejected batches of Baby Romaine because, in her estimation, the leaves were too tough to yield a choice product.  Remember, we are preservers of texture, and if we have tough greens, then we preserve the tough, and if we have supple greens, we preserve the supple. “ I can make a Butter Lettuce Kimchi,” she said. And she did. 

As usual, she was right, and the results are delicious.

Butter Lettuce

We Brine the Butter Lettuce for two days.

We drain the Butter Lettuce without rinsing.

We Ferment the kimchi in our microbatch Mashiko ware crocks.

We ferment the kimchi for just over a week.

Butter Lettuce Kimchi. The supple texture of the lettuce is beautifuylly preserved without becoming mushy.

Rice & Pickles July 13 & 14

Rice & Pickles June 29 & 30

Rice & Pickles June 22 & 23

Rice & Pickles June 15 & 16

Pre-Summer Round-Up

With Summer right around the corner it’s time for the blog to make its way back from an extended Spring Break. Here is a quick look at the bowls we served over the last couple of months.

Rice & Pickles March 23 & 24

Rice & Pickle April 6 & 7

Rice & Pickles April 13 & 14

Rice & Pickles April 19 & 20

Rice & Pickles April 27 & 28

Rice & Pickles May 4 & 5

Rice & Pickles May 18 & 19

Rice & Pickles May 25 & 26

Rice & Pickles June 1 & 2

Rice & Pickles June 8 & 9

Vernal Dispatch: Home

It is undeniably Spring as I write from the work table in our bedroom cottage, nestled in the middle of the back garden at our home in Berkeley. The day is glorious, and I’m a little taken aback by how far into the season we suddenly are. New culms of the timber bamboo, Bambusa oldhamii, now in its 24th year, some over four inches in diameter are coated in a glaucous powder and reach skyward for almost 35 feet. The Tree Dandelion, Sonchus canariensis, has bloomed already, producing plumes of what will be, woefully little viable seed. The branches of the Japanese Maple, Kinran, bend as they adjust to the new weight of new leaves woven with golden thread.

Seeds from the Canary Island Tree Dandelion

Acer palmatum “Kinran” transl.- ”Woven with Golden Thread”

New foliage of Lions Head Maple with Salvia Buccananni in the backround.

Sprays of pink blooms from Salvia buchananii dapple the background of the almost key lime emergence of the Lions Head maple, a specimen of unknown providence but which is certainly older than we are. Lilies- Calla, Canna, and Crinum alike unfurl, and flower, and foliate. Everywhere, Spring consumes the available space, and one has to look to see the last vestiges of winter’s husk sloughing off.

Calla Lilly “Green Goodess”

Canna Lilly

Canna Lilly Seeds

The vegetable garden, in late again, is beginning to take shape and holds some promise in the season's warmer and longer days. We may have a proper showing if we can get some growth in before the summer turns cold and foggy.

The Dogs, now solidly in their fifth year, laze about in the sun, then shade, then again in the shade, then sun- they patrol the paths, vigilantly stand sentry for squirrels, hope, pray, beg for a brief ball interlude-

or they unsettle the ducks.

Sadie

Shio

The ducks, all four of them, two in their second year and two in their sixth, can be heard at this moment furiously flapping in their small pond just around the corner from where I sit and write. After a winter of freeloading, they have all begun laying again- So they may stay.

(from left to right) Ophelia, Frances, Iris, Josephine.

A few days of duck eggs

At The Shop, now entering its 28th year, the era of Rice and Pickles has reigned on for eight years. But here, at home in a 100 year old house and in the gardens 24th year, these years will surley be known as the Dog & Duck years.

Talansias and Finials

I suppose it is in the nature of schedules to be a zero-sum game. Mine certainly is. Spring consumes not just space but time- Energy, to be sure.  It is Spring!  The Blog is on Spring Break.

Back soon,

Kevin