This is what I’ve made so far this first quarter of 2022. I wanted to keep track of what I’ve done. Trying to keep myself busy.
Food
Top to bottom, left to right: Laurie’s pear cake, chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles, cheese biscuits, pickled veggies, chichi dango, roasted sweet potato pudding, Costco rotisserie chicken broth, tuna tofu patties, fig and orange jam, caramelized onion and zucchini quiche, pad see ew, roasted tomato salsa
Craft
Top to bottom, left to right: stitch and mend sampler, denim whale with pleats, Feather and fan scarf, denim whale with topstitching, Hawaiian quilt pillow, Aloha shirt blanket, Year of Hat March hat, garment cover with upcycled aloha shirt
My parents never had brussel sprouts before I roasted some up for dinner the other night. My Auntie M was telling my mom how delicious they were so I decided to make some and my parents enjoyed them. My mom kept asking about them and how they grew and that they reminded her of little cabbage. This made me think I could make some pickles with them.
pre-prepped sprouts
I’m not sure if I every explained what tsukemono is. Tsukemono is Japanese pickles. You may have gotten them with your meal at a Japanese restaurant. There are several different styles of pickles. For the brussel sprouts, I’ll be using shiozuke, salt pickling. Just One Cookbook has a great description on shiozuke. Here’s the link: https://www.justonecookbook.com/tsukemono-shiozuke-salt-pickling/
I still had half a bag of sprouts and I decided to try them out with the cabbage tsukemono recipe from justonecookbook.com. This recipe has cucumbers in it. I didn’t have any so it was all Brussel sprouts, little dried chili, and sliced Kombu (seaweed).
Brussel Sprout Shiozuke adapted from justonecookbook’s Japanese Pickled Cabbage
1/2 bag of organic Brussel sprouts (about 750gm), cored and quartered 1 3/4 t sea salt 1 dried chili, sliced 2″ x 2″ piece of Kombu, sliced
Add sprouts into a ziplock bag. Then add the rest of the ingredients and massage salt into the sprouts. Squeeze out as much of the air from the bag. I place the bag into a baking pan and add weights to it. I try and get at least 5 pounds on it. I usually flip it and massage the sprouts after the first couple of hours to see if it has produce some water. I leave it on the counter with the weight for the rest of the day. Then refrigerate it. It’s ready to eat the next morning. We eat with our meals just a little side dish for everyone. It’s crunchy and sweet from the brussel sprouts. We finish it in a week or so.*
*I feel like I need to add a giant note here. I’m a newbie at tsukemono and this is my first batch with Brussel sprouts. I wish I took better notes but I didn’t. And I didn’t realize so many people would be show interest in this recipe. Please bear with me with this recipe. Thanks.
For the salt, it’s approx. 2% of salt to the weight of sprouts. I may have add slight more, maybe 2 t. because I thought it would help soften up the firmness of sprout.
The chili that I use isn’t too hot. Not sure what type it is, it’s red, about and 1″ to 1.5″ long. If you don’t like hot you probably can leave it out. I’ve used to add fresh chili when I didn’t have dried but that is much hotter. I use a kitchen scissors to chop it up
Kombu is edible dried seaweed. It comes is sheets or strips. I used a strips version, like this can be order from Amazon. You also can eliminate or substitute it with sliced ginger or lemon rind. It will slight change the taste but still I’m sure it will be delicious.
The only other note I wanted to add was I thought this recipe turn out delicious and I think a Kimchi version would be great, too. I haven’t tried kimchi yet but when I do, I’ll make a sprout version.
Who knew in a matter of two three months, my life would change so much. Here’s what is going on. I started this post on 10.20.2020 and have started on a few things.
me from the trail
Furlough officially turned into unemployed.
Decided only to work part-time
Staying put in my parent’s house.
I guess I need to look life from a different point of view
I mentioned in my post Moving Forward; I need to update my to-do list. I looked back at my list, and it seems going longer and longer. Hmmm. I thought I made more progress.
