My new "pet"

As I quipped this week to a co-worker, my ideal pet is a single-celled organism. My kitchen is a great place to keep them. I have managed to keep a sourdough starter alive and still sweet for about a year, and it is still yeasty enough to raise bread. The latest addition to the menagerie is a kefir (kəˈfɪər/ kə-FEER) culture, which I purchased dry at a local natural foods store and rehydrated at home. Kefir is a bacterial culture that ferments milk. It has been used for centuries to make milk safe to store for longer periods than fresh milk can keep. Other advantages are that the process adds to the vitamin and probiotics content of milk and reduces the amount of lactose, since the kefir bacteria feed on the lactose sugar.

After only two changes of milk, my kefir "grains" started producing kefir, and, if I wasn't careful to monitor more than once a day, curds that I then had to turn into cheese. Here is a kefir grain (the little protein mass at the top left that has the culture in/on it that starts fermenting the milk), floating on a new batch of kefir:

Care and feeding of kefir is much easier than looking after, say, a dog, but it has added several minutes of prep work to my day. I'm regularly changing jars from active kefir fermentation on the kitchen counter to storage jars in the refrigerator, moving extra kefir grains to the storage vessel in the refrigerator, sterilizing containers and utensils at each step. It's not a lot of work, but it is something that requires a little bit of attention each day unless I take a few days off and put all the kefir and grains in cold storage.

The flavor and texture of kefir is similar to a very thin yogurt. Uses I've put it to so far:
1. pouring on morning cereal instead of milk
2. in a salad dressing
3. making a spreadable cheese
4. putting the cheese into cooked dishes
5. mixed with juice as a breakfast drink

Here is a jar of kitchen-counter actively-fermenting kefir:

I keep eating the kefir cheese before I get a picture of it. Just imagine spreadable goat cheese like chevre, and that's pretty much what I'm getting when I strain a batch of over-curdled kefir in a cheesecloth for a day. It tastes great with the addition of a little salt and some dried or fresh herbs. If I heat little chunks of the cheese, it changes texture to something like a fresh cheese curd.

In a couple of weeks, I'm hosting a workshop at my place about fermented and cultured foods, through the Meetup group Radical Homemakers of Bloomington-Normal. I'll give away starter kefir grains to those who attend. I also have sourdough starter available, and a friend said she'd bring kombucha culture for fermenting tea.

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This post brought to you by foods that start with the letter G

Food is arriving weekly through Henry's Farm CSA again ("what's a CSA?" check this link), and at the beginning and end of the season, the major vegetable group is GREENS. We eat a lot of salad and stir-fries and search around for other options to keep up our interest in greens. When gnocchi (small Italian potato dumplings) went on sale recently, I bought a couple packages and figured they'd eventually come in handy, so bring on the unfamiliar greens!

Lamb's quarters showed up at the CSA pickup, and I traded some onions to get some more of this stuff in the hopes that we'd like it enough to eat it for two meals.
"Use as you would spinach" was the take-home message about this edible weed on the Brockman Family Farming blog. So Andrew and I did so with this earthy-tasting dish that was a team effort. We discovered that like most of the cooking greens, these are great cooked with garlic. Garlic shows up twice in our recipe: once as minced cloves, once in the pesto.
If you have leftovers, I recommend adding a bit of liquid when reheating to soften up the gnocchi.

Earthy Greens and Gnocchi
serves 4

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
12 oz white button or cremini mushrooms, sliced 
One 17-oz package potato gnocchi
grated parmesan cheese, optional
1 bunch (about 8 oz. by weight) lamb's quarters, spinach, or Swiss chard
1 Tbsp basil pesto
1 Tbsp dried Italian seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Clean all dirt and grit from greens, remove stems and chop greens down to bite-size if needed. Heat water to cook gnocchi according to package directions. Cook other ingredients while waiting for water to heat. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Saute onion until tender, then add garlic and mushrooms and continue cooking. Stir in lamb's quarters, then Italian seasoning. Keep warm on low heat while waiting for gnocchi to cook. When greens are wilted, turn off heat and stir in pesto. Drain gnocchi and add to mixture in skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with grated parmesan if desired.

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