Soup Sorceress ®

There are various ways to flavor and color pickled quail eggs. I used turmeric for a pretty yellow color. This was used as an appetizer for the Topanga Mountain School fundraiser, and it was gobbled up real quick. I also added pickled, turmeric english peas, which I’ll explain how to do as well. I have a new vision for this, which is to make cashew cream sauce and drizzle that all over.

 

This is how I do it, for 2 dozen quail eggs. The picture above is 5 dozen quail eggs.

Start with the brine, because it needs time to cool down.

~ 1.5 cups of apple cider vinegar. (you can you rice vinegar if you want)

~1/2 cup of water

~ 2 tsp black pepper

~ 2 tsp. sea salt (I use real salt brand)

~ Fresh Turmeric Root, approximately 1/8 cup, or a little more, diced. (if you chop them a little bigger, it’s easier to spoon out the eggs, without getting little raw pieces of turmeric root with it.)

You can use 2 tsp. of ground turmeric powder if you prefer. 

Put all ingredients into a pot, and get it to a boil. I boil it a couple minutes, to make sure the turmeric is cooked a little, and the salt is dissolved.

Put the brine aside. If you want it to cool down faster, put it in the fridge or freezer, just don’t forget about it if you put it in the freezer!

Then cook the quail eggs. 

I searched a lot on cooking quail eggs, perfect for pickling, and there are a few answers to this, but I chose this way and it works.

Gently place 2 dozen quail eggs in cool water in a little pot, and bring them to a boil. Boil for 4 minutes exactly. Sometimes I’ll do 10 seconds less.

Make sure you have a bowl of ice water ready before they’re done boiling. After 4 minutes, not a bit longer, quickly and gently scoop the eggs with a spoon and place them into the cold water.

They’ll cool down pretty quickly and then you can start peeling the eggs gently. They’re easy, just be gentle.

Put the eggs into a clean mason jar.

Once the brine is cooled down, pour the brine in the jar with the eggs. Close the jar and shake a little. Then put it in the fridge. Wait 3 days to a week before eating them so they’re nice and pickled. The eggs should last a month from the time you bottled them.

The pickled turmeric english peas:

It’s basically the same thing, but you’ll pour the brine HOT in the jar with the peas in them. That way it blanches it a little. It’s a perfect little sour, crunchy, turmeric pea, flavor burst!

You can use a lot less brine, depending how many fresh peas you feel like shelling.

Top the salad with little greens, radishes, pickled peas, and whatever else you like.

 

I didn’t enter the chili cook off in 2015, because I knew how to make chili. I didn’t have some special chili recipe, or make it very often.

One day I pureed some cooked beets with fresh tomatoes, and then cooked mushrooms and various veggies in the puree with fresh chili peppers, and it was a beautiful pink color! So when the chili cook off came around, there was a vegetarian category, I thought, “That’s a good idea to help promote my veggie business”.

I was young and enthusiastic, and really into the vegetables.

“You’re not putting kale in that are you?” my friend Sean said, who put American cheese in his chili. It made me think of all the times I had been made fun of and it encouraged me to do something better. I lost that contest. It just wasn’t a chili; it was a spicy soup.

The next year, I won second place for making a bison and beef chili topped with fresh strawberries and habanero lime whip cream. It was a chili no one could forget. The kids especially loved it.

I also bent the rules a little and used a tactic where, I kept a couple kids around by feeding them strawberries. It turned out really well for me because they helped me taste test and balance flavors. We also had loads of fun together, which was the whole point anyway. The “chili” was like a habanero, chili curry covered strawberry lollipop with fluffy sour, spicy whip cream.

That year the contest categories were confusing. Although, most people thought I would win 1st place, I was put in the traditional category, when everyone else thought I should be in the non traditional category. I was too happy to care, I was having so much fun with my community.  At the end, a judge walked up to me and brightly exclaimed, “everyone agreed, you had the best chili! the best!” I said, “but he won first place.” and pointed at Trevor. She silently walked away. It was a peculiar, and very Topanga moment.

2016

They came up with a new description for the other non – traditional category. If you were doing something strange (me again), and using different meats other then beef you were in the Champion Chili category. I was placed in the right category!