Well, I need to adjust the ever-growing list to make it attainable for me to feel like I’m getting things done. I’m putting out in the universe.
Do List
Clean out my storage unit by the end of the year; last week I cleared out 4 boxes; and I think I found a home for the dehydrator and my imac.
Get plans to rework the house: call someone to draw up the ideas.
Make a budget; made the budget sheet; need to make an appointment with myself to enter my month expenses
Work on projects with scrap materials and yarn
Draft a blouse pattern for me and make so clothes for me
Start stitching my aloha shirt patchwork quilt
Open my Etsy shop; scheduled myself for a photo shoot for my inventory this week
Make a sourdough starter and make more bread
Experiment with my pickle and jam flavors
This list is my wish list that things I want to do and over time hope to achieve.
Coming back to Hawaii has triggered many food memories for me–shave ice (extra fine snow cone), seed (flavored preserved fruit), malasada (Portuguese yeasty donut), to name a few. Pickled ogo popped in my mind during my monthly girls’ zoom meetup. J was telling us about the Marine Learning program at Waianae High School, raising and selling ogo. That spiraled into talking about pickled ogo and ended with four of us buying 5lbs each.
What is “ogo”?
Blanched in salt water
Ogo is an edible seaweed that we used to handpick at the West Oahu beaches when we were kids. It has since been over harvest, and only the people who know the secret spot pick it. Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Hawaiian use it in their dishes. The Hawaiian name for this variety is called Limu Manauea. You can find it mixed in with different pokes.
I just learned that ogo is short for ogonori, which means large amounts of ocean moss in Japanese. Here’s a link to an article about ogo and Waianae’s Marine Learning Program, where I got my giant 5lb bag full. Here’s another piece if you want more information about the different limu (seaweed in Hawaiian).
The recipe
The funny part about the recipe is I thought my mom had one at the ready. I have distinct memories of coming home from the beach and her cooking up a storm making the pickled ogo. But when I asked her, she didn’t have a recipe. But my friend, Google, did several recipes. They were similar in ingredients, with slight variation in amounts. I picked this one, “My Dad’s Ogo,” from feeding my ohana.
First off, a 5lb bag of ogo is enormous. In my mind, it should be half the size. Fitting it in the refrigerator overnight was challenging, and I played refrigerator Jenga to make it work.
Smelled like the oceanIngredients ready to go: chili pepper, garlic, onion, green onion, shoyu, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, no sesame seeds
The hardest part was blanching the ogo in salted (Hawaiian) boiling water. It cooks so fast, as soon as it turned green, within seconds, I was scooping it out of the water to drain in the colander. Back and forth, back and forth. Remember, there were 5 pounds to blanch.
I got through half minus a bag of ogo saved for another time. I decided I better see how much of the dressing I need to cover half the bag. I figured to double the recipe would cover it. I mixed all the ingredients well, making sure the sugar dissolved. On tasting, I added a tablespoon more of shoyu. It needed a more saltiness to it.
I dumped everything into a giant yellow Tupperware container from the 70s and mixed well. Everyone (Mom, Dad, and I) had a taste test and agreed it was delicious. Letting it sit would make it even better.
First batch done
Still had another half to do but had an evening training, so that would have to wait till tomorrow morning. Mom wanted a version with Gochujang in the dressing.
First thing in the morning, started the salted water to boil. Now that I’ve done it once, I have the process to follow. The dressing would be similar to version one, without garlic or round onions plus five teaspoons of gochujang.
L to R: version one with garlic and onions, version two with gochujang, version three with salted cucumbers, more rice wine vinegar, and gochujang
Mom made a version of her own using the gochujang version; adding sliced salted cucumbers and more rice wine vinegar (not sure how vinegar she added; I say approximately 1/4 cup). It was more like a namasu dressing-much tarter than rest. I would have added another teaspoon for gochujang for a little sweetness and umami.
Princess Hot Flash 