Overnight Zucchini Pickles

Chinese supermarkets are no stranger to pickles. In fact, it was only after moving to China that I really examined the term “pickle” and realized it doesn’t always mean “pickled cucumber”, as I had erroneously grown up thinking. However, getting your standard jar of crunchy dills can be a bit of a challenge. Supermarkets usually only carry one or two kinds of pickles and they tend to be both expensive and not to my tastes.

So, when a friend in Dalian mentioned he was making some Bread & Butter pickles, it got me curious about making my own. One problem — no cucumbers. What I did have, however, was a zuchinni hanging out in the fridge that was eager to be put to use. I had briefly read somewhere that zucchini can be pickled similar to cucumbers, and so decided to give it a shot.

To be honest, my expectations were quite low that things would turn out very good. As such, I was a bit half-assed with the recipe, eye-balling most things. The results were pleasantly surprising though, so as best I remember, here’s what I did:

What I Used

• 1 zucchini
• 1 air-tight container to store things in. I used a Lock & Lock, but a glass jar would work too
• Water (enough to cover the sliced zucchini in the container – about 2 cups)
• Sugar (about 4 heaped Tbsp)
• Salt (about 1 Tbsp – or to taste)
• Vinegar (around 100 ml or so)
• Spices (traditionally you’d use mustard & celery seed, but I had neither, so I used fennel seeds, dried dill and some fresh ground black pepper)
• Onion (about a quarter of a large onion — I used a red)

What I Did

1. Place all ingredients (minus the zucchini and onion) in a small pot and bring to a boil. Remove from heat once boiling.
2. Slice zucchini into thin 8-10 cm strips. I sliced length-wise, as the zucchini was a bit too fat to do circular slices.
3. Cut onion into thin slices.
4. Layer the zucchini and onion in the storage container in alternating layers.
5. Pour the hot (not boiling) mixture into the container and allow to cool.
6. Refrigerate overnight, and enjoy!

Virtually all recipes for pickles are a much longer process, but the overnight thing worked a treat. I tried the pickled zucchini the next day and it tasted great. It’s inspired me to try a few different combinations of the above — namely using more dill and a bunch of garlic, oh, and cucumbers! (Kool-Aid pickles anyone?) As I mentioned above, I was pretty slapdash with the recipe, and so relied a lot on tasting the pickling liquid to get it to a flavour I liked. If you follow my footsteps, I suggest doing the same. More salt, less sugar, etc.

If anyone has any advice or experience, it’s always much appreciated. I’ll look for it below.

I love how “blow into the cartridge” is part of the instructions.

And just so it doesn’t get lost after the sun sets on this 256-colour day, here are some useful maps should you wish to head out on a quest to become the Avatar, rescue Zelda, or just chill with your fellow Light Warriors:

(h/t to Aaron Posehn for sharing the video)

Chinese lyrics:

Dawen’s subtitles in the video are all in traditional characters, and considering my simplified hanzi is lackluster on a good day, apologies if I’ve flubbed things converting it all to simplified below:

^* – Dawen switches the phrasing and wording here so that it’s more “in a beautiful world / you float around”. He also reverses the “I wish I was/you are so special” lines — not sure why.
^** – The 漂 used is for floating in water. The original, I assume would actually be 飘, as I think the feather would be floating in air. I could be wrong though. Interesting to note that one has 三点水 as it’s left-side radical, and the other 风 as it’s right-side radical — sort of denoting “water” and “air”.

For years I’ve enjoyed cooking, but it’s really only been the last few months that I’ve started developing it from an abstract interest into a full-on hobby. As I’ve really only had one “hobby” for the last two years, it’ll be nice to have another topic to blog about.

And thus the reason for this category (and the inaugural post in it) — I’m going to start sharing some of the experiences, recipes and photos that evolve out of this interest.

I’m not much of a purist when it comes to cooking, nor do I have a super-human palate that gives me some great epicurean insight. I dig food and drink though, and enjoy creating things (whether from my own head or, as is more often the case, blatantly stolen from someone more skilled that myself). I warn now, recipes may (not) be overly detailed, focused on the wrong things, or just altogether useless. I use recipes like I use guide books, just as a way to get a feel for things, and so the recipes I share are likely to follow that ideology.

