Real Pretty Food

I am kind of addicted to ume vinegar. Since my roommate, Morgan, made pickled radishes with it the other day...I can't get enough. Maybe it's the salt. Maybe it's the sour. Maybe it's because when I pour it on white rice, it's pretty in pink and I feel like I am eating doll food. 

I generally dislike artificially tainted food. For example, I find the abhorent flavor "Blue Razellberry" to be ridiculous at best and utterly icky. That said, there's a certain aesthetic to which I am puzzlingly drawn to consume: that which I imagine dolls might also eat. Perfect, shiny, not particularly realistic, frequently out of proportion to the hands of the dolls, charming, off colored and ever fresh. Doll food. Cute. 

It doesn't make me hungry to look at, but somewhere my imagination leaps and and I somehow like to eat things that I might eat, if I were actually a doll. Not miniature scones or meticulously glazed tiny turkeys, but bright and aesthetically princess-y, human proportioned meals. It just tickles me. 

I had some rice vermacelli sitting around, and poured some of the ume vinegar brine from Morgan's radish pickles atop them with some chopped fresh basil and a generous dollop of my blackberry preserves. The noodles turned pinker the longer they stayed in the sauce. 

So pretty! Not to mention sour and salty and sweet and herby. 

A doll would totally eat pink noodles. This doll does.

Pickled Radishes

My roommate, Morgan  Taylor, made the most beautiful, delicious pickled radishes. I didn't have anything to do with them but they were so great I can't help but shout from the rooftops about them for all to hear. 

Adapted from here, the recipe calls for pouring a brine made of ume vinegar, rice vinegar and strawberry syrup over a jar of sliced radishes, then sticking it in the fridge for two hours. Not wanting the pickles to be too sweet (and also not really knowing what strawberry syrup is), Morgan strained some of my blackberry preserves into the brine mixture. It was quite subtly sweetened, but very obviously colored a bright and deep magenta color. The ume vinegar was so salty and tangy I kept eating one after another of these wonderful pickles. I had to drink about eight cups of water after, but it was totally worth it. 

I am in love with the brine and want to put it on everything. It's so pretty, too, almost like not-food, but the powerful flavor redeems it. Morgan promised to make more, and I'm really glad as I'd like to always have a jar of these cooling in in my fridge. 

Blackberry Preserves

"The medicines of another time, the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass."

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Picked about two gallons of blackberries today with Mr. Jean Nagai.

The neighbor kids asked me why we were doing it and I said because they'll taste like summer in winter.

Rinsed them off and brought them to a boil with two cups of sugar. Betty Crocker's blackberry preserve recipe calls for one cup of sugar for every cup of berries, totally obliterating the fundamental tartness of the berries, so this time I taste-tested it and only added as much as seemed necessary. The liquid never became syrupy, and is lighter in color than the highly sugared versions I've made. 

Poured them in sterilized jars, sealed and waterbathed them for ten minutes. 

A patch of sunlight in the dark.