Legacy Pickles: Green Tomato Relish

Surely almost every culture on Earth has a pickle (or, sometimes a fermented food) that serves as a gentle bass line to the melody of the meal - a taste that is part of the food though never its focus. Often this is something that has been passed down through the family, or friends, or perhaps a familiar food conveyor.  Once you have become accustomed to that little assist, the food never tastes quite right without it. The jar is there in your pantry, and you reach for it without much of a second thought. 

Green Tomato Relish, ready for the shelf

In our family, that is Green Tomato Relish.  It is required that we make a batch of this every few years.  Homemade hamburgers are not real without it.  It is the secret ingredient in meatloaf, deviled eggs, sauces and salad dressings.  This relish is closely related to a couple of other Southern pickles, "chow chow" and "piccalilli".  Indeed, when I was introduced to this, it was called piccalilli, but as far as I can tell, most recipes for piccalilli include some fruit such as apples. Chow chow usually includes cabbage.  But what all three pickles share is that they are a mixture of fall vegetables with plenty of sugar and vinegar and some assertive spices.

I learned to eat "piccalilli" that was made by the parents of family friends.  We were gifted with a jar each fall as the senior Whitworths cleaned out their fall garden and the green tomatoes, peppers and onions went into the mix. I came to love this mixture as a child, especially on hamburgers.  Later, I combed through recipes until I found one in Joy of Cooking that seemed to match my memory. (The elderly gardeners were long since dead and gone.  The lesson is, always ask for the recipe.)

Use enough red bell peppers to add a color note.

The first challenge is to find the green tomatoes.  If you have your own garden, this is easy.  Traditionally, it was made from the garden leftovers just before the first frost.  But I have been known to grow tomatoes and harvest the first flush of fruit to make this pickle.  It is surprisingly hard to get commercial growers to supply you with them.  Hope for good friends with good vines.  You can use green tomatoes of almost any size, though I don't recommend the tiny ones.  As a rule of thumb, I might choose medium-sized green tomatoes not yet at full growth potential.  At least, make sure that the tomatoes have not begun to ripen.  It will make them too mushy.

Sliced, salted, drained vegetables

Plan for two days to make the pickles.  The vegetables are sliced (I use a food processor) and layered in a crock with pickling salt. (It is very important not to use iodized salt.  If you can't find pickling salt, use kosher salt.)  This will create a brine.  The crock is covered and left overnight (12 hours).  Then the vegetables are drained and rinsed, to avoid a highly salty pickle.

The next step is to place them in the pickling mixture to cook until they are transparent.  Then they are ready for canning.  Some people might keep them in slices, but I put them through a food processor briefly to make a relish.  (Be careful not to purée them.)

Measurement note:  tomatoes are often sold in farmers' markets by volume rather than by pound.  A peck (8 quarts) is about 16 pounds.  I find that a half peck makes enough relish for several years.

Green Tomato Relish

Slice:

One-half peck green tomatoes (about 8 lb)

12 bell peppers, about 1/3 red or as available

5 large onions (less if Spanish onions, which are larger)

1 large garlic bulb or about 8 cloves of garlic

In a crock:

Layer these sliced vegetables with about 1/2 cup pickling salt; add scant teaspoon to finish as needed.

Push  a clean plate down over the vegetables until brine covers them.  Cover the crock and set in cool corner overnight.   Drain and rinse after 12 hours (approximately).

Pickling mixture:   (Heat in resistant pan, enamel or stainless steel)

1 1/2 quarts cider vinegar

2 lb light brown sugar

1 T plus 1 t powdered ginger

1 T plus 1 t dry mustard

In infuser bag or wrapped in cheesecloth

2T whole cloves

2 sticks cinnamon

1 T celery seed 

Add vegetables and simmer until translucent.  Try to avoid a heavy boil.

Can these in pint jars for 15 minutes (hot water bath canning).

Pickles can first be chopped in a food processor, taking care not to purée the relish.

Allow pickles to mellow for 1 month before using.