Here’s what I used.

~Grass fed beef stewing meat and ground meat, and pasture ground pork from Harvest Gathering Farms.

~My own pork bone broth. Roasted the bones, and simmered for 3 days with curry leaves, apples, onions, coriander seeds, and maldon smoked sea salt.

~Fresh pureed heirloom tomatoes

~Artichoke hearts (thanks to the kids helping me cut fresh ones and scooping out the hearts!)

~Pomegranate Molasses

~Dark Chocolate

~Vanilla

~Cherry bomb peppers, spicy lemon peppers from Erewhon in Calabasas. Habanero peppers and chili peppers from my garden…. It was surprisingly not too spicy.

~Volcano red Wine from Volcano Winery in Hawaii

~Onions

~I topped it with butter mixed with diced crispy garlic, and lime rind.

~I sliced SunChokes really thin, cooked them through and crispy around the edges, and put those in towards the top.

~The best part was adding finger lime pulp on top, also called lime caviar. The judges loved the little lime squirts in the mouth. I got those at the Topanga Farmers Market the day before.

I believe the reason I won 1st place this year, is that I get kids to hang around, who bring in some extra magic to the pot from just being awesome. I also worked exhaustingly hard at it, and go way out of my way to source every ingredient from farmers I know. I was also placed in the right category this year!

 

Sasha, with her second place ribbon for her delicious strawberry pie!

 

The kids happily wrote some of my ingredients on my chalkboard.

Chili goggles.

 

 

 

 

With everything going and all the concern, something we can agree on is, sharing healthy food is a good idea. We have a lot of power together. This was our focus. Willa shared a story she read at school about sharing food.

It was an early day out of school so we got some extra time together. We painted some used wooden boards. Something to brighten and decorate our kids kitchen with, which is next to a garden.

 

The more good stuff we create together, the better.

We were scheduled to make egg salad yesterday, which is really simple, but today was more about working together, which we do really well together. We decided we should also make crepes. We almost went for meringues, but ran out of time. I promised we’ll do a meringue day with all kinds of flavors of meringues.

Not much different from our last class, but this time we had Willa’s master crepe skills. She showed us the way of perfect crepes.

 

 

We were so impressed with that little perfect circle! We made a fresh jelly, with pomegranate juice and kiwis for the crepes. Little Immy wanted her crepe with lemon and sugar. I told Willa, “I don’t have time to cook the lemon and sugar into a jelly.”

“Kali! You’re over thinking it! She just wants some lemon juice with sugar!” said Willa.

That was awesome, and she was right. Immy loved dipping her crepe into the juice.

In the end, we gathered together in the kiwi gazebo and celebrated our food.

We made a couple containers of egg salad to share with teachers at school. They love getting our little treats.

Next week, we plan to make pomegranate molasses as well as apple sauce. We’re using fresh, local, organic, apples and pomegranates from Etheridge Farms. It’s a lot of work doing it from scratch, but we’ll do it together! The pomegranate molasses will be used for a later class when we make FesenJan with Heather Tehrani.

The plan was to make crepes. I picked up a dozen eggs from Topanga friends with happy chickens. We realized we had plenty of eggs to also make deviled eggs, and were inspired to work on two things at the same time. Making sure to focus on not over boiling the eggs, while also working on crepe batter. Deviled eggs felt like a great way to make use of some of special Topanga eggs, and they were really delicious!

For the crepes, we picked apples in the garden, diced them, and cooked them on low heat with a little coconut oil, cinnamon, and a little sugar. We used a simple crepe batter recipe and filled them with cooked apples.

Deviled Eggs

Put the eggs in a pot of cold water, turn on the heat and wait until the water comes to a rapid boil. Remove from the heat, put a lid on it, and let stand for 9 minutes. Quickly put the eggs in a bowl of ice water.

They patiently waited for the eggs to cool down and the shells peeled perfectly. Slice them in half and scoop the yolk into a bowl, add mayo and mustard, whip it. Add salt and paprika. Then scoop it into the egg whites. Sasha thought she used too much paprika, but it actually turned out super tasty, perfect amount of everything!

Can you find the little toy cows? It’s like “Where’s Waldo”, they place them in at least one picture every time.