If you’re looking for something fun to do in a beautiful setting on Memorial Day weekend, you should consider joining me for a hands-on DIY cooking class at River Myst Haven. It’s a gorgeous place that’s nestled among the hills west of Healdsburg on Westside Road.

From scratch, we’ll create building blocks of the DIY kitchen and then use them in a seasonal menu that we’ll all enjoy together.

Participants will learn how to make mustard, which we’ll use to create a glaze for pork canapés and also the vinaigrette for a seasonal salad. We’ll enjoy homemade Meyer lemon parsley aioli on a sustainable seafood stew. We’ll learn how to make yogurt and talk about all the different ways to use it, as we create a yogurt cake with seasonal fruit. Finally, we’ll have a cultured butter making demo and tasting. $100. Sign up here.

MENU:

Mustard Glazed Pork Canapés

Seasonal Vegetable Salad of

Artichokes, Asparagus, Snap Peas and Fava Beans

with Homemade Mustard Vinaigrette, Fresh Herbs,

and Ricotta—(subject to change based on availability)

Sustainable Seafood Stew with Meyer Lemon Parsley Aioli

Yogurt and Seasonal Stone Fruit Cake with Streusel Topping

Butter Making Demo and Tasting

My life and my kitchen have both been overtaken by fermenting cabbage lately. (Is there a support group for that?) Partially, it’s the season. I always want to make hearty, fattier foods when the weather turns cold and sauerkraut and curtido are the perfect accompaniments. Plus cabbage turns sweeter as the weather gets chillier, making it a tastier proposition all around.

The other reason for the abundance of fermenting cabbage is that I’ve been doing a lot of demos to promote DIY Delicious and ferments are interesting to people and lend themselves well to demoing. Fermenting is something a lot of people want to try but have maybe felt intimidated. Ferments are also quick to make in a prescribed amount of time on a stage (most of the time is passive time spent waiting for them to ferment). I always bring a finished batch with accompaniments for tasting.

What type of accompaniments? Well, you can eat curtido, sauerkraut, or other fermented vegetables with beans, in grain bowl salads, atop soup, with sausages, mashed potatoes, on sandwiches, in tacos and quesadillas and even on pizza with the right flavor profile combination.

Lately I’ve been serving curtido with simply cooked Rancho Gordo beans (gotta give the other book some love) and local queso fresco. The demo days have been cold and rainy so that dish has been working out quite nicely.

I had some leftovers the other day and created the taco you see pictured above. To make it, I sandwiched some grated cheese between two tortillas and crisped them in a cast-iron pan to make a taco dorado.  I added beans, leftover steak, avocadoes, salsa, cilantro and a big dollop of curtido. I took another batch to a friend’s birthday party where it was enjoyed with tamales by all the guests.

The only problem: My whole laundry basket smelled like fermenting cabbage because of the tea towels I’d used to cover the Mason jars. Thank goodness a double wash took care of the problem, and prevented me from having to replace all my clothing!

Wild Salvadoran Curtido from DIY Delicious

Time Required: 15 minutes active; 3 to 5 days passive

Curtido is a lightly fermented cabbage salad commonly served with pupusas. Think of it as sort of a Latin American sauerkraut.

Makes 1 quart

1 medium head green cabbage (about 1 1/2 pounds), quartered, cored, and sliced as thinly as possible

1/2 a small onion, sliced thinly

2 to 3 carrots, peeled and grated on the large holes of a box grater

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 jalapenos, cut in quarters lengthwise, seeded and sliced thinly

1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano, crushed

Put the cabbage, onion, and carrots in a large bowl. Add the salt and, with clean hands, toss and squeeze the vegetables until they start to soften and release their liquid (about 5 minutes). Add the jalapenos and oregano and toss to distribute. Pack the mixture tightly into a one-quart, wide-mouthed glass Mason jar, pushing down on the vegetables with a wooden spoon or your fingertips with as much force as you can until the level of liquid rises above the vegetables. Put a smaller jar inside the glass jar to keep the vegetables submerged. Cover with a clean tea towel and secure with a rubber band. The curtido needs to breathe.