 

 

Peppers to Brighten the Winter

When I was growing up in the South, there were two kinds of hot pepper sauce that we used.  One was Tabasco or one of its imitations.  The other was a bottle of hot peppers in vinegar with a dispenser top that sat on almost every diner table and certainly in our condiment shelf.  The vinegar's main use was to add piquancy to cooked greens, like turnip greens.

Now hot peppers of many kinds dominate American cuisine and I've grown a fair number myself; ancho, Anaheim, jalapeno.  But in recent years I've discovered serrano peppers.  They can be used sparingly in cooking or salsas (I usually choose jalapenos instead for those purposes) but they make excellent hot pepper vinegar.

In the past I've picked them all green but this year they got away from me and began to ripen.  I suspect this will make the vinegar even spicier.  We're still using last year's batch - this is one of those things that gets better with sitting.

I found that the excellent Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich had a recipe for something she calls Picque.  Picque, or pique, is a Caribbean vinegar-based sauce that apparently is often made with pineapple rind and various herbs.  This recipe is simpler and is great with kale, cooked Southern-style.  It is also good as a brightener in cooking or salads where you might add a squeeze of lemon juice or other splash of acidity.

Picque

adapted from Joy of Pickling

Clean serrano chiles (green or mixed green and ripened) and remove most of the stems.  Slit with a knife but leave whole.  Choose glass bottles with non-reactive caps (old vinegar bottles with dispenser tops are ideal).  

Divide these ingredients among the bottles.  (You'll have to guess how much in each bottle depending on the size of the bottle.)

4 garlic cloves, halved
12 whole black peppercorns
1/8 t pickling salt

Push serrano chiles into the bottles as tightly as possible.  Pour unheated, undiluted cider vinegar directly over the chiles to fill the entire bottle.

Note: The recipe is for 1 cup of cider vinegar; divide the other ingredients according to the size of the bottle. The chiles take up a lot of volume and I typically get two bottles per recipe.

Shake the bottles to dissolve salt, cap, and let sit in a cool place for several weeks before using.  You may refill the vinegar once, but it won't be as good.

  

 

Using Root-cellar Cabbage

Cabbage has been a consistent theme here, both because it is such a satisfying crop to grow, and because it has so many uses. In The Cabbage in Winter, I commented on some recipes for using cabbage, and in Cabbage is King discussed cabbage's importance as the food of the poor.

One of the most important reasons to celebrate cabbage is its role as a storage vegetable. Whether in fermented form (sauerkraut) or simply stored in a cold place like a root cellar, cabbage can serve as a nutritious vegetable through most of the winter at a time when fresh vegetables are (traditionally) unavailable. More attention is being given to root cellaring these days (here's a summary from a local workshop) as a way to preserve homegrown (or purchased) produce that is not canning, freezing, dehydrating, or pickling. After all, even excellent pickles have their limits as vegetable sides. Cabbage is a good root cellar subject if the right varieties are used.


That choice of variety is crucial, as I've learned from hard experience. Cabbages (we're talking the head-forming type, not Chinese cabbage or any of the numerous leafy members of the clan) can be of many colors (though the basics are red and green), shapes and sizes. But a crucial difference is whether they are summer cabbages intended for early harvest or fall cabbages. Early (summer) cabbages are tender, fresh and sweet, and lovely for slaw or other salad use. My beloved Tendersweet (see Mon Petit Chou) is wonderful for this. But as I described in Cabbage for Sauerkraut, early cabbages can split, as early as the first week in August. For either sauerkraut or for cold storage, you want the ones that grow fat and happy well into the fall. This head was photographed on November 16, just before harvesting. It is a variety from Johnny's Seeds, appropriately named "Storage".

The next problem is finding a good storage place. Refrigerators will work. But the idea is to find a "root cellar" space, one that stays cool but doesn't freeze. For most people who don't have a root cellar, this requires some ingenuity. (Note that a basement does not make a good root cellar. It is usually too warm and is also frequently too wet.) I found that an old kitchen cabinet in my unheated garage stayed above freezing. (The thermometer is a min/max.) This picture was taken on December 26.

