The other day I helped a family with their annual passata tradition. I had an ulterior motive: making passata has been on my bucket list for years, and I wanted to learn how they did it.
While we were working, I remembered seeing a Facebook reel about the “Nonno Knife” and thinking it was amusing.
Why are you telling me this, Papa? Well, the Nonno in this operation used a cheap supermarket paring knife.
What do you know? It looks like the reel was true! He was literally using a “Nonno knife.”
So I get home, and guess what? Despite owning a roll of stupidly expensive professional knives (including a $100 paring knife, but NOT a Japanese knife, at least)—the knife I’ve used for most tasks over the last 25+ years is a cheap one I got for free from a kitchen renovation.
Somehow, after all these years, I have a Nonno knife.
But since I’m not a Nonno (yet), let’s just call it “Papa’s Knife.”
I checked them daily, and found myself skimming the top because of some wild yeast.
A little over a week ago, I decided I wasn’t going to fuck around with the yeast growth anymore. I’d done some research, bounced what I was seeing off Gemini, and everything seemed normal enough—but I’d reached the limit of how adventurous I felt like being. I kept thinking, “I do not want to fuck these up.”
A little over a week in. I’d fucked around with fermentation long enough. Into the fridge.
Only one problem to fix before we could call this test done. I still had to eat one. It took another day to work up the nerve:
Well, They’re Pickles. 4/10 for flavour.
I don’t know if I fucked them up—or if I’m just not used to that flavour.
Nothing about them screamed failure. Maybe I’m just expecting that sharp, vinegary deli pickle you get beside a burger.
Dill. Garlic. Salt. Crunch. Vinegar.
These weren’t that.
After Mrs Sandemano’s taste test—she caught me red-handed eating these straight out of the jar—we agreed they were missing acid more than anything.
So I added two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and put them back in the fridge. Hopefully, they’d improve.
A couple of days later, I tried another one.
Don’t worry, the white webbing is “Stomata & Lenticels!” It’s fine.
Ehh…5/10?
They’re better. The vinegar got them a little closer to what my brain apparently thinks a pickle is supposed to taste like.
Still, I’m not exactly standing here thinking, fuck yeah, check out this pickle.
I also noticed this weird white webbing on the skin.
Which made me wonder if I’d managed to grow something new and exciting.
I looked it up with Gemini. Apparently it’s “stomata and lenticels”—part of the cucumber itself. I had to double-check that because the explanation sounded like bullshit.
I’d bore you with the extensive rabbit hole, but you can go down that one yourself. Stomata & lenticels. Apparently it’s a whole thing. I learned something.
An extreme close-up showing what it is! Stomata and lenticels! Apparently.
Also, reflecting on it—shit. Salt. I added more liquid to an already-established brine without adding any more salt, which means I also changed the salt concentration.
Did that matter at this point, especially once they were refrigerated? I don’t know yet.
So rather than continue standing in my kitchen suspiciously eating pickles by myself, I’m taking them to a party tonight.
Verdict à venir. Maybe I fucked up the pickles. Maybe I need to get used to lacto-fermented pickles. Or maybe there’s something interesting in the middle.
If you’re looking for advice on how to buy basil, this ain’t it. We’re talking about growing basil by accident, a quick fix, and pretending like I meant to do it the whole time.
Last year I had a hot pepper guild — two jalapeños, two habaneros in an enormous pot, and they crushed it. I tried to overwinter the pepper plants — and I killed them. Classic.
This year I went on vacation in late June and never got around to replanting the pot. When I got back, it was overgrown — except one thing was thriving in there on its own: a Thai basil plant, self-seeded from a bucket plant I’d let go to seed the year before. Nobody planted it. It just showed up and took over.
The overgrown jungle before I touched it—can you see the Thai basil on the left?
So I ripped everything else out, left the Thai basil where it stood, and planted a store-bought basil plant I’d divided. Mulched the whole thing with dried grass clippings. Then, mostly, left it alone.
