Fermented Daikon Recipes

2 recipes, kitchen science with citrus seeds, Open Kitchen, Sunday, Feb 26, at 1 pm PST and Zoom link (scroll to bottom of this post)

So, I know I said that I moved on to D and daikon, but I couldn’t help sneaking another citrus recipe in for you with the addition of grapefruit. 🙊 As I mentioned I am somewhat obsessed with fermenting citrus at the moment. Do you go through fermentation phases? (Let me know in the comments.)

Anyway, I did a little research on pectins in citrus. I’d casually noticed for a few years that when I left the seeds in preserved lemons, for example, the brine would gel up. From my canning years, oh so! long ago, I knew that citrus was a good source of pectin but I didn’t explore this further until last week when I was motivated by one of your comments on a post.

It turns out that both the peels and the seeds are high in pectin. The peels of fresh fruit are remarkably higher than that one that has been in cold storage for months. This is one reason you may notice that a particular citrus ferment can develop more or less gel in the brine. The other is the seeds. You will find when you leave them in your ferment (as I did), the ferment will thicken. For condiments, and recipes like the one below, I tend to take the seeds out because I don’t want anyone to chomp into a seed by accident. However, when I make simple salt-preserved citrus I always leave them in. I like the gelatinous quality. Since I know I will be dicing it up before I use it, I know I will remove the seeds then.

For some fun kitchen science, place a tablespoon or so of fresh citrus seeds in a jar, and cover with a bit of water overnight. The next day you will see they’ve created gel. You can add this gel to any preserve. In the same vein, I have started to experiment with adding fresh citrus seeds, tucked into a cheesecloth bundle, to non-citrus fermented condiments to thicken them up. I will keep you posted.

This pomelo offered a plethora of seeds to experiment with.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. I’ve scheduled this month’s open kitchen. Sunday, Feb. 26 at 1 pm Pacific Time. (Scroll past the recipe to the link at the end of this email.) I realize this time is either great or impossible for some of you. I would love to hear your thoughts on times that work. I will be trying a number of different days of the week and times to try to offer the opportunity to many of you.