The cabbage will dry on the outer leaves and should be watched for rot (do not use plastic bags!). It can be withdrawn for use as needed. This cabbage was removed from the garage on February 12. Note that the internal leaves are white and dense.






The stored cabbage can be used for fresh use, like coleslaw, but the result is only acceptable.

It is excellent for cooking, however, though not for cabbage rolls (the leaves are too tightly packed). For example, thinly sliced cabbage can be added to a gratin. An important key to cooking cabbage is that it should always be simmered, sautéed or braised gently, so the sulfurous compounds that give boiled cabbage a bad name are not released.

Here is an old favorite from my childhood that makes good use of the freshness of the stored cabbage. This soup is excellent with homemade cornbread. It is satisfying without being heavy and will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Mother's Hamburger Cabbage Soup

1 pound or less lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 head cabbage, cut into thin shreds
1 stalk celery, chopped
Canned tomatoes (home-canned or 14-16 oz can) with juice
Black pepper
Dried sweet basil
to taste: salt, hot pepper sauce (note: canned tomatoes are salty already)

Cook the ground beef in a minimum of oil until the meat is no longer raw, but do not brown. Add the onion, tomatoes, and water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add cabbage and celery. Cover and simmer for about half an hour, keeping water level well above the vegetables and stirring occasionally. Add seasonings and simmer for a few more minutes. Cabbage should be tender before serving.

In A Pickle

So why haven't I posted on my garden and food blog for a full year? Because I've been too busy gardening and preserving. We expanded our vegetable garden last year (to about 2,000 SF) and it has now become a major time hog. With weeding, soil preparation, planting (amid the weather mishaps of the early part of the year) and then staking, spraying (although I limit that to what is absolutely necessary) and compost mulching, the garden can soak up days at a time.

But then the hardest part of all - the harvesting. Surely this ought to be the payoff and time for celebration. But it can lead to a sort of exhaustion, as piles of what a fellow gardener and blogger calls "obligatory vegetables" take over the kitchen and demand to be processed.

Thus it was in July when I came to resent my cucumbers for being so relentlessly productive. I had a disappointing crop in 2009 (an all-around poor summer for gardening) and was unable to make our favorite bread-and-butter pickles. So this year I planted 4 hills of pickling cucumbers, including two of Ferry-Morse's "Sumter". The other two hills were from old seed, including "Homemade Pickles" from Cook's. ("Amour", last year's choice from Johnny's, was discarded - it has awful prickly spines.) The two from old seed had a modest production, but Sumter exploded.

So of course I made a big batch of the bread-and-butter pickles, but Sumter wasn't done with me. Despair set in as I went out to the garden every other day to find another full flush of fruit ready to pick.


Fortunately I had collected several books on pickling, including the excellent The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. Although I had never made dill pickles before, I tried her Short-brined Dill Pickles. Like most pickles, they had to cure on the shelf for a while. But I might have made a second batch if I had tasted them right away. They are wonderful - spicy (contain garlic, hot pepper and peppercorns in addition to dill) and not flabby, though I didn't include grape or cherry leaves. We'll have no trouble eating them up this winter.

Then it seemed that my moment had arrived to try traditional fermented dill pickles (called "half-sours" by Ziedrich). I didn't use her recipe but rather one from Ohio State extension. Those did turn a bit flabby and though they are tasty enough, I won't try that again. They filled up my Gartopf fermenting crock and left an odor that was difficult to clean off.

Since I had already made another pickle (a family favorite, green tomato relish), it was time to stop. Fortunately pickling cucumbers are fine in salad, cold cucumber soup, etc. And less than a month after they began to fruit, I pulled the vines out. They were being afflicted by bacterial wilt disease.

Here is our own recipe for bread-and-butter pickles. Quantities of vegetables are approximate depending on what is available.

Bread and Butter Pickles

1 gallon (10 lbs) pickling cucumbers
5 medium onions
2 red bell peppers

Slice (a food processor works well for this) and layer in a 3-gallon pickling crock with 1 cup total of pickling salt. Cover with a weighted plate for about an hour till brine forms (a quart jar filled with water will work). Refrigerate for about 6 hours.

