The Bell (Pepper) Jar
Can you taste the waste?
I recently posted in the other newsletter about these roasted red peppers that I love so deeply. Over here I wanted to talk about what I did with the byproducts, since whenever I make something I try to find uses for the scraps, trimmings, and less sexy parts of whatever ingredients I used. In this case, the pepper skins and seeds make up the bulk of the waste (their stems are really not edible, though parsley stems are and should absolutely be used in stock or in a version of what I describe below).
Charring the skins is essential to the roasted pepper recipe, so these skins are pretty black but still have flavor beneath the char. The seeds have flavor too, though it’s on the bitter side. Both the skins and seeds are coated in the sticky and delicious juices that collect inside the peppers as they cook. These juices are incredible: sweet, savory, and viscous. They provided all the hydration the koji needed.
I added rice koji 1:1 by weight and then 4% of the total weight in salt. I let it sit on the counter for a couple of weeks, then got impatient to taste the result and put the jar in the circulator at 140˚F/60˚C for about 72 hours to accelerate the enzymatic activity. Then I blended the mixture smooth, which took a few minutes because it was very dense and sticky.
The result is a gorgeous dark red-brown, and the flavor is deep, complex, and exciting. This batch of peppers had some poblanos in it, so there’s a nice insistent heat on the finish. It’s marvelous, and suggests a ton of possibilities right out of the gate, especially mole variants and a spicy vinaigrette for something like a pineapple-jicama salad. Because I kept the salt level low (which you can do if you keep water activity to a minimum, but that’s a subject for another post) it’s not overpowering.
The most important takeaway, though, is that this represents found money: a superbly tasty paste made from what would usually be thrown out or composted. A zero-waste kitchen is not some ascetic aesthetic meant to make a virtue of privation. It’s the exact opposite—using microbes and enzymes to transform scraps, peels, and offcuts to produce some of the most inspiring and useful flavors that you will ever taste.
Thanks for the inspiration. I process New Mexico green chiles fairly frequently; it's an indulgent purchase - 10lbs. roasted then frozen once/year, ordered online - and I am always left with a bowl of skins and seeds after processing a batch. Have always composted them. But this would be a good koji project.
And speaking of koji projects, I've completed my first: vegetable charcuterie as per the guidance in "Koji Alchemy". I used 2 large apples, 1 large red beet, and 3 Korean radishes (all from my garden/orchard). For the beet, I followed the guidance in "Koji Alchemy" more or less verbatum, cooking and peeling first then brining in a plastic bag with 1.75% its weight in salt. The radishes were simply peeled then brined similarly. The apples were brined at 1.75% in a 5:1 sugar:salt mixture. Following brine, I applied koji spore to the surface and cultured for 36H. Koji grew as I'd hoped it would. Then everything went in the food dryer until it lost 30% of it's weight. The results? Mixed. The apples were fabulous, having taken on a dense, cooked-mushroom-like texture and concentrated flavor. Maybe a little less salt in the future. The radishes and the beets were both way too salty, which surprised me, having used the EQM method. I mean, even sliced paper thin, too salty. Furthermore, the surface of the radishes had become hard, and the surface of the beets had become mushy to the point where I had to rinse it off. The beets had also taken on a secondary culture in places.
My next koji project will be more traditional - growing koji on rice, and using that for bettarazuke with the remaining garden radishes, and also for the green chile scraps, thanks to your post.