The Pickle Shelf Radio Hour

BONUS: A Quick Pickle! To celebrate Lunar New Year, we thought we'd share some bonus content from our very first episode, Batch No. 1, Jar No. 1 - Rice Cakes, Road Trips and "Gung Hei Fat Choy!"

In this short clip, Kentucky-based chef AuCo Lai discusses Vietnamese scallion heads, pickled through a process of lacto-fermentation. The same process is often used with shallots, and AuCo has applied it to the preservation of a certain cousin of the scallion, found right here in the Appalachian woods. "I have done this with ramps, and they are delicious." AuCo says.

We recently wrapped up another hunting season at Lost Creek Farm. In this episode we’re making hunter’s stews from all over the world and hitting the woods with our good friend, Jonathan Hall. Join us as we explore the ways hunting and cooking experiences can change the way we think, through personal stories about race, place and our relations with the natural world.

It’s harvest season in the garden at Lost Creek Farm, where Mike Costello and Amy Dawson grow dozens of unique heirloom vegetables, from Homer Fike’s Yellow Oxheart tomatoes and Pink Annie half-runner beans, to Bloody Butcher corn and Cushaw squash. Behind each of those plants is a generations-deep community of people who’ve saved their cherished seeds and passed them down over the years. We visit just a few seed savers behind some of the crops grown at Lost Creek Farm, and we hear stories of seeds connecting people to their own families and communities, as well as other cultures and far-away places.

In the face of uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world found creative ways to honor their culinary rites of spring and early summer. In this episode, Jan visits his family in Poland, where, as far as spring holidays go, Easter reigns supreme. Mike hears stories from his mom about the picnic foods of Decoration Day, the holiday formally known as Memorial Day since 1970. We're joined by a special guest to celebrate the Kurdish New Year, Newrouz, as well as Ramadan and Eid.

Mike and Jan tag along as one West Virginia family makes traditional morcilla, an old-world blood sausage that connects them to their northern Spanish roots and opens up new connections from seemingly worlds away.

Special extended episode! For the very first episode of The Pickle Shelf Radio Hour, Mike and Jan celebrate the Lunar New Year in Washington, D.C. and rural West Virginia. Mike joins a good friend on an epic winter road trip through the mountains to procure ingredients for a special Cantonese feast. Kentucky chef AuCo Lai stops by Lost Creek Farm to prepare a spread of New Years dishes steeped in Vietnamese tradition, with plenty of influences from AuCo’s time in the Bluegrass State’s Appalachian coalfields.

Heads up: this episode contains mild and infrequent use of adult language