JUST FIZZING

Ferments and pickles – an extract from Restore by Gizzi Erskine.

Gizzi Erskine tackles ferments and pickles to make favourite condiments in this extract from her book, Restore

WHEN I STARTED writing this book, over a year ago, the world felt like a very different place. I was already in something of a tizz about the state of the world, both agriculturally and environmentally, and was finding the mixed messaging – and the fact that no one was taking responsibility for the real cause of all this damage done to the planet – maddening. And this made me realise I had to re-evaluate how I approach my use of imported ingredients – ingredients I truly cannot live without. I needed to teach myself how to adapt. Accepting that change starts at home can be overwhelming, devastating and depressing for anyone with any joie de vivre, but it doesn’t mean that we have to live this incredibly staunch, colourless or bland life. If anything, it’s the opposite: when we look into food production and the reality of what it means to eat sustainably we are in fact offered a pretty bountiful plate. Yes, eating in a ‘restorative’ way takes consideration, forming new habits and stepping away from conveniences, but it can also be creative, fun and delicious.

Asian food is one of my favourites, but many of the ingredients I use in these dishes – particularly the fermented condiments – are imported. The Asian condiments I love all look and taste different, but they share the same foundation – one of the most uncontrollable ingredients in cookery: bacterial cultures. These cultures require regulated temperature (as opposed to heat) and time. Fermenting is about enabling these bacteria to impart life into food. Fermenting is a complex process and fermented foods vary widely based on the key ingredients, how much salt is added, what temperature the ferment is left at and for how long. Flavour notes can range from tangy to savoury umami and salty, a spectrum of taste that brings a depth and roundness that it is almost impossible to define but is addictively satisfying. I want to show you that it is possible to get into the world of fermenting and preserving in a practical and realistic way, with delicious results.

1 SRIRACHA

MAKES 750G / PREPARATION TIME 10 MINUTES / FERMENTING TIME 2 WEEKS

This may be the number one thing I can’t live without. When I started experimenting with making my own, none of them had the right viscosity, until I did things a little differently. Normally, people ferment the chillies and then make the sauce, but I swapped the steps, cooking it, thickening it and then letting it ferment, which keeps the viscosity you would expect from a squeezy bottle of sriracha.

800g red chillies, stalks removed and

chillies roughly chopped

50g bird’s-eye chillies, deseeded and stalks removed

2 heads garlic, cloves peeled

100g caster sugar

2½ tablespoons tapioca or cornflour

250ml rice wine vinegar

3 tablespoons table salt

You will need a sterilised 1-litre preserving jar or bottle.

Put the chillies in a food processor with the garlic, sugar, tapioca or cornflour, vinegar and salt. Blitz on high speed for 3 minutes, or until it is as smooth as possible (I am lucky I have a really powerful Thermomix and Vitamix which processes in double time; the main thing is that you need to let it blitz for as long as it takes to get a smooth paste), then transfer the paste to a saucepan. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes, until the sauce has reduced by about an eighth and the flour’s thickening powers have engaged! Transfer to a hot, sterilised 1-litre preserving jar or bottle and seal tightly with a lid.

Allow the paste to sit at room temperature for 2-3 days, stirring it once a day. After about 3 days you should see bubbles forming on the surface. This means fermentation has begun. Within 2 weeks it will have fully fermented. It will keep in the fridge for ages, and will continue to ferment slowly even when chilled. As is often the case with ferments, the flavour only gets better with age!

2 CHEATS’ ACTIVATED KIMCHI

MAKES ENOUGH FOR A 3-LITRE PRESERVING JAR / PREPARATION TIME 30 MINUTES, PLUS 1 HOUR MINIMUM BRINING TIME / FERMENTING TIME 2 DAYS

I’ve been making kimchi for years, the recipe for which I’ve already posted online, but when I made the gochujang (see page 100) I was playing around with things to do with it. The fact that the gochujang is full of live bacteria means that it starts the process of fermentation really quickly and you will have decent kimchi within a day or two rather than a few weeks. This kimchi is also vegan.

50g salt

300ml water

2 heads Chinese napa cabbage, outer leaves

removed, cabbages quartered lengthways

300g Accelerated Gochujang (see page 100)

80g fresh ginger, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks

6 spring onions, julienned into 4mm-thick strips

2 apples, cut into thin matchsticks (with skin intact)

You will need some kitchen gloves and a sterilised 3-litre preserving jar.

Begin by giving the cabbage a quick brine. To make the brine simply dissolve the salt in the 300ml of water in a saucepan over a medium heat. Pour it into a nonreactive container which the cabbage will fit into. Once the water has completely cooled, add the cabbage, pour over enough cold water on top to ensure the cabbage is submerged, and allow to brine for a minimum of 1 hour.

Once the time has passed, remove the cabbage from the brine and dry it thoroughly. You’ll need to get in between every leaf to make sure it’s as dry as possible. (Over the course of fermentation the cabbage will release lots of liquid and you don’t want the flavour to become too diluted, so it’s good to eradicate as much water at the start as you can.)

