Rice & Pickles January 27 & 28 — 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 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 there is a combination of regulars and newcomers 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 Fuertes; we top them with fuyu persimmon puréed with Umeboshi and Nukazuke Radish. 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 Jalapeño ferment.

We always begin the bowl with a 50/50 blend of short-grain brown and sweet brown rice, 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. Iga is a great location for Donabe making because the clay body that is found in and around Iga has a high microscopic fossil content, which results in superior heat retention in the clay products that come out of the area; so, not only is the Donabe a beautiful and effective rice cooker but it also acts a warmer as it's very slow to cool once it has come off of the flame. 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 and dried and powdered beet pulp left over from juicing beets for kombucha, which gives it color, and we use Sea Lettuce instead of salt.

In the center of the bowl, we have Butternut squash that is steamed, pureed, and seasoned with sake lees that had Kabocha squash fermenting in them in 2022. The Butternut we use today is a variety called Lunga di Napoli. At the bottom center of the bowl is a lactic acid ferment of beet and fennel. We use the whole fennel, the bulb, the frond, and the seed for this pickle. Under that, we have turnip greens mixed with Jalapeño Kasuzuke, or Jalapeños fermented in Sake Lees for one year. We worked with Tokyo Turnips this week. The Turnips are fermented in a Brine with Fennel and Bee Pollen. We mixed the greens from those Turnips with the Jalapeño Kasuzuke. Continuing to the right along the bottom of the bowl,l we have a Napa Cabbage Kimchi. The cabbage was quartered lengthwise, rubbed with a paste made from rice flour, ginger, garlic, onions, chiles, and apple, and fermented with carrots, scallions, and kombu seaweed. On top of the Kimchi, we have Bettarazuke. 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 let it ferment for about a week. 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 the other side of the bowl, to the left of the Beet & Fennel and Turnip greens, we have a sauerkraut made with green cabbage, lemon garlic, and dill. This sauerkraut was one of the four original flavors that we made when we started Cultured in 1996. Continuing to the left along the bottom of the bowl, we have Red Daikon mixed this week with our Indian Pickled Limes - an 11-month fermentation of limes; they are our version of an Indian achar, like the mango pickle you might get on the side of your dosa. The limes are minced, mixed with the Red Daikon, and left to sit for a few days. On top of the Red Daikon, we have Kohlrabi pickled in the Brine from our Umeboshi plums, also called Ume Vinegar or Umezu. Nestled amongst the Red Daikon and Kohlrabi are Nettles. The nettles 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

**Red Daikon mixed with Indian Pickled Limes**

Above the Butternut puree, we have slices of Beets and Fennel. The beets were fermented in sake lees for two years and the fennel for just under a year. Kauzuke Beets and Fennel. Takara 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 and Fennel, in it for an average of 12-18 months to make the pickle known as kasuzuke which means pickled in kasu. Next to the Kasuzuke, we have Radish Nukazuke- Radishes fermented in Rice Bran overnight. This overnight pickle was three months in the making. It starts with making a Nuka Pot or Nuka Doko; we do that by creating an active pickling bed out of rice bran, salt water, kombu, chile flake, maybe some miso, some sourdough bread cubes, or a splash of beer. At the end of the day, we put vegetable scraps in the pot, remove them the next day, aerate the mixture, and then put new vegetable scaps in. We repeat that daily for about 8 weeks. By putting the vegetable scraps into the mixture, we introduce lactic-acid producing bacteria. These microbial communities thrive in the anaerobic environment of the rice bran paste. By aerating the mixture we are interrupting the progression of Lactic-acid producing bacteria and introduce arobic yeasts and bacteria. The result over time is that we create a vibrant and complex ecosystem that affects great change in the vegetables buried in the bed in a very short time.

Today's greens are a mix of Chysanthamum, Spinach, and Curly Endive. 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. Last week, we had a Tangerine-Carrot Kombucha on the menu. We took the rind from the tangerines, pureed it with salt, and fermented it for about a week. We then took that fermented citrus paste and thinned it with olive oil and tangerine juice to make a salad dressing. Finally, we add a Cabbage Leaf crisp on top of the puree. The Cabbage Leaf was rubbed with a paste we make from dates, tamari, and the brine from our chile paste and dehydrated.