Anyway… there’s the introduction to the category, lets get on to the food.

On The Menu: Sauerkraut

I’m going to ease into things here with quite possibly the simplest thing I’ve ever made — sauerkraut. I love me some sauerkraut, and erroneously believed it took years and a dozen elves to produce. Nope, 2 ingredients (+1), 10 minutes of prep and a bit of patience is all. It’s dead easy.

What you’ll need:

• 1 good clean glass jar
• 1 head of cabbage. I’m in China, and used 大白菜
• 2-3 tsp of salt (non-iodized)
• Some caraway seeds (optional)
• A big bowl
• Time (not to be confused with “thyme”)

How to make it:

1. Boil your jar: I actually didn’t do this, nor did I have a proper canning/Mason jar on hand, so I winged it with what I had (see the photo) and it turned out fine, but you’re probably supposed to.
2. Slice up the cabbage: I sliced mine decently thin using a regular knife, but if you have a food processor or mandolin, that’ll work too. Slice ‘er up and put it in a big bowl. It’ll seem like quite a bit of cabbage, but we’re going to take care of that.
3. Salt & Pound: Add your salt to the bowl. We have to break up the cabbage a bit so that it’s not so tough/fibrous, and so the salt can start pulling out the liquid in the cabbage. I think it’s common practice to use a tenderizing mallet to mash up the cabbage, but I just used my hands, crunching the hell out of it all until it had reduced in size considerably and a lot of the juice began to come out. Basically, get it down to a sort of consistency/texture of what you feel sauerkraut should sort of look like.
4. Mix in the caraway seeds: This is completely optional, but I like the slight anise taste it gives the kraut. I happened to have caraway seeds on hand (somewhat of a rarity here in China), but thinking about it now, I could have easily used star anise (八角) which is everywhere here.
5. Jar it: Place your mixture in your jar, pushing each handful down as you do, so it is quite compacted. The bulk of the cabbage should be below its liquid — add a bit of purified water to assure it is. Most recipes I’ve seen call for some sort of weight to be placed on top of the mixture to keep it below the liquid, but I didn’t have anything to weigh it down, so I just filled it right to the rim, so there was no air in the jar — air is our enemy. Put your lid on — tight or loose, I’ve seen recipes for both. My jar only had one option — air tight.
6. Store it: The fermentation process is going to create gas in the jar, which will force air and liquid out of the jar if your lid isn’t tight. As such, best to put your jar on a tray or plate that can catch the liquid. If you’re using a Mason jar, you’ll need to release some of the pressure in the jar every couple of days in the fermentation process. All that’s left is to stick it someplace out of the way (not in the fridge) and wait.

The amount of time the cabbage will take to ferment depends on your room temperature, lower temps will take longer, and higher temps shorter. Additionally, the amount of fermentation can be somewhat of a personal preference. I live in a warm climate, and I liked the taste of mine after about 6 days. Seven to 10 days is common. After 5-6 days, give it a little taste to see how it’s doing. I was advised to use a plastic or wood utensil instead of metal, as apparently metal can screw with the chemistry of the fermenting process. I have a two year old — plastic forks are not a problem here.

The Results + Benefits

As I mentioned, my kraut took about 6 days before it reached a taste that said “sauerkraut” to me. Admittedly, my affinity to the stuff largely comes from heaping it on brats or ballparks bought street-side, so I’m not sure where my tastes fall on the authenticity metre.

Also note that if you use a jar similar to the latch kind I used, I found a lot of the liquid was pushed out the top from gas expansion during the fermentation process. I have seen recipes call for adding more purified water to replace it. I didn’t add anything.

Alright, so you might be asking yourself why go to all this fuss to make sauerkraut, and you may also be asking yourself why you just read a rather long and none-too-concise “how-to” about it. Well, in a phrase: home-grown probiotics. Gut flora is your friend, and raw sauerkraut is all about it.

Don’t let my long-winded explanation fool you, I was blown away with how easy making the stuff was. I can’t wait to try it with some other veg and see what the results are, eventually working my way up to making my own kimchi. If you have any experience with fermenting vegetables, or other tweaks/tips, please let me know in the comments.

References

• A decent Youtube video on making kraut
• An article about the probiotic benefits of sauerkraut

Chatty Casey

And a little video with Casey and his cars.