Drain and rinse the vegetables and place into a large pot that contains this pickling mixture:

6 cups (1 quart plus 1 pint) apple cider vinegar
6 cups white sugar
2 whole cloves
1 1/2 t ground turmeric
1/4 c mustard seed
1 T celery seed
(spices may be placed loose into the mixture)
Heat briefly to mix before adding vegetables.


Note: if the vegetables are not rinsed, the pickles will be salty. A couple of washes is enough. Use a colander.

Heat the mixture (but do not boil) until the vegetables turn translucent. Pack into pint jars and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Allow the pickles to cure for a month before using. This recipe makes approximately 16 pints.

The Terror of Tomatoes: So Much of a Good Thing

It's fortunate that we choose not to remember unpleasant things and that we compartmentalize memories. Otherwise, we might never order so many garden seeds. We'd look at those lovely pictures and think, "Oh, no - the harvest!!".

Now is the season of desperate processing. Even with the depredations of a late-season tomato late blight infection, the tomatoes have advanced from one kitchen counter, to a second, to a table in the basement. I've pulled out the last of the vines but I'll have tomatoes ripening and asking to be processed for another week or two.

I grew three varieties this year. My old reliable for fresh eating and casual cooking is Carmello, which I've been buying from Renée's Garden. It is a tender-skinned variety bred for flavor that grows medium-sized red round tomatoes. This gets made into tabbouleh, gazpacho, fresh salsa, broiled tomatoes, and of course eaten as luxurious big fat red tomato slices.





I've usually grown an Italian plum-type tomato too, and lately it has been Pompeii, also from Reneé's Garden. They produced very well this year and made large long fruits.










This year I added Amish Paste from Cook's Garden. These are described as "acorn-shaped" and that works pretty well. They are supposed to be meaty and good for sauces. Some of these fruits were huge.

I can't compare flavor for these last two, because I combined them. I usually think of plum-type tomatoes as "paste" tomatoes. So I just quartered them and cooked them together in a couple of slow cookers, a.k.a. crock pots. I cover the pot until the tomatoes juice up and begin to cook, then remove the cover and let them cook down all day. Then I run them through a food mill to remove skins and seeds, and the result is a moderately thick purée which I freeze in jars.

What I do with the Carmello when it exceeds fresh eating requirements? I skin them (by placing briefly in a pan of boiling water and then pulling the skins off) cut them up, and cook them down. This goes into various dishes for freezing, like cabbage rolls and a huge batch of spaghetti sauce. But I also make a simple basil-tomato sauce for freezing. It can be used as is or as the base of other sauces and it is a good way to use the basil I grow every year.

Basil Tomato Sauce

For each large pot (about 6 quarts) of cooked tomatoes, cut up 1 medium onion and 6 garlic cloves. Cook them in about 1/4 cup of olive oil until translucent (don't let the garlic brown) and add the tomatoes and a plentiful quantity of fresh torn (not chopped) basil leaves. Simmer with stirring until thickened, 1-2 hours. Add ground black pepper and salt to taste (I often omit salt since tomatoes are fairly salty in themselves).

I've often used this from the freezer to make a more complex meaty spaghetti sauce. It can also be used to make a sauce with roasted red peppers.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

For each quart of Basil Tomato Sauce, roast and peel 1 ripe red bell pepper (or more). Put the pepper and the sauce into a blender and purée till smooth. Season with black pepper and 1/4 t each salt and sugar (or to taste).

I serve this with Eggplant Parmigiana. Both the prepared eggplant and the sauce freeze nicely for midwinter meals.

The Basil Tomato Sauce is just fine as is for dishes like traditional lasagna.

Frontiers of fermentation

I've been fascinated for some time with the practice of fermenting foods for preservation and have spent some years perfecting the production of sauerkraut from cabbage. Last year my husband gave me a Christmas present of a fancy crock from Germany (Harsch) that adds some low-tech ease to the process. While I have learned to use a standard crock with a wooden cover for the kraut, a weight (quart jars filled with water), and covered with a tea towel, then a bath towel, this crock takes care of a number of those requirements. The essential requirements are that the vegetable needs to be pressed firmly to make "juice" (after being salted at 3 Tablespoons pickling salt to 5 lbs cabbage), pressed down with a weight and covered with brine, then protected from molds and yeasts and allowed to ferment to an anaerobic condition. For a pictorial account of this method, see Kim's account.

