Eating in Season with Jacqui Marsh
Hi there. That's my cow Nutmeg posing
with me in the little picture—isn't she a
looker?? She's responsible for all the dairy
products of our household, and she takes
her job very seriously. When I got her, I immediately
became interested in the fermentation
of milk into cheese, yogurt, cultured
butter and the like, but I never gave too
much thought to the fermentation
of anything else. And there
is so much else that can be
fermented! Vegetables, fruits,
dried beans, fish, meat, herbs,
and a dozen other categories.
When I read Nourishing Traditions
(Sally Fallon) and Wild
Fermentation (Sandor Ellix
Katz) I became fascinated by
the possibilities of this amazing
method of food preservation
and I got started on a delightful
experiment that picks up a little
more steam every year.
I can't give you the equation that
explains how putting cabbage, salt and
(sometimes) water in a jar gives you a
crunchy, deliciously sour pickle several
weeks or months later, but I can address
the question that I had: “Why doesn't it
rot?” The (very) basic answer is that this
nifty thing called lactic acid is produced
during the breakdown of organic material.
Salt helps the process along. To steal
an explanation from Sally F.: “Lactic
acid is a natural preservative that inhibits
putrefying bacteria. Starches and sugars
in vegetables and fruits are converted to
lactic acid by the many species of lacticacid-
producing bacteria. These lactobacilli
are ubiquitous, present on the surface of all
living things and especially numerous on
leaves and roots of plants growing in or
near the ground.” (They're also amazingly
beneficial for our gut flora). Once there is
a buildup of that lactic acid in your pickle,
it provides as acid an environment as any
vinegar pickle and does just as good a job
at keeping that food fresh.
I have found lacto-fermenting about
twenty times faster and easier than vinegar
pickling and heat processing. My mother
would be in the kitchen until all hours of
the night: stove on high, steaming pots processing
finished jars, the next brine boiling
on the stove. Those pickles were delicious,
to be sure, but I can't help but compare how
Fermenting, Well Beyond Yogurt and Cheese
I got my cukes and cabbage preserved last
year. The stove never got turned on. I just
washed my jars, chopped my vegetables,
salted and packed. If it were a particularly
hot and nasty day, I took my task to the
basement, and cooled off as I worked. No
sweating over a hot stove in ninety-degree
heat that day. It baffles me how we moved
from a fairly simple process of
throwing vegetables in a crock
with salt to burning a buttload
of electricity and pushing
our endurance in the kitchen,
warming kitchen and planet…
I find lacto-fermented vegetables
wonderfully crunchy,
raw and fresh in the winter. I
frequently use salsa as a “fresh”
tomato on a winter spinach
salad, kimchee is dynamite
with eggs in the morning, hot
peppers are incomparable for
cooking Indian or Mexican
dishes and cucumbers make winter sandwiches
as good as summer ones, and the
brine from any of them can be used as a
healthful vinegar substitute in salad dressing
or just drunk as a spicy juice.
I've never had any problems with
spoilage of my pickles except when whole
cucumbers have popped up out of the brine
and gotten soft and squishy before curing.
But from what I've heard, if your pickles
go bad—you know it! They stink, are black
and slimy and few would be tempted to put
them in their mouth. But let me pass on
some excellent advice from Sandor Katz.
“Usually I find that [any] funkiness is
limited to the top layer, which is in contact
with the microbe-rich air. Underneath that
the ferment is fine. If in doubt, trust your
nose…. If you're still in doubt, taste just a
little bit. Mix it with your saliva and swish it
around your mouth like they do at wine tastings.
If it doesn't taste good, don't eat it.”
I hope you will be tempted to try a new
method for your pickling—and keep a centuries
old method alive and well.
Kimchee
(adapted from Nourishing Traditions
by Sally Fallon)
1 head cabbage (I prefer purple cabbage as it
is crunchier than green)
1 bunch green onions
1 cup carrot grated
1/2 cup daikon radish, grated (optional)
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
3 cloves garlic peeled and minced
1/2-1 tsp dried chile flakes (or any number of
fresh that you would like!)
coarse sea salt
Weigh your bowl before you start!
Place all ingredients except salt in bowl and
pound with a wooden pounder to release
juices. Weigh finished product in the bowl
and add 2 tsp of salt per net pound of vegetables.
Toss well to incorporate salt. Place
in a mason jar—I prefer regular size mouth
as it limits air contact and seems to keep
the contents from floating up above the
brine so easily. Pack the vegetables down
into the jar with a fork until the juice rises
to cover them by at least 1/2 to 3/4 inch. If
you haven't produced enough juice for that
to happen, you may add a bit of unchlorinated
water to top it up. Cover tightly and
keep at room temperature for three days
before transferring to cold storage. You can
sample at any time after three days, but really,
it is best after at least a month.
• Don't worry if you don't have every
last ingredient, and don't be afraid to
add another. I sometimes add kelp flakes,
cumin seeds, or nasturtium seedpods.
• I like the old fashioned glass topped
mason jars for this job, as the salt in the
pickle does not corrode the glass and rubber
that it comes in contact with. If you
have bail-top jars—now's the time to put
them to work.
• Sally recommends that one store
their pickles in the refrigerator after the
first three days. I have not found this to
be necessary, indeed, it misses the point. I
have always just moved my pickles to my
cool basement right after jarring them and
they have kept well for up to a year.
Pickled Hot Peppers
Pack a Mason jar with small hot peppers.
Add 1 tablespoon sea salt to pint (2
to a quart) and fill to within an inch of top
with unchlorinated water. Carefully pack
a grape leaf down over them, pushing the
edges of the leaf into the sides of a jar with
a chopstick or some other dull weapon so
as not to puncture the leaf. Goal is to use
leaf to hold the whole fruits below the brine
by a half-inch or so to keep peppers from
spoiling. The grape leaf also contains tannin,
which helps to preserve crunchy qualities.
Use these wonders
Back to the July - August, 2007 NOFA/Mass News
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