Shangxia Jiu - Guangzhou's famous high street.

Tuesday morning Maggie, Casey and I crawled out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4:15am to head to the airport and catch a flight to Guangzhou. The quick two-day trip was a necessity so that we could apply for Casey’s Canadian passport and Maggie’s visa for a visit to the TNS&F in May.

The early flight-time was due to the Guangzhou Canadian Consulate only accepting passport applications between 9am and 12pm, leaving only a narrow window for us to get in and get it done. The flight from Haikou was brilliant — cheap and fast. Less than an hour in the air, and around 400RMB each way (incl. tax).

I’ve voiced my gripes about the whole guarantor system enough on Facebook, but other than that, the trip to the consulate went without hiccups. The mid-April arrival of Casey’s passport has us sweating a little bit about some of the other hoops we need to jump through to get the boy out of the country, but troubles for another day.

From the consulate we headed across town to Canada’s visa processing centre — which is night and day from the atmosphere at the consulate. It’s actually a bit embarrassing that this is the first point of contact some people have with my country. This is our third visa application, and I think it was somewhere between #1 and #2 that Canada (and a number of other countries) switched to outsourcing their visa application process.

So, instead of a nice clean commercial office, it looks like a Chinese bus terminal — completely with crowds, dim lighting, tired and overworked looking employees, no sound barriers or efficient queuing between the rows of waiting (and chatting) applicants and the visa application takers. Basically, just a mess — made all the more uncomfortable by a squirming toddler.

After a long process of sorting my already well-organized visa application package, filling in several forms that were not mentioned in the package checklist and throwing away a number of items that were mentioned but are not actually needed, we got the application submitted — now we wait with fingers crossed. Oh, for the record — apparently when the visa application checklist says, “Two (2) identical photos of the applicant and each accompanying family member,” and you write an e-mail to clarify that you actually need to supply photos of family members that are accompanying but are Canadians, and they say “Yes you do”, they actually mean “No, of course not — that’s silly”. If anyone would like visa application sized photos of Casey or me, I have extras.

The Less Official Part of the Trip

Had we been so inclined, we could have headed directly back to the airport and been home mid-afternoon. With both of us never having been to Guangzhou before, we figured we’d take an extra day and explore the town. We’re fortunate to have some great friends living there that offered to put us up for the night and give us the skinny on what we should see in city.

I’m not sure why, but despite knowing that Guangzhou is a 1st-tier city, and thus must be large, I always pictured it as smallish. Man was I wrong. The place sprawls on in all direction for ever. As such we did some tourism triage and came up with a very narrow selection of things we wanted to see.

Up/Down Nine Street

This was from Maggie’s digging into what we should see — and of course it centred around food and shopping. Shangxiajiu is about what you’d expect from a pedestrian shopping street — lots of people, shops selling everything from cultural to cultureless, and lots of restaurants and teahouses. It’s Guangzhou’s version of Wangfujing in Beijing, or (more familiar to me) Guanqian Jie in Suzhou.

Delicious Dimsum - Some amazing dimsum at a great (and busy!) restaurant on Shangxia Jiu.

Not one for window shopping or buying useless souvenirs, the street offered little of interest to me — with one exception — dim sum. One item on my Guangzhou todo was to have authentic Cantonese cuisine, and what better than some dim sum for lunch. We hit up the well-known 陶陶居, and were not disappointed.

The whole method of serving was a bit of an experience, as you simply go up and grab whatever dim sum you want and it gets marked on a bill that is tallied at the end. As there was no real menu or pricing, we were completely gambling on what it would all cost — figuring if they had 4 floors packed with people (all seemingly speaking Cantonese), it must be decent. We stuffed ourselves with easily the best dim sum I’ve ever had, including drinks (and the obligatory tea), and it only set us back around 100RMB ($15) — gamble won.

Shamian Island

The big suggestion from the people I pinged seemed to be Shamian Island, a compact chunk of land on the Pearl River in the centre of town that used to be a post-Opium War French/British concession.

Just a block or so south of Shangxia Jiu, it made for an easy after-lunch walk, which led us past Guangzhou’s bulk TCM market. We didn’t stop to look, but I don’t imagine there is much in the way of the world’s flora and fauna that isn’t represented in dried or powdered form there.