The fancy German crock has its own ceramic weights that substitute for finding a plate to fit or buying a wooden cover, and the rock or jars used to weight it down. They are two semicircles that drop in elegantly. Then a water seal consisting of a grove in the top of the crock plus the lid prevents any contaminants from getting in and helps promote the anaerobic progress of the fermentation.

I used the crock this year for my second batch of sauerkraut. Since I had already made a batch using my standard recipe, I became a little more experimental. Both the recipes that came with the crock and those in a book on preserving food (Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning,Chelsea Green Publishing Co.) had made me aware that some European traditions do a lot more with sauerkraut, adding different vegetables and some spices to the mix. Apparently one can make turnips into shreds for this process, and carrots are another popular addition, but there are many variations. I chose a very conservative combination of several recipes. I added one onion, shredded very fine, and 3 bay leaves, 3 sage leaves, 3 whole cloves, and 6 juniper berries to my 10 pounds of cabbage, layering as I went. After 4 weeks of fermentation, the kraut was flawless and my husband says it tastes "spicier". The taste of the added spices is barely detectable, very subtle, and probably would not be detected if cooked.

This year I abandoned the practice of canning my kraut and have preserved all of it in quart canning jars in the refrigerator. It is delicious but this method results in some bad moments when trying to find places for other things around all the kraut jars. The kraut is very good as is but also serves as a salad with a simple vinaigrette (3 T oil to 1 T vinegar, pepper, no salt) and a chopped scallion. Cooked with sausages and a few caraway seeds, it is just as tasty in a different way.

I grew two varieties of cabbage for use in kraut this year. The one I have grown for several years, "Stonehead" from Jung, began to crack in mid-August. Kim and I made it into kraut that was decanted mid-September. The other variety, "Tendersweet" from Johnny's Select Seeds, I used for the second batch in mid-September, decanted in mid-October. Tendersweet has odd flattened heads and very thin leaves. I thought it would be superior for kraut because it made very fine strands. However, the resulting product is not as crisp and clings together when served rather than standing out a bit. I probably won't use it again for that, but it is a superior eating cabbage.

Timing of kraut production has been related to head splitting, which ruins the cabbage for making kraut and invites bacterial soft rot. Tendersweet appears to be somewhat more resistant to early splitting. I've discovered that the splitting of the head is preparatory to blooming. Cabbage is a biennial but apparently our climate has enough cold shocks to induce flowering. Perhaps I should investigate to see what varieties the kraut packers in Wisconsin use. I recall that they had huge basketball-size heads and might be resistant to splitting.

Preservation of food security

One of the big problems of being a consumer primarily of local food is the "seasonality problem". We have gotten used to fresh vegetables all year long. That just isn't possible unless you live in California or other 12-month growing climates (and it isn't really even true there) or unless you import food. And as we know, importing food from hundreds of miles away is costly in fuel, greenhouse gases, and increasingly, in food dollars. If we are to have "food security", that is, assurance of a continued supply of healthful food, we need to learn how to eat from what we can grow ourselves or buy locally.

Actually, it has been wonderful, this transformation to year-round fresh food. When I was a young woman first cooking for my own household, the only fresh vegetables available in the winter were celery, hothouse tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, carrots, potatoes, onions. The celery and lettuce were probably from California, maybe the carrots too, the potatoes and onions stored. Everything else was canned or frozen. Now we expect to waltz into the supermarket and get everything needed for any possible dish, any month of the year. It is a great luxury.

But it is a block to eating locally produced food. Vegetable crops can be staggered for a longer harvest but they still are intensively seasonal in our climate, available perhaps for 2 months of the year in most cases. So it is feast or famine, unless you take steps to preserve them.

