Rice & Pickles January 20 & 21 — The Cultured Pickle Shop

If you join us for Rice and Pickles on the weekend and sit at the bar across from me, I take you through the bowl as I build it, describing how each component is made. If you are a repeat guest at the bar, you’ll know that I definitely have a spiel. That spiel changes a little from week to week because the bowl changes a little (or a lot) from week to week. For regulars, I try to switch it up a bit. I leave some things out, give briefer descriptions, or take deeper dives into one or two components. This recap of the Rice & Pickles bowl will essentially be my weekly recitation told as if a combination of regulars and newcomers were sitting at the bar.

When you Dine in with us everything from the Dashi to the Sweet Bite is included in the meal. So, the only decisions you’ll need to make are the additions. We have Goma Dofu, which translates to Sesame Tofu. Goma Dofu is not a true tofu, in that there is no soy in it. It is made entirely out of Sesame Seeds, which are toasted, ground, pureed with some Dashi, and then heated with Kudzu Root. Kudzu Root is a root starch that acts as a binder and lends a texture to the finished product that is similar to a silken tofu, which is where it gets its name. We also have avocado. The avocados this week are Bacons, we top them with fuyu persimmon puréed with young green Umeboshi. We also offer a cured egg. We make the eggs every Wednesday. They are a six-and-a-half minute egg that we marinate in a mixture of tamari, and shiso vinegar, which is a shiso kombucha that has gone to acetic, or vinegary, to use a beverage but the shiso flavors are still nice and clean, so we long age it into a mild vinegar mix it with the tamari and sake lees from last years Kabocha Squash ferment.

We always begin the bowl with a 50/50 blend of short-grain brown and sweet brown rice, a sticky or glutinous brown rice, grown by the Lundberg Family here in California. We cook our rice in a Donabe. Donabe are a family of Japanese clay cooking vessels. The Donabe we use is called a Kamado-san and is specifically designed as a rice cooker. Our Donabe comes from Iga, Japan, and has been made by the Nagatani-en family for 5 generations. We top the rice with a gomashio or sesame salt. Our take on this traditional Japanese toasted sesame and salt condiment is that instead of using salt, we use either one of our ferments that we have dried and powdered or a seaweed. Today, we have toasted sesame seeds, dried and powdered beet pulp left over from juicing beets for kombucha, which gives it color, and we use Sea Lettuce instead of salt.

**Short Grain & Sweet Brown Rice Cooked in a Donabe**

In the center of the bowl, we have beets that are steamed, pureed, and seasoned with sake lees that had beets fermenting in them in 2022 . At the bottom center of the bowl is a pumpkin that was shaved and mixed with our Indian Pickled Lime- an 11-month fermentation of limes. They are our version of an Indian achar, like the mango pickle that you might get on the side of your dosa. The limes are minced, mixed with the shaved Pumpkin, and left to sit for a few days. To the right of the pumpkin, we have scarlet queen turnips that were pickled this week in the brine from our Umeboshi plums, also called Ume Vinegar or Umezu. Just under the turnips, we have sauerkraut, a classic Cabbage, and sea salt Sauerkraut. Continuing to the right, the yellow pickle, is Daikion radish. The Daikon was sliced thin on a mandoline and mixed with fermented yuzu rind called Kosho.

**Beet Purée Seasoned with Sake Lees from a 2022 Beet Kasuzuke**

**Fairytale Pumpkin mixed with our Indian Pickled Lime**

**Scarlet Queen Turnips Pickled in Umezu**

On the other side of the pumpkin, along the bottom of the bowl we have a wedge of Baby Romaine Kimchi. Roamine lettuce has a very similar structure to a Napa cabbage making this a delicious and novel take on a classic Kimchi. On top of the Kimchi, the white pickle, is Burdock Root. A couple of weeks ago, we made a mash made from rice, rice koji, and barley shochu, we put dried and salted daikon in the mash and left to ferment to make the pickle known as Bettarazuke. For the previous two weeks, Daikon Bettarazuke has appeared on the bowl. This week, we took that same mash and fermented Burdock Root in it. Next to the Bettarazuke we have Kombu with Misozuke Garlic.. On Tuesday, we took the Kombu from last week's dashi, julienned it, and mixed it with Misozuke Garlic. The garlic is a young garlic harvested in June of 2022 and buried in a Hatcho miso, where it has been fermenting ever since. The garlic and the miso are minced together and mixed with the kombu.. On top of that, we have nettles that were blanched, minced, and marinated in our miso tamari, which is the liquid that rises to the top of the vessel during our sweet white miso production.

**Baby Romaine Lettuce Draining after being Brined for Kimchi**

Kombu

Kombu from last weeks Dashi

Misozuke Garlic

Young Garlic Fermented in Hatcho Miso for 18 Months

We also have okra fermented in a brine with garlic and chile and a slice of beet kasuzuke. The beets were fermented in sake lees for two years. Takari Sake, one of the larger sake producers in our region, is just a few blocks from The Shop. We essentially tap into their waste stream; we get the byproduct from their fermentation, a paste made up of rice, rice koji, and yeast. We take that paste, called kasu or sake kasu, and we add sugar to it, to feed the yeast that is still living in it; we add salt to it to moderate the fermentation and for texture preservation, and then we bury vegetables, such as Beets, in it for an average of 12-18 months to make the pickle known as kasuzuke which means pickled in kasu. The lees from this pickle were used to season the beet purée at the center of the bowl. On top of the puree, we add a scallion crisp. The scallion was rubbed with a paste we make from dates, tamari, and the brine from our chile paste and dehydrated. The greens today are a mix of Chysanthamum, Radicchio, Baby Mustards and Kales. They are dressed with a fermented tangerine rind or a kosho. Kosho is traditionally made with yuzu rind. We make ours with a variety of California citrus. This week we have a Tangerine-Carrot Kombucha on the menu. We took the rind from the tangerines, pureed with salt, and fermented them for about a week. We then took that fermented citrus paste and thinned it out with some olive oil and tangerine juice to make a salad dressing.