Shamian was nice. Not blow-your-socks-off interesting, but a quiet stroll that worked as a good reminder of the city’s long history with foreigners. It was also our first real glimpse at the Pearl River. Additionally, it was neat to see the White Swan Hotel, which is located on the island and hosts a number of foreign couples adopting Chinese children. If you’ve seen the PBS documentary “Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy“, you know the hotel I’m talking about, as it features prominently in the film. Incidentally, if you’ve not seen the movie, definitely do.

Building on Shamian

Building on Shamian

The IKEA Dilemma

A quiet alley behind bustling Shangxia Jiu.

By the time we finished up on Shamian, it was mid-afternoon and we needed to make a tough decision to head down to the Guangdong Provincial Museum and get a few photos of the GZ skyline in, or head to IKEA.

A difficult decision — Guangzhou’s skyline is unique to the city, but for a resident of Haikou, a visit to IKEA is just as rare an opportunity. In the end the big blue and yellow won and we maxed out our carry-on limit with kitschy kitchenware with Swedish names. So next time you’re by and you ask me how the Guangdong Provincial Museum was, allow me to introduce you to my awesome new Gnistra, and his buddy Aspekt.

From IKEA we barely had time to dash back to our friends’ apartment, repack our goodies (thanks for the packing paper Elvina!) and head to the airport via Guangzhou’s metro. The subway was absolutely packed, as it was rush hour, but still the better choice for getting to the airport I think. A taxi or bus would have been a bit more comfortable, but there’s no telling how long wading through bumper to bumper traffic would have taken.

The flight home was peaceful, as Casey fell asleep on take-off and didn’t wake up until we landed. All-in-all, the trip to Guangzhou was great and I’ll be looking forward to heading back there the next chance I get. Living in Haikou you get accustom to not having access to the creature comforts of larger cities (like Starbucks, Thai food and supermarkets that carry an herb section greater than Five Spice and Pepper), but it’s nice to slip out and remind yourself how the world works for most people. Huge thanks to Glen and Elvina for putting us up (and putting up with us), it was great seeing you guys again. Casey still keeps talking about “Shushu and Ayi in Guangzhou”.

A view of the Pearl River on Shamian Island

Crap winters aren’t something new to me. Growing up in Southern Ontario, I’m used to cold, slushy, sleety, snow-filled months from the end of October until the end of March.

The problem with Haikou winters isn’t even really the cold. The mercury shares its time riding just above and just below the 20°C mark, and so isn’t really “cold” by this Canuck’s standards. However, it’s not so much the (lack of) heat, it’s the humidity. I don’t think I’ve been dry since December.

Six or seven years ago I spent a week on Koh Chang in Thailand at the height of the rainy season. It was warm, so the rain itself wasn’t much of a bother. I could still swim, drink and hang out in a hammock — my primary vacation activities. And generally, I quite like the rain. However, what I discovered my 3rd or 4th day, after running out of dry clothes, is that being permanently damp ranks up there with mosquito bites on the under-arch of your foot and canker sores.

That was a week. I’m now going into month three of living in a cloud. Every day I wake up to what looks like a rainy day, but it never rains. The ground is wet, our balcony is slick with a thin layer of water and the ants continue to migrate from ground to kitchen counter — but no rain. The air just sort of sits there and makes things moist.

I’ve lived in several apartments in China that have come with a clothes dryer, but sadly our place in Haikou is not one of them. After months of waiting days (often in vain) for clothes to dry on the line, I’m pretty certain I would trade Casey (or at least Button) for a few spins of warmy dryness.

On that rare day once every week or two that the sun makes an appearance, our community instantly transforms into what looks like an elaborate yard sale — specializing in textiles. Every balcony fills with hangers, every tree gets a line tied between it, every shrub that can support the weight gets loaded with blankets and pillows. Children run and laugh; adults breathe a long, deep breath of air, the first in a while that doesn’t smell like a dirty gym sock.

But it doesn’t last. All that sunshine coaxes out the moisture that has permeated every pore in the city, and it isn’t long before once again you’re able to wash your hands simply by waving goodbye to that distant warm glowing orb in the sky.

