Beets and bubbly things

This past weekend I took a break and relaxed a little. As the weekend draws a close, I'll use my last breath of relaxation to record some food experiences and thoughts of the last week or so.
I would like to begin by updating on my dosa making project. A week and two days ago I made a batch of dosa batter. Over the course of a few days it fermented to a very nice level of tangyness. For the first two days I eat the dosas along with some spinach and potato mixture (not really much to speak about there), however when that ran out I resorted to a rather unconventional, and what I imagine, untraditional accompaniment for a dosa --- smoked salmon. A few months back I had picked up two 8 ounce packages of Springfield Smoked Fish Company smoked salmon. This is the company which makes salmon bacon, and in my estimation, they are the best smoked fish company around. This smoked salmon is cut in strips and even after having been frozen for a few months, was extremely soft and smooth in texture, and rich and creamy in taste. In any case, every morning for the past week or so I have been eating three strips of the smoked salmon along with my dosa. The tangyness of the dosa counters any hint of fishiness from the salmon in a way similar to a splash of lemon juice on a bagel with lox. I imagine that most people who include dosas as a daily meal in their diet would not eat fish, but that does not have to stop me from enjoying it.
Going with the theme of fermentation, I have made it a goal of mine to constantly be fermenting something. At this point this does not include brewing beer (though some day it will), but it does include dosas and cider. A college roommate of mine who is stationed abroad picked up on my love for apple cider during a conversation over the computer. He decided to ship me (not from Japan where he is located) three jugs of apple cider. The cider is very good, though I have decided to spice it up a little. Using the remainder of my previous batch of bubbly, fermenting cider, I created a starter last night began to ferment the first of these new jugs. Already the complexity of the cider has evolved, and it is excellent! Two cheers for bacteria.

Changing gears a little, while my parents were visiting, we stopped off in Chinatown. I tried not to buy too many non-winter items (I have been good about this for the past two months or so), though I did make some non-seasonal purchases. One of these was a pound of cilantro. The problem with cilantro is that it goes bad very quickly and can not effectively be frozen or dried. One use which I tried tonight was to mix (after blending it) in which some of the dosa batter. This tasted alright, but I probably won't repeat the experiment. The other use was as part of a jellied beet and ginger (I also bough 2 pound of ginger) dish I made. Too often my ginger goes bad before I can finish it, so this time around I decided to skin and freeze almost all of the ginger. In the process of preparing the ginger for freeze I ended up with a number of little pieces of ginger, which would not last in the fridge for long and which were not worth freezing. They say necessity is the mother of invention and tonight was no exception. I have a few cans of beets which I've been meaning to use, so I decided to make a ginger and beet mixture and to try to gel it up with some agar-agar and some cornstarch. I started by finely dicing a few chunks of ginger, along with a few cloves of garlic and half of a jalapeno pepper. Then I chopped and finely grated some carrot (I did both for some odd reason), along with some orange and grapefruit zest. This all got sauted in some olive oil for a few minutes while I opened a can of beets. I removed the beets, and poured the juice into the pan, and also added a cup or so of my fermenting apple cider and a little sugar. Meanwhile I boiled a little water and added what I thought would be enough agar-agar to gel up my mixture. I chopped the beets into slices and threw them into the mixture which had been sauteing. When the agar-agar was dissolved this went in with everything else, and finally, fearing that I had not used enough agar-agar, I added some corn starch. I poured the mixture on a cookie sheet and carefully moved it to a flat surface to cool. A little while ago I moved this to the fridge. The mixture seems to have gelled pretty well. I'm not sure if it will hold up under cutting that well though (it seems to break pretty easily). The flavor is pretty nice, with a nice spicy kick from both the pepper and ginger. I'm not sure what to eat it along with, though I could imagine having it served with some very thinly julienned carrots and maybe some alfalfa sprouts and a sweet vinaigrette. We'll see if its worth repeating.