Sparkly Concord Grape Lacto-Fermented Whey Soda

concord-grapes

Each year I get concord grapes in my CSA share, and I never know what to do with them aside from just eating them fresh (I once tried pickling grapes—never again). This year I decided to expand my solo repertoire with these intensely flavored and deeply purple fruit bombs and try making a lacto-fermented whey soda with them. I am happy to say, it was seriously tasty.

For my culture, I used the whey I collected from making yogurt cheese—this kind of cheese is basically the result of hanging plain yogurt (full fat without stabilizers, pectin, or gelatin) in butter muslin for a day or so. They whey drips out and what remains is a thick and tangy spreadable cheese. The whey contains cultures that usher along the lacto-fermentation process. Here’s a shot of the delicious cheese hanging with the whey at the bottom of the container.

hanging-yogurt-cheese-whey

To start, I washed and picked all the grapes off their stems, discarding any that were overripe, damaged, or in generally bad shape; firm, ripe, and unblemished grapes were what I was looking for. In the end, I had 6 cups of grapes. I added 2 cups of water and 1/2 cup organic sugar to the grapes and brought it all to a boil, and let that simmer for about 30 minutes. I cooled the mix and then put it through a sieve, discarding pits and skins; what was left was a thick juicy liquid.  Continue reading “Sparkly Concord Grape Lacto-Fermented Whey Soda”

Hellgate CSA Week 14

CSA Week 14

This week we definitely got a glimpse of fall – enter the winter squash! Exciting, to say the least – I am a huge fan of winter squashes. Additionally, we got:

1 bunch carrots
1 pound green beans
1 head escarole
1 pound sweet peppers
1 pint mini tomatoes (not shown)
(1 acorn squash)
2 pounds apples
2 pounds pears
2 pound concord grapes

The carrots will be fermented; the green beans turned into dilly beans. The tomatoes have just been eaten out of hand pretty much. The escarole is quite bitter, so I’ll likely braise it somehow, perhaps with bacon!

I plan to pickle the grapes.

Apart from these fruits and vegetables, I received a tomato canning share – 20-25 pounds of plum tomatoes.

tomato share from hepworth farm

They look and feel great so far, and I plan to make crushed tomatoes with them. If they do as well as I expect they will, I’ll order another box for next week! Slow roasted tomatoes, yum.

This week was a meat & dairy week, so it was great to replenish my stock of ground beef and turkey sausage. I also ordered two cheese from Nettle Meadow Farm – Kunik and Three Sisters. Both are excellent, but Kunik is out of this world! A very luxurious cheese.

Also, I ordered a batch of “Battenkill Brittle,” which is a kind of crunchy, sweet, seedy brittle. It’s sweetened with brown rice syrup and maple syrup, though it’s not super sweet at all.

Quite a week this week!