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.

Is fermenting not a winter activity?

Last Sunday I bought a gallon of apple cider. After drinking a few glasses of it (over the course of two days) I decided that it was no where as good as I remembered apple cider being. It was from a farm, and it looked nice and dark, but it just tasted like very sweet apple juice --- no kick. So I decided to leave it out near the window sill (where it was still pretty cold) for a few days. Forgetting about it until Friday, I was very surprised that when I went to open up the plastic jug, I heard a loud hiss of air (CO2 more likely). When I pour the cider, it bubbled and when I tasted it, my taste buds jumped for joy. Just a few days of fermentation (completely uncontrolled) had given me a tangy, slightly hard, cider. The overwhelming sweetness was gone, as the fermentation had surely consumed much of the excess sugar. I think I remember the cider at the right time. Had I left it much longer, it may have become a little too strong, though who knows.
Inspired by my inadvertent success with fermenting cider, I decided to reattempt Dosa making. Months ago I had some difficulty getting the right consistency and right texture to my Dosas. I repeated the same recipe, mixing Urad dal, a little Chana dal, some short grained rice (sushi rice this time) and some Methi or Fenugreek seeds (which made headline recently as being the smell behind a chemical/gas scare in New York a few years ago). I soaked these in water overnight and then blended them to a course pulp in the morning. In the evening I tried to make a Dosa. It came out rather plain and lacked a crunchy texture and contained too much of the original courseness of the ingredients. This evening, after another day of fermentation, I approached the bowl of Dosa batter. The change was marked. It had begun to foam and the course grains had somehow been consumed and changed by the fermentation. The fermentation (though slowed from the cold) had certainly transformed my mixture. A cast iron pan and a little oil quickly yielded my first very successful Dosa. It was crispy but not grainy and the bottom was nicely browned, though the top stayed a little spongy. Still not as good as the Dosa cart, but I have enough batter to experiment for another few days. Who knows, maybe in another day or two, the batter will have evolved further. Though, I had refrigerated the batter since there is a lot left.

Dosas 2

So I let the remainder of my Dosa batter ferment over night. When I got to it this morning, it looked like it had fermented a fair amount more (it was more murky). I whipped it up a little and added a little more water to it and some salt. This time around the Dosas came out a lot better. In fact, my last attempt (I made three this morning) actually looked and tasted like a proper Dosa. My conclusion (and I will test this in the next few days) is that in our climate you need to let this ferment for at least a day, and then you also need to give it enough water. This aside, the Dosa cooked up pretty well.
I'm going to make another batch for Wednesday as a post election celebration (hopefully).

Dosa making take 1 (or 2 perhaps)

This morning, before heading off to watch the NY Marathon, I started on the path to making Dosas. Knowing that this would likely not work well, I used only a small amount of ingredients. The directions I found online where to mix 1 part Urad Dal, 2 parts rice (short grained), and 1/4 part Channa Dal, plus some Metha (Fennigreek) seeds. You wash them and then soak them in water for at least 6 hours. Then you blend them to a course batter in a blender. I did this. In my first attempt at actually cooking the Dosa I used a large cast iron skillet with some oil, and poured the batter into the middle, then used my pouring cup to spread the batter. Unfortunately, the batter was too thick and didn't spread. It also didn't cook that well. I ate the creation with some of my indian/bangladeshi greenbeans I made earlier, but it was not particularly good.
With this failure under my belt I figured I should add a little more water and let the batter continue to ferment. I did this for about 3 more hours an then just a few minutes ago made another Dosa. This time the batter spread better, and it cooked better. However, it still seemed a little to course and in my opinion there has not been enough fermentation. I still have some of the batter left, so my plan is to let it ferment over night, and then blend again in the morning and try once more.
This exercise in Dosa making today reminds me of my first Dosa attempt about a year or so ago. My friend Evan and I decided to apply for an NYU iron chef type contest. The application was to design a breakfast menu. I had the idea of making Dosas. There was a problem though. Most importantly you only had an hour to prep and make the breakfast. Secondly, they didn't have the right types of lentils. Still, I persevered and figured that ingredients and time are only in the mind (a common act of hubris I suffer from). So, I took my lentils and my rice and threw it in the blender with some water. Sure enough I got a nice paste which looked kind of like Dosa batter. The only issue was that when I tried to cook it, IT TASTED and FELT HORRIBLE. It was all gritty and I'm pretty sure my body was unable to make anything of the protein locked deep inside of the ingredients. An utter failure, I just tossed the mix. In retrospect I should have just let it ferment for a day and then tried again.