Thai basil isolated and the rest cleared outA store-bought overgrown basil plant—cost $6The new guild together – Thai basil with its basil buddiesDried grass mulch sets up this basil guild nicely
“Mostly” is doing some work in that sentence. I’ve been pinching the tops and especially the flowers off both plants the whole season. My theory — which may be complete bullshit — is that basil’s basically a weed, and weeds get eaten by wildlife and just push out more growth to compensate. So pinching it is me doing the wildlife’s job. Keeps it vegetative instead of bolting to seed and quitting on me.
A few days later after the plant had settled in, looking a bit haggardAug 9 and the basil guild is looking beautiful
Whatever the reason, it worked. The Thai basil came back harder than I expected — I’m honestly still a little shocked it’s there at all — and the divided basil filled in right alongside it. Two completely different flavor profiles sharing one pot, no drama.
Aug 21 and this basil guild is producing nicely
I’ve been using it hard this summer — cherry Roma tomato and zucchini braise being the one my wife and I keep coming back to. I’m also trying to figure out an Asian-style pesto for ramen night, alongside a regular one. If I’m growing it, I’m going to use it.
Freshly picked basil ready to make the zucchini and tomato braise
Next year? No idea if I run it back the same way or switch it up. But I like how this went, and honestly — this an example of what “being an artist” looks like from where I sit. A pot, an accident, and something worth eating at the end of it.
When I made the decision to “leave a few scapes go to flower,” little did I know that not only could I still use the garlic cloves, but the flower heads would produce these beautiful garlic bulbils.
Garlic flower full of bulbils
Here’s the game plan: (freshly researched through Gemini, Claude, vetted by YouTube videos and, well, whatever)
I keep these in a dry space (my basement cellar should do) until I plant them in late October. It’ll take two years to produce full garlic heads. This is the long game, if Gemini is to be believed.
Garlic bulbils in my hand
Also, as an aside, I just learned you can use garlic bulbils in pickles — you don’t even have to peel them. Maybe worth exploring more bulbils for the future.
Every year it’s the same—I buy a bag of Mucci mini cucumbers from Costco (when they’re under $3, always a good idea in theory) and every year they go soft and sad on the counter before I actually do anything with them. They always end up like this:
Unfortunately gone rotten despite Mrs Sandemano’s persistent inquiries on what I’m going to do with them.
This time, no more excuses. Fermented pickles, finally, and a real question to answer while I’m at it: does a fancy Pickle Pipe airlock actually make a difference, or is daily burping just as good?
So I set up two jars side by side. Same cucumbers, same brine, same everything — except one is a real canning jar that has a proper self-venting Pickle Pipe lid, and the other is a repurposed Putter’s jar with a plain lid that I’ll have to burp by hand. Whichever one wins, I want to actually know. (Also, it has absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing debate with Mrs Sandemano whether we ought to keep my collection of empty jars.)
The setup (Day 0) :
Mucci mini cucumbers, ends trimmed about 1/8”
Blossom ends of mini cukes?
One clove of garlic per jar, and not just any garlic — the first of the season from my own garden.
This is my first ever garlic I grew
A big pinch of pickling spice in each jar (scientific measurement: thumb and two fingers, roughly 1 tsp).
Pickling spice I use this year
A few fresh dill fronds.
Rescued from a bunch that was on its last legs, after diligently awaiting in the refrigerator for me to finally follow through on this project.
Two 1L jars: one repurposed pickle jar with a solid lid, one wide-mouth jar from Walmart that happens to fit a Pickle Pipe perfectly.
One pickle pipe jar and a repurposed pickle jar
The brine (and a small math incident) :
Target was a 2.5% salt brine. I weighed the water from both jars combined: 744g. Then I did the percentage math and got 1.8g—a number so small it looked wrong. I consulted Gemini, and found out it was because I’d added an extra decimal place. No sweat, multiplied the result by 10, landed on 18.6g of pickling salt, rounded up to 19g.
“Ah yes, precision.”
—Papa Sandemano
I dissolved the 19g into the full 744g of water in one bowl, whisking until it went clear, then split it back evenly between the two jars, leaving about 1cm of headspace in each.
Lids on, jars tucked onto the counter out of direct sun.
Day 1:
Curiosity got the better of me, and even now the smell promises something amazing to come.
