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You may have noticed we have a few new faces in the club and some classic products on trial in local stores for retail.
It’s a new chapter in our story.
After ten years of fermentation education and the hokey cokey with production, we have a new limb to our business.
Over at @themulticulturedclub we are making all sorts of memories.
We have preserved some lemons which is a family heirloom recipe from Sudan.
We are introducing kimchi to palates who have never tasted such a thing, and with this we will be expanding our kimchi offering new cultural fusions.
We are adding all kinds of spice to our saurekraut, and our funky addictive chilli tickle goes up and down the Scoville scale depending on which African countries are present on production day.
We have evolved to become a dynamic collaboration between @anakacollective and ourselves, @theculturedclub, to offer opportunity, integration, training, community and this delicious food to women with direct experience of the asylum system who are making Belfast home.
We celebrate diversity.
We represent inclusion.
We care about culture.
We are food sovereignty.
We promote a healthy, low-waste sustainable lifestyle.
If you see our products on the shelves, tag us @theculturedclub @themulticulturedclub
If there is a shelf where you would like to see these products drop a message or tag the shop.
Offer us feedback, we are open to shift with your needs.
We greatly appreciate your support of this vision and our mission by purchasing these products. Your support benefits those marginalised by the asylum system.
We have worked hard to get this far and @cocomonket has done such a fab job to capture the magic of our CLUB. Help us spread the love.
If you wish to collaborate with us
Just say hello.
Love wins
💗
Dear Fermenters.
I know how it starts!!!
You hear the microbes speaking to you and next thing you are alone in your kitchen doing things with food no one around you understands.
Well now you never have to be alone, as something symbiotic is occurring.
A community of cool cats (or are we donkeys? In house joke, moving on)
A Fermenter’s Guild.
Do follow along @fermentersguild as yesterday this bunch of funky folk met to establish the things we need to thrive.
This is the brainchild of the one and only ‘man in a pink suit’ @thekojikitchen, nicely balanced out by brainmama @the.umbel ✨
Thanks @aguademadre for hosting this exciting meet up in your fabulous fermentation, in Hackney. I’ll be back for the water kefir alone.
#fermentationmakestheworldgoround
#Preserved lemons
How to do you use them?
As we launch these jars of sunshine on to nearby shelves, this is possibly my most asked question of 2022.
And in answering it gives me perfect opportunity to explain how I cook. It’s simple.
I cook up something plain, like quinoa, rice, some veg, a frittata or a one pot wonder and then I use a flavour bomb ferment to pull it all together.
You can refer to the master of flavour and Middle Eastern cuisine @ottolenghi for full preserved lemon genius.
Where you need acid & salt then reach for these.
Stews, hummus, Mayo….
As it’s salad season I have one particular preserved lemon dressing I love to use. Recipe below.
There’s a very sweet story behind these lemons made @themulticulturedclub
They are a traditional Sudanese recipe and they are divine.
If Belfast is local to you, you can pick up a jar
@thenutmeghealth @indiefude @biarebelramen @bethanyfruitmarket @thes3cretmarket
Hit me with other places please.
Soon @themulticulturedclub will be functioning online with our range of goods for special delivery.
Elevate your meal one zingy bite at a time. Profit from our sales goes straight to a crisis fund to support the beautiful multi-cultured team.
Grab a jar and whizz this together:
1 preserved lemon wedge
1/2 cup full fat Greek yoghurt
2 Tbsp water
5-6 Tbsp olive oil
Pinch of black pepper
1/4 tsp sugar/xylitol (optional)
Eat with salad, fish, potatoes, quinoa, tabbouleh, lamb. Let the lemons do their thing on your plate!!
💗🍋💗
Do you grow your own?
If you do you get it 🌱
Come harvest your know just how much work has gone into your foods creation 🥕
Without this interaction and patience it’s easy to see how we can become so detached.
It is easier to waste food we have not had to grow.
So, Just in time for EARTH DAY I want to plant this seed…. That we start to take food waste seriously.
Waste doesn’t just cost money it’s costs the Earth.
There is much we can do to store food correctly or preserve it.
That’s why we are hosting this event ON THE TURN.
Learn how to respond to that withered, neglected bit of veg in the fridge by turning it into something of a culinary delight.
MAY 8th
2pm-4pm
@The Cultured Club HQ
Extravaganza entry tickets in the bio link.
Gratitude to my friend Kareen of @monkeyshine_makes for her gardening efforts and camera presence 💗🌱💗
These #preservedlemons
They really are pots of gold.