You can see the small juice glass inside the jar if you look carefully. Note how all the vegetables are submerged in liquid. Now all you need is a tea towel and a rubber band to cover.

Leave out at room temperature for about 3 to 5 days. Check once daily to be sure the vegetables stay submerged, pushing down on them if needed. If you see a frothy residue on the surface, simply skim it off. Taste daily starting on the 2nd day. The curtido is ready when it tastes good to you. When it’s to your liking, fasten the lid and transfer it to the refrigerator. It will last months in the refrigerator. It doesn’t really go bad but will soften over time.

Though it took place last month (how is that possible?) I wanted to take a moment to blog about the home-brewed soda class my pal Nishanga taught at 18 Reasons.  Nishanga showed class participants how to use ginger bug and whey to naturally ferment sodas. She discussed other starters and I brought along some homemade root beer I’d made using the method in DIY Delicious that calls for brewing yeast.

Nishanga telling them what’s what.

Grating ginger and turmeric for the ginger bug

Slightly fermented ginger bug

Class participants putting together their very own sodas

After the demo, participants put together their own starter batches to ferment at home. Nishanga shared tastes of her lovely home-brews featuring amazing flavors out of her garden in Berkeley. We tried Lemon-Rosemary and Hibiscus Schizandra Soda. For snacking, we used the yogurt we’d drained the whey from to make a quick dip and served it with my homemade crackers from DIY Delicious.

PS: Nishanga recently signed a contract for her own cookbook with New Harbinger Press.

It’s sure to be a great and completely unique book because nobody I know has so much gastronomic talent combined with a professional grounding in Chinese Medicine and nutrition. Congratulations Nishanga!

Straining the sarsparilla for root beer

Root beer fermenting

The inaugural DIY Delicious book event was held recently at Jimtown Store in Healdsburg, CA. Since working on the recipes for the Jimtown Store cookbook was my first foray into cookbookery, it only seems fitting. Plus it’s a warm, welcoming space that feels like home and Carrie Brown and her staff know how to make a party!

But first the food: My dear friend Ellen helped me make fresh cheese, crackers, ajvar dip, and yogurt cakes the day before—all from the book.

Upon our arrival, all we had to do was crisp the potatoes, assemble the canapés (which included homemade sauerkraut and mustard from the book) and arrange the other items on platters. Carrie and her staff provided the flowers, the space and all the gorgeous herb bundles.

It was a fabulous party. Both my sisters showed up, many friends, ex-husband, and even some folks from as far away as Palo Alto.

Ajvar Dip (from DIY Delicious page 74)

This is a wonderful dip to make this time of year when the eggplants and peppers fill the markets. If you take the time to really char the eggplants (don’t worry, the stove will clean up just fine) you will be rewarded with a lovely smokiness that reminds me of a very good baba ghanoush, only better. Look for this recipe on the Chronicle Books Blog later this week.

Time Required: 30 minutes active; 30 minutes passive

Makes about 2 cups

1 globe eggplant, about 1 pound

2 red bell peppers

2 garlic cloves, peeled

Salt

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon ground Aleppo pepper or paprika

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Wash the eggplant and poke it with the tines of a fork in several places. If you have a gas burner, lay it right on top of the grate, turn the burner to high, and roast until blackened all over, turning often with tongs, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet.

Roast the peppers the same way and transfer them to the sheet as well.

Put the charred peppers and eggplant in the oven and roast until completely soft, about for 10 minutes for the peppers and 20-30 minutes for the eggplant. Remove the peppers to a bowl, and cover with a plate so they can steam. Leave the eggplant in the oven until it is very soft all the way to the center. Test it with a fork to be sure.

Once the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel them, and remove the seeds and stems. Transfer to a food processor. In a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic with a pinch of salt until you have a smooth paste. Add to the food processor with the peppers and pulse until chunky smooth.

When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, scrape the flesh from the skin and remove as many of the seeds as it is easy to do, without worrying too much about removing all of them. Transfer the eggplant to the processor with the peppers and garlic. Add the lemon juice, Aleppo pepper and pulse a few times. Add the olive oil slowly while pulsing. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Serve immediately or refrigerate, well covered, for up to 10 days.