Nothing to report yet — no cloudiness, no bubbles, nothing dramatic. Just me, checking on two silent jars like they owe me an update. Stoked. Almost impatient. This is apparently just what fermentation day 1 is: waiting for something to happen while a garlic clove sits there doing absolutely nothing to prove it either.
Next check-in whenever the brine starts doing something interesting. Which — fingers crossed — should be soon.
Two things currently sitting on my counter that Mrs. Sandemano keeps bugging me about (and I’m not entirely sure what to do with.)
The garlic bulbils are from my first year growing garlic, so they’re completely new territory for me. Eat them? Plant them? Pickle them? All of the above?
And then there’s the eternal problem of buying mint: you need six leaves and somehow come home with a small shrub. It’s so much, I just threw half of it away.
Half of the bunch ends up here
Surely there’s something better to do with the rest than watch it slowly die in the fridge. I’m thinking drinks, sauces, preserving it? Or maybe trying to propagate a few stems so I can stop buying the shit altogether.
Some already rooting, and the rest for a zucchini salad later
Look, let me start off by saying that Hugel (short for hügelkultur—a complex German word that Siri hates) knows abuse in its five years. Last year’s tomatoes produced as much as my neglect could allow. I told myself last October (okay, early November) that the sixteen cloves of garlic would give me a great start. Of course, I neglected it completely, right up until June 19th, when I stood in the yard cutting scapes with one eye on the clock because I had a flight to catch. I made a conscious call not to pull the nettles — I wanted to see what they’d do, maybe forage them eventually.
Anyway, after a 24 day vacation, I’m not sure what I expected coming back. How would me garlic fare, sir?
Approaching the gate I did not expect the nettles I’d “eventually harvest” to grow nine feet tall in three and a half weeks. Standing at the gate, all I could think was: did I fuck this up? Again?
Look at those stinging nettles! They’re like “I didn’t know they grew that fucking tall” tall.
So, I’m no idiot, I know the Stinging Nettles gotta go, and a quick Gemini check tells me I don’t have to worry, it’s a good thing they’re there because it means Hugel is doing better than I thought. Sure. I’ll go with that. All I’d have to do to rescue that garlic? Just clear six inches around them.
“Just clear around the garlic?” Hey buddy, can you find it? No sweat right? It’s somewhere in this epic clusterfuck!
Okay—I had already pulled a garlic bulb a couple days ago, out of curiosity, before I’d even started this whole rescue operation. Now I know the garlic is doing alright in Hugel. But where was it?
My first garlic—small, a little rounder than expected. I was so excited that I washed the dirt off, and trimmed the roots.
No big deal cleaning out the “Ortiche.” (That’s the Italian word for Stinging Nettles and I’m using it so I can pretend like I’m growing them on purpose.) The good news? Now it was easier to see where that garlic was, they’re almost ready, and if we can save them from being choked out
There’s garlic falling over in there so we’re on the right track.
No-grow zone dealt with, less clusterfuck. All I had to do was mercilessly clear around each garlic plant. Oh, and keep some of the good Ortiche so they’ll regrow around Hugel.
I’m not going to keep the Ortiche that grows along the old wood fence. I need to walk around Hugel.
While removing the rejected Ortiche, I started thinking of how I learned that family back in Italy pay good money for it, but here I’m getting them for free. Also wild physalis trying its best to overtake everything. I’ve wondered how can I take advantage of both for free food. I had to come up with a plan.
The plan. Yellow and red = no grow, blue is for Ortiche. I’ll figure out Hugel later.
Seeing it’s a well-intentioned plan—it’s one-hundred percent “we’ll see.” NGL the progress at this point was enough motivation to tackle the next issue: That garlic needs six inches of cleared area.
Give that garlic the six inches it so desperately needs!
With the garlic’s competition weeded out (ahem), I left a couple physalis bushes, and Ortiche stumps. I don’t want to squander free produce, and Gemini has a couple ideas for how to best manage them.
Bonus! Garlic + Free berries and greens!
I like to get down to the ground level and give my growing area a good look. I read that we give that garlic six inches clearance so they dry in the heat. Apparently this will harden the bulbs.