What do you do with yours?
We have lots of favourites.
Just in case you missed it in the stories, now is a good time to make your SPRING tonic.
Lots of greens from plantain, cow parsley, dandelion leaf, sorrel, cleavers, nettles etc etc
All infused in apple cider vinegar for two weeks.
I like to sip one tablespoon mixed in sparkling water before I eat.
Good for the liver.
Good for digestion.
Good for glucose response.
Good for nature connection. 🌱
This little pot of zesty promise is working it’s way to you!!
We are ready for popping these on local shelves.
First we take Northern Ireland,
Then we take Berlin.
Tell us, where’s your favourite independent deli, health food store, fruit n veg spot.
Online retail to follow shortly.
Baby steps for @themulticulturedclub
The most frequent question we get asked is “How do you use them?”
Pick up an @ottolenghi book, he uses them a lot. We are hoping he’ll try these lemons which are a traditional Sudanese recipe and visit our Multi Cultured Hub too. 🍋
We have some great recipes to share from Sudan and North African when our online shop is visible.
Let all good things, time makes wonders.
#preservedlemons
Still with the ten year photo lapse (swipe right) I know this feeling.
The April acceleration into new things,
new learnings,
new opportunities
illuminated by spring's extra light.
Its sharp shadows and how it spotlights the dusty sleepy corners.
Encouraged to set things in motion,
I still can recall the moment of great revelation ten years ago.
I had to teach and share, put into words and action, the magic of the microbial.
Like a rabbit in the headlights, I felt the divine, the supernatural nature of the revelation.
A hugely intuitive and sudden moment of clarity beyond anything I had known in my ramble of a life. Felt like a proper April Fools at the time.
I completely understood these invisible friends I had bumped into along the way.
They lit me up. They turned me on.
They turned everything around.
I still think they will save us, they are the wayshowers but that is another post for another day.
Today I celebrate.
Because it is April ten years ago that I knew I had to start The Cultured Club.
I had no idea why I called it so.
But gathering people to share the wisdom was the idea.
Culture broadens out beyond just these little invisible things that inspire such transformation.
Culture offers more to discuss, more to ponder as we see how it shapes us, changes us, defines us.
That, and I am also tickled by its more creative potential in the arts, beliefs, values, habits, customs. Deep stuff.
Now here we are, still so deeply and intuitively loyal to the CULTURES.
Oh how they have changed me.
Oh how they have directed my path with great curiosity, revelation and insight.
Oh how they have worked wonders in my gut, changed my mind, altered my perception, invoked such happiness, instilled great balance and had my best interests at heart.
Today I celebrate this decade, which has been a joy of discovery, filled with many amazing people who have offered stage, opportunity, connection and similar alchemy.
Today I celebrate as new things set in motion.
The little baby that was The Cultured Club has only undergone a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is now @themulticulturedclub
There’s a lot to say, so it’s continued in the comments!
I definitely don’t do all of the things, all of the time.
In fact I do half of the things half of the time.
For many years now this has been synchronised with Nature’s cue. So as we are on Rhubarb season I was delighted to be reminded of this fab ferment by @miseanja who I bumped into the other night.
Rhubarb it’s been a while.
Let’s salsa
7/8 stalks of rhubarb
Small green pepper
1/2 red onion
1-2 jalapeños
5cm ginger
120ml honey / or 1/2 cup sugar
Juice one lemon
Zest of an orange.
1tsp sea salt.
Soften the rhubarb.
Allow to cool.
Add the other ingredients, either chunky or pulsed.
Transfer into a clean jar and allow to ferment for a few days, before tucking in.
Keep it in the fridge for a few weeks. This is not a long rhubarb preservation option.
The average bottle of ginger beer contains a whopping 38.5g of sugar
But not my ginger bug ginger beer!!!
The sugar in this baby is food for the microbes. They consume the sugar and create CO2, that’s the fizz to you & me.
Using simple ingredients such as ginger, lemon, sugar, water and some fermentation skill, plus a little patience… we can create litres of probiotic, sugar less delight for pennies. Well, this 1 litre bottle probably cost 60p to make. I can’t put a value of the time & patience but 200ml of Fentimans costs around £1.50, Bundaberg roughly the same. I know where I am placing my bets for both my wealth and my health
We will have a ginger beer fest abs other probiotic drinks event this SATURDAY APRIL 2nd.
At our HQ @vaultartistsni
Booking open until midnight tonight. 30/3