With winter roots and wild mushrooms in abundance, January was a perfect time to invite Kelly Geary to Umami Mart for a Quick-Pickling and Canning event. Author of a the book Tart and Sweet: 101 Canning and Pickling Recipes for the Modern Kitchen, Kelly was visiting California from Brooklyn to showcase her Sweet Deliverance jams, winner of the Good Food award.

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Based in Brooklyn, NY, Kelly Geary is the founder and chef for Sweet Deliverance, a thriving subscription program where she prepares healthy, delicious home-cooked meals out of her CSA shares. All with fresh and organic produce, she charts out each meal for the week, for her too-busy-to-cook customers — anything from salads and soups to protein-rich entrees that are ready to be warmed up for the entire family.

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As some of you may remember, I made umeboshi (pickled plum) last year, while Kayoko & Co. were doing the same on the west coast. I used yellow plums instead of Japanese plums, while the west coast group used real Japanese plums, but pickled while they were still green and unripe. Both results were ok, but I had to retry it this year.

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If you can get your hands on sake kasu (sake lees, a yeast by-product of sake making) a subculture of cooking opens up to you. Most commonly used for marinating fish and pickling, sake kasu looks like pizza dough with the consistency of wet clay and aroma of nama (unpasteurized) sake. It’s usually available for cheap, next to the okara (tofu lees) in a Japanese or Asian market.

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PREFACE
The Ume Project: Foraging
The Ume Project: Pickling for Umeboshi
The Ume Project: Umeshu (Plum Liqueur)
The Ume Project: The Aka-Shiso Edition

Since July, Yoko and I have been working on umeboshi (pickled plums) with Sylvan of Peko Peko, a Japanese catering company based in Oakland. From picking our own ume from a backyard Berkeley tree, to hunting down enough aka-shiso (red perilla leaves) to help add color to them during the pickling process, we did it all.

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PREFACE
Battle ReCPY: NYC Umeboshi Project, Pt. 1
Battle ReCPY: NYC Umeboshi Project, Pt. 2 

Finally, I finished pickling my ume. All I had left to do was to dry them under sun for a day or two. Being in NYC, I don’t have a gigantic backyard where I can freely dry my ume, so I simply laid them on cookie sheet (since I don’t have bamboo colander either), and left them on a sunny day near my window.

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This post is rather late, for which I apologize. Er, about a month late. SORRY! Where has all the time gone? How is it already mid-September? I look outside and the leaves are turning color. The light gives off a deeper glow. It is dark at 7:30pm.

Sigh. San Francisco’s (non-existent) summer is officially over.

So… let me continue today with my Umeboshi Project with Sylvan of Peko Peko Catering, which we started back in July.

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PREFACE
Battle ReCPY: NYC Umeboshi Project, Pt. 1

After a couple of weeks of pickling plum in salt, it extracts all the water out of the plums, which makes umezu (plum vinegar). Once the liquid rises above the plum, it’s time to add red shiso (perilla). You can either do it or not do it since the shiso basically just adds color, not much flavor.

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After seeing the Ume Project on the west coast, I was intrigued. I like umeboshi (pickled plums) and every time I go home to Japan, I bring back my mother’s homemade ones. After all, I am from Wakayama, where Japan’s best umeboshi is made. I should have the umeboshi making gene in me.

I’ve seen Japanese ume (plums) at the grocery stores, but they are very NYC in size and price.

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While it’s no Musso & Frank or Mateo’s, Umami Burger is quickly becoming a fixture in the LA culinary world. Seriously. Six locations have popped up since the original La Brea location opened in 2009 and the popularity doesn’t appear to be losing steam. Though it embraces the similar rapid expansion model that made the American Apparel empire so successful, Umami Burger has touched on something that is not only Californian, but authentically Los Angelean.

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