I repeat: Some of them are falling over, which is supposed to be a good sign.
I fucked up cutting the scapes—pre-airport haste— and let four go to flower. Apparently they make a pretty flower, and can attract some good pollinators. It’s fascinating to see the bulb sway in the wind. Shouldn’t be too hard to capture on my iPhone.
No! The BULB! FOCUS ON THE BULB!
I tried to get in a close-up so you’d see the flower bulb is starting to split. The wind was not cooperating, and this is the best shot.
Yeah! Maybe if I hold it…COME ON!
It’s hard to get a decent focus on the flower for this picture, and this was the closest I could get. You can see the tiny little bulbils, even if they are a little out of focus.
The best focus I can get. Those little structures inside this flower are called bulbils
These pictures are beautiful enough that I had to send them to Gemini for a deep dive. Now I want to use these bulbils to make even more garlic. I just have to figure out how.
While reading (yet another) discussion this week about whether food photos are “real,” I decided it would be way more entertaining to scroll through old Facebook albums.
That’s when I found this dish from 2009.
If you think you know what you’re looking at, you’re probably wrong. Keep scrolling.
Looking at this particular photo brought back a memory I hadn’t thought about in years…
At the time, I was running my first kitchen as an Executive Sous Chef, effectively acting as Chef de Cuisine under my mentor, the chef who became the Food & Beverage Director.
Looking back now, I also laugh a little.
My mentor and I prepared this dish for a food photography session, and everything had to be perfect.
Of course there were microgreens. (It was 2009.)
While we were executing, he turns to me and asks me why I don’t have a nice Japanese knife like all the other cooks. (it would be easier to sashimi the Albacore.)
Back then, Japanese knives were becoming the thing every cook bought. I remember commenting that I was taught those knives were something you had to earn. Those assholes buy these knifes but can’t even keep them sharp. What a waste of money.
Without hesitation, my mentor turned to me, hands me a Japanese knife, and said:
“Out of everyone in this kitchen, you’re the one who deserves that knife.”
I don’t remember what knife he handed me, or what brand it was.
I don’t care—I remember how that moment felt.
Yeah—the dish was styled. The photos were styled. The restaurant itself was styled. That’s part of hospitality. People don’t just pay for food. They pay for an experience.
A rule I stubbornly defended: the photo still had to resemble the dish. The guest had to recognize what landed on their table. The goal was never to invent something that wasn’t there — it was to present what was there, at its best.
Funny enough, that’s what made me think about this dish again.
The featured image for this post isn’t the original photo. I quickly snapped the photo on my BlackBerry Bold before the plate left the kitchen.
That BlackBerry gleefully flattened everything — the fish, the colour, the oil, the texture, all turned into the same orange-grey mush. The dish looked better than the camera could handle.
Modern tools let me restore some of that. Not because the tool is magic — anyone can open the same app. But seventeen years of knowing what that dish was supposed to look like is what told me how far to push it, and where to stop.
It wasn’t the garnish, or the photography, or even the food that stuck with me. It was the kitchen. The mentor. The curiosity that came with both.
Same knife. In skilled hands.
Funny how a seventeen-year-old photo can remind you of the things that actually mattered.
The original. Taken on a phone that also doubled as a flashlight.
Look, I’ve bought these before and I’ll buy them again. 24 green onions for $6.99 is a better deal than 3 for 99 cents — you don’t need a Red Seal to do that math.
The problem? I have a history with green onions. Specifically, a history of turning them into fridge slime before I get any real use out of them.
So here’s what happened this time.
I get home from Costco. These things sat on the counter for six hours while I put groceries away, butchered a pork loin, cooked supper, and played Tetris with the fridge. No room. Green onions lose.
I managed to use some in a “vegan” kimchi Jjigae ramen. Chopped enough for a small container. That’s 2 out of 24.
The rest? Spent the night on the counter. In the bag. Same bag they came home in. Same bag Costco had refrigerated before I bought them.
They’rea in the fridge now. Finally. But the clock is ticking and I’ve got 22 green onions staring at me every time I open the door.
Ever wonder—So what the hell do I do with these before they go sideways?