Wash the non-reactive container you brined the cabbage in and dry it very thoroughly. Add the gochujang, followed by the ginger, spring onions and apples. You’ll want to wear gloves for this next part of the process: once you’ve donned your gloves, use your hands to mix the ginger, spring onion and apples thoroughly with the gochujang until combined. Take your dried cabbage quarters and spread a little of the gochujang marinade between each cabbage leaf so that it is really well rubbed into the cabbage.

Wrap each cabbage quarter around itself to create a tight parcel and wedge into a sterilised 3-litre preserving jar. It will start fermenting pretty much immediately, and you’ll be able to tell by the level of liquid that leaches out of the cabbage that it’s starting to ferment.

Within two days, it’s good to go, or you can store it in the fridge. It will deepen in flavour the longer it ferments.

3 ACCELERATED GOCHUJANG

MAKES 1.1 LITRES / PREPARATION TIME 5 MINUTES / FERMENTING TIME 6 WEEKS

Gochujang, a Korean red hot pepper paste, is at the foundation of so many Korean dishes. It’s an effort to make (trust me, I’ve been to South Korea’s Sunchang region and made it properly), but I really wanted to include it in the book. It’s usually activated with a special soy bean, however to speed things up here I’ve used miso in its place, which is already fermented; I’m not normally one to cut corners but this recipe is genuinely surprising. The Korean pepper is what makes this special. It’s roughly ground (even the ‘fine’ stuff ), it’s very hot and is naturally sweet (having originated from the Spanish peppers) and bright, bright red! You can buy it on the internet or in Asian supermarkets.

120g rice flour

120g fine sea salt 800ml water

250g fine Korean red pepper flakes

70g sweet white miso

AFTER 2 WEEKS

8 tablespoons rice or barley malt syrup

2 tablespoons salt

You will need a sterilised 1.5-litre preserving jar.

Mix the rice flour, sea salt and water together well in a bowl, then stir through the Korean red pepper flakes and miso until evenly distributed into a thickish paste. Transfer to a sterilised 1.5-litre preserving jar and seal tightly. (You need the jar to be a bit bigger than the volume of the gochujang as the paste will need room to expand as it ferments.)

Set aside in a cool, dry place (out of direct sunlight) and leave to ferment for 2 weeks. Once this time has passed, you will start to see some little bubbles forming on the surface. Now it’s time to add a final hit of flavour and balance out the spice of the gochujang, so a hit of sugar from the rice or barley malt syrup and some more salt is just the ticket. The salt will also inhibit the gochujang from fermenting too much, too fast. Mix both thoroughly into the paste, then clean the inner walls of the jar with a cloth dipped in vodka to keep the inside of the jar sterile. Place a cellophane jam seal on the gochujang, seal tightly and put it in the fridge to continue slow fermenting for another month. As ever, it will only deepen in flavour the longer it ferments.

4 FRIDGE-RAID ‘NOT QUITE BRANSTON’S’ PICKLE

MAKES 3KG / PREPARATION TIME 20 MINUTES / COOKING TIME 50 MINUTES / MATURING TIME 3 MONTHS MINIMUM

I consider myself quite the aficionado at recreating famous recipes, but there are some that are so hard to compete with that it’s just not worth it. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve tried to recreate Branston pickle but not quite made it. Half of me is not sure why I bother: it’s so accessible and, let’s be honest here, it’s more marmite than Marmite – you either love it or hate it! So many people have really un-fun memories of it. My friend at school used to have thickly buttered chewy bread rolls filled with Marmite, a thick slice of Cheddar and Branston pickle that she’d never eat, so would give to me, and a love affair was born.

The reason I decided to bother this time is because I wrote this mid lockdown, and I had promised myself to not throw out a single thing during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was rummaging around my fridge and there were some vegetables and apples looking very sorry for themselves – I was pretty certain all these things are what go into Branston pickle, so I went to my last recipe (one that hadn’t quite worked). It was looking good: technically, Branston pickle has swede in it and I only had butternut squash, but I searched the store cupboard and I had everything else.

My notes from the last time I’d tried to make it were, ‘stick to the dark brown sugar and malt vinegar – less cornflour’, so I retested it and it’s the closest to Branston’s that I’ve got so far. I wanted to include it in this book as it’s a really good way to use up things that are on their last legs, and refreshing everything in ice-cold water makes it spring back to freshness. Remember that dehydrated veg is just that – it’s simply lost its water. More often than not, it has retained its nutrients (look at the nutritional content of a fresh grape compared to a raisin, for example). When you cook or salt something, generally this is to remove the water from it, so making chutneys is great for veg and fruit past their best that have already begun this process of dehydration.

So here’s my most up-to-date ‘Branston-style’ pickle recipe. It’s not quite Branston’s, but it’s bloody delicious and works marvellously in that very same butter, Marmite, cheese and pickle sandwich! Bear in mind it needs at least 3 months’ maturing time before it’s ready to eat, and that you need to sterilise your jars (enough jars for 3kg of pickle).