One thing that does love all this moisture is mould. It’s everywhere. The spot just under your windows that the sun never reaches — mould. That box of old clothes in the spare closet — mould. I pulled out a leather-bound journal of mine off the bookshelf the other day and its cover had sweatered up. The smell of my apartment alternates between the scents of “Musty Basement” and “Sterilized Hospital”. The battle is endless.

The end is nigh

We moved to Haikou last March, and only briefly experienced this cold dampness, so I can only hope that the pattern repeats and we’re coming out of the clouds (so to speak).

I suppose this is the penance we’re required to pay for the other 2/3rds of the year where the weather is pretty stunning. If ever there was a case for moving 2 hours down the tracks though, Haikou’s winters would be it. Sanya, only 250km to the south, suffers hardly any of this. Never in my life did I think that decision on where to live would come down to sunshine or supermarkets.

In the end, supermarkets won out. Despite the nicer beaches and better weather, giving up our apartment and the easier access to amenities proved too difficult. We’ve renewed our lease for another year here in Haikou — I think I’ll be buying a dryer before next winter though.

Oh! The sun just came out … I’ve laundry to do before all the best bushes are taken.

The smile of a man who knows he's just won the lottery.

I have a hard time believing that it’s been half a decade since Maggie and I exchanged marriage vows with sand between our toes. But there it is, for five years I’ve been married to the most beautiful, most amazing, person I could ever hope to meet. She is my partner, my confidant, mother to my son, my best friend, and the love of my life.

Wood, Water and Wine

There is this thought that smiles in me,
On wood, water and wine.
Something simple within these three,
All tangled on a vine.

Wood so solid and protective,
But blows and bends in time.
Water clean, clear and reflective,
On seaside alter bind.

Wine the produce of affection,
That fates allowed to find.
Noteful, soft, ripened perfection,
Five years aged and refined.

Wishing everyone a very prosperous Year of the Dragon!

(h/t Nicki and Erik or the “Live 龙 and prosper” idea!)

So the other day I decided enough was enough and started fresh. As this is my personal blog, I wanted a design that was fun, interesting and showcased various things I like. I also wanted a bit of a sandbox that I could play in with new CSS3 and HTML5 goodness. And so the 2012 edition of the site was born.

One of my objectives was to make the site lighter (in weight, not colour), but still be a bit of a visual smack in the face. As such I’m using CSS instead of images for display elements wherever possible — true, this is a good practice all around, but one that is easily ignored or forgotten when you’re eager to get things “just so”. Fortunately CSS3 support is pretty much across the board now (thanks for joining the group IE9, your dusty nametag is by the door), and that opens up a huge palette for a Web designer to play with.

This has resulted in a theme that uses only about 10KB of “layout” images, not counting the various background photos (which can be customized page-by-page — see the about page) or the slightly heavier home page due to those big social icons.

<rant>
However, if you still happen to be using an old browser, things are going to look a bit sketchy for you. I spend a lot of time making client sites backwards compatible, and it’s frustrating. Next to bookkeeping, it’s about the most mundane and irritating part of my gig. The truly insulting bit is that there are few things simpler than upgrading to a modern browser, and yet people refuse to do so. And this is why for my site, my site, I’ve said “to hell with it” and have barely given those fools a code line of consideration (if you are part of the 2% that come here using IE6 or IE7, I just called you a fool, de-fooling yourself is easy). A modern Web experience and browser security obviously isn’t a priority to people who are using 10-year-old browser tech, and I’d be doing them a disservice by enabling them to continue using it.
</rant>

Anyway, the design still has little ways to go, and there are lots of small (and largely long-forgotten) legacy things that will need to be dealt with (the downside to running this blog for a little more than 8 years now — seven of which have been in China — is that the way I laid things out in the past is a far cry from the more standard way I do things now, lesson learned).

One other change is that I’ve done away with Disqus for comments. As a rule, I try to avoid 3rd party integration for things that core software does well enough. I wanted to give Disqus a try though and so had installed it with the last update (a year ago). Overall, I like Disqus’ functionality, and I like that it pretty seamlessly can be enabled and disabled (you’ll notice all comments made during my Disqus trial are still there and still in the proper hierarchy). It also has some great SNS integration. However, I do a lot of work with WordPress, and I’m used to the WordPress way of managing comments. Because of that, the Disqus system never really felt comfortable to me.

I think that about covers it. Hopefully the new theme is as enjoyable to visit as it was to put together.