foodierudy

On Tuesday evening I listened to the excellent Sandor Katz speaking on the topic of fermentation at the London College of Naturopathic Medicine. Sandor is a friendly hippy who explained how pretty much every culture on the Euro-Asian landmass has some way to preserve their produce using fermentation, from Korean Kimchi, to German Sauerkraut. Many of the foods we eat daily involve fermentation at some stage in their production (ie. yoghurt, cheese, wine, beer, chocolate, bread, salami, coffee, etc). Enthused, I thought I’d make some Sauerkraut…

I finely sliced white and red cabbage, and sprinkled it with salt. I should have stopped there. But I decided to add some grated carrot, finely sliced white onion, and some garlic. Mix it all together, scrunch it with your clean! hands to release some of the juices, then pack it into a clean preserving jar. Really pack it in! As you continue to press, the juice will come up the side of the jar. The idea is to submerge the veggies under juice.

The theory is simple - as friendly bacteria ferment the veg anaerobically, the acidity increases. Both the salt and the acidity as well as the absence of oxygen limit the growth of harmful micro-organisms. Then leave for a couple of weeks to mature in a cool place. I closed the lid of the jar, but left the rubber seal off, to allow the gas to escape (Sandor told us of a couple of stories of tightly sealed jars exploding…). Warmer = faster fermentation, cooler = slower, but arguably more flavour (a bit like sourdough bread really!).

Can’t wait to taste it…! Next project - Kimchi…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.