And for my grand (and visually maniacal) pickling experiment, the types of food I could think of were endless to the point where I kept asking myself: "What HASN'T been pickled?"
So for inspiration, I asked my trusty friend & companion of 10 years Google for some advice, and stumbled onto a recipe when deciding to keep things simple:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/crisp-pickled-green-beans/
Plot twist: This was not the recipe.
Wanting to do things differently (because "Different" is awesome), I wanted to bring in a little Oriental twist into this experiment by implementing something my family had bought from the grocery market but never ate: Enoki Mushrooms!
(admit it, you too have something in your kitchen right now that was wasted several dollars on. With that money, you could've indulged yourself with several chocolate bars. Hmm. Or better yet, stop buying that one item you don't eat, save up and then start your own factory that produces whatever food you left sitting in the kitchen! Whoops, my imagination just struck again. Let's continue!).
Now knowing what I wanted to do in the pickling, I began to research on existing recipes if anyone had ever tried these two unlikely combinations of both Creaminess and Crunchiness, and surely enough someone had already did it first (darn, there's someone crazier than me).
In this recipe from a British culinary education site named "L'atelier des Chefs", Enoki mushrooms and Asparagus are both combined in a simmer of pickling vinegars, made to be served almost immediately.
With this being a pickling experiment, I began my project with a different approach of converting this recipe to be pickled in a jar for several weeks:
1. I substituted Asparagus for a crunchier Green Bean, quite pickle-able for its size and perfect yield
2. I did not simmer the Enoki Mushrooms and Green Beans in pickling solution.
3. I blanched them in water instead!
4. The yield of the recipe had to be doubled to accommodate the size of my only Mason Jar (the other ones are for my Mom's plethora of Chinese herbs. Sick or near-dead from winter? Just let me know and I'll send you some tea bags. Only joking, of course).
The ingredients used:
Oh, and the butter, chopped parsley & farfalle pasta? That's just part of my dinner in another personal endeavour of mines.
The process was simple (considering it was actually my first time pickling). I began by processing my required vegetables prior to blanching:
Meanwhile in a separate pot far away (like, across the kitchen far), my pickling solution was simmering. The pickling liquid consisted of a reduction of Soy Sauce, Rice Wine, Mirin and Rice Vinegar.
After the simmering, the time came to remove the blanched vegetables for the last steps (Brought to IMAX Scale presentation to showcase the cinematic proccess in all of its HD gloooooooory!):
Finally came the pouring of the reduction once it was brought down halfway into the pot.
Much to my surprise, the scalding hot pickling liquid forced the air pressure out of the tightly-sealed lid to the point where I heard seeping noises. At this point, I knew that the jar had pressurized itself a bit, but I boiled the jar carefully in a spaghetti pot of boiling water to be sure. Needless to say, it became pressurized for the grand waiting of 3 weeks.
Day 1:
Day 8 (1 week in):
Day 16 (2 Weeks later):
The Final Day: (Day 26), (4.5 Weeks In)
After several weeks of Pickling the Enoki Mushrooms & Green Beans, the food had shrunk by 1/3 of its size and gradually curled the Enoki.
For detail, here is the same jar in Day 26 (turned around for more visual)
Sensory Evaluation:
Of course, progress cannot be achieved without expecting results! After weeks of pickling in the solution, I tried out the food for the first time and the feedback my palate had told me was promising:
But yes, I liked it.
Taste
Salty:
Not much saltiness, as the mirin had created a sourness to the vegetables. The soy sauce, however had brought this missing saltiness (no seasoning was added to this liquid). The rice wine had also enhanced the flavours of the soy sauce during the cooking proccess and it enveloped my tongue when eating both the Enoki and Bean simultaneously. The other liquids had brought out further saltiness when reducing, and the remaining liquid has carried the true flavours from this liquid mix. Saltiness was definitely in this (not to be confused with sour, which shares a similar but unique effect).
Sweet:
As the yield was doubled, so was the quantity of caster sugar that was placed into the solution when reducing. The amber colour of the solution was a result of the partial caramelization when the sugar was cooking during the simmering. With that being said, the sweetness brought a confectionary (and novelty) feeling to this concoction. It was both sweet and sour, and the enoki mushrooms had brought out this sense the most!
Sour:
Oh, man. The already-sour rice vinegar, combined with the also already-incredible-sour mirin, with the also-super-duper-tangy soy sauce really combined to bring up that "pucker"factor to your tongue when also remembering that soy sauce and rice wine were major supports in really flavouring the green beans. Mushrooms were creamy, and were less-affected by the sourness of the solution.
Bitter:
The Green Beans in particular were blanched to eliminate the woodiness (so that the evaluation wouldn't be intruded by its existing bitterness). With the blanching already giving the beans a "clean slate" to have another flavour, I noticed when eating that the sugars had alleviated the overwhelming tanginess of the solution in the green beans, and it brought a flare to the sides of my tongue,
Umami:
This is where the pickled mushrooms come into play. The creaminess as mentioned in the Sour description of the sensory evaluation provided a savoury feeling of both pungency and a subtle essence from the solution. As the mushrooms were full of moisture before pickling, I can theorize that the Enoki had reacted well when the scalding hot pickling solution had further cooked the Enoki to its preservative state.
And Now...
Touch
Upon taking out the pickled foods onto a plate, the first thing I observed when I pressed the beans was that it became very soft from weeks of pickling, but another thing was that it was really flexible, almost as if it was crunchy, but hard to snap! The mushrooms on the other hand, were firm when I got them raw. Upon analysing the Enoki, it had become almost gelatinous while still retaining its form factor. The softness was still there, but that "soft- crunch" in an Enoki mushroom surprisingly was there.
Sight
The colour of the green bean had changed dramatically to a much lighter shade of green.There were pockets of liquid under the skin of the green bean, and the glossiness had enveloped the vegetable, again presenting a confectionery appearance thanks to the work of the sugar!
The Enoki, on the other hand had become a light-amber, visually indicating that the Enoki had indeed absorbed and reacted to the pickling solution. Other than that, many heads of the mushrooms had fallen off the stems for reasons unknown (the jar was still as a statue during the pickling process).
Smell
I almost passed out from the overwhelming aromas of the jar's contents upon popping off the lid, then the top cover. You could immediately take in the vinegar (sort of like the suicidal act of inhaling balsamic vinegar when it is being reduced. Yes, I tried that, and it the subsequent headache taught me most of the lesson of thinking before leaping). Additionally, the rice wine had always provided an enhancement, but being paired with the rice vinegar it was overpowering.
Accounts of Success, Flaws & Room for Improvement:
Accounting my success, for a first time the pickling worked as it was supposed to through following the instructions. The food really did deliver a culinary victory in creating an original mixture that can be modified or flavour-enhanced before the simmering process.
There were some flaws, however as I had fore-mentioned. Because of the enhancing abilities the Rice Wine & Mirin have, the vinegar's power was amplified and it just overwhelmed the solution during the simmering process (which, on top enhanced even more out of the vinegar). It essentially became a vinaigrette, and although it was pickle-able, the Enoki mushrooms tasted better after pickling, but the green beans took most of the hits with every bite feeling like you're crunching down on a frozen salad-dressing ice cube (not the most accurate of analogies, and I generally do not favour pickled foods, but it was incredibly sour for my taste!)
Definitely this issue brings me to my next topic on improving the pickling method to create the best product possible. Different approaches such as adding less rice wine, less rice vinegar, and implementing more caster sugar with more mirin for sweetness (and maybe some thyme to bring in deliberate staleness to tone down the high vinegar count) over sourness will balance out the natural sours that are already extracted & enhanced by the simmering process.