The feast part is great, of course. I remember growing up in the South when every meal had at least three vegetable courses in the summer. There were squash (pattypan - zucchini was an exotic), cooked in water with a little butter; mustard or turnip greens; butter beans or blackeyed peas (both fresh, not dried, and also "cowpeas"); coleslaw; ripe cantelope peeled and cut into thin crescents, salted and peppered and served as a salad; cucumber salad made with onions, vinegar, water, and a little sugar; fried okra of course, and eggplant dipped in flour and fried till delicate in the middle and crisp on the outside; new potatoes and peas cooked together with milk and butter; potato salad (homemade, with pickle relish and mayonnaise) for picnics and grated carrot with raisins. For those who like them, fresh sliced tomatoes. And of course, corn on or off the cob in season (maybe five weeks in midsummer) and fresh green beans. Later in the season, we could have Waldorf salad (apples, celery, walnuts).

But in winter, we ate canned green beans, lima beans, peas, or spinach; the dreaded iceberg lettuce wedges; canned pear halves with cream cheese; canned corn, either straight or cream-style; canned yams, sweetened with brown sugar for holiday fare; canned asparagus when we were being fancy; and, inevitably, Jello salads with canned mandarin orange slices, canned pineapple, or bananas.

If we are to live off the land locally, either from our own gardens or from local market growers, we'll have to recapture those days when one literally ate what was in season. (If not repeat the actual winter menu of those days.) This means relearning the arts of canning and preserving. Of course, the home freezer has made a big difference too. But that's why I am pickling, fermenting, and exploring other means of preservation of home-grown food.

Secrets of Sauerkraut

After about five years of experimenting with making sauerkraut, I've finally figured out how to do it reliably. I'm going to share the secrets. Some I got from a version of the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning that is no longer available online. Some was from Ohio State Extension. Some is hard-earned experience from making mistakes or having a lucky inspiration.

First, grow your cabbage. Sauerkraut is best made from freshly harvested cabbage. USDA says "between 24 and 48 hours after harvest". I suspect this requirement is because the lactic acid bacteria (lactobacilli) population that is native to the leaf surfaces begins to die off in stored cabbage. I pick and partly clean the cabbage the day before processing, cutting off roots, discarding dirty outer leaves, and rinsing off any remaining dirt. Soaking would probably be a bad idea. Then I just leave the heads out on a clean work counter overnight.

The timing of harvest and the variety of cabbage are important. My early trials were poor because I kept thinking of sauerkraut as a fall harvest task and trying to do it in late September. This is wrong for two reasons. One is that a certain temperature is needed for fermentation. The other is that cabbage tends to split as it gets mature and if there are cool nights with good soil moisture. Last year I chose an early-maturing variety, "Gonzales", a real mistake; I lost 1/3 of my crop to split heads even though I harvested over Labor Day weekend. Gonzales is meant to make "miniheads" for fresh eating during the summer - I must not have had my reading glasses on when I chose it. Other years I have grown "Stonehead", with some splitting but perhaps not so early. This year I'm going to try a mix of Stonehead and "Tendersweet", a flatter head that is said to be resistant to splitting. For the last two years, I have harvested and made the kraut around Labor Day, with good results. Temperatures are warm but not too warm during fermentation.

For processing, the heads are cut into quarters, outer green leaves and cores removed, and then shredded. Unless you have amazing technique, shredding with a knife blade is too uneven as well as tiring, and a food processor makes shreds that are too coarse. In past years I used a mandoline, inefficient and time-consuming but with good results. Finally I broke down and bought a real kraut shredder, or as they are called, a krauthobel. I have concluded that all these come from the same factory in Slovenia. It is like a huge mandoline made of wood with multiple blades and a square box that rides over them. No pressure is required on the cabbage to make the cuts.

I trust stoneware crocks best for fermentation and pickling. Some people use plastic buckets but the references I consulted warn against using anything but food-grade plastic. The crocks are prettier anyhow. Old ones are fine if they are not cracked, but new ones are a good investment. A 3-gallon crock will make 15 lbs of sauerkraut, and a 5-gallon crock will make 25 lbs. Then a plate that just fits inside the crock is needed to press down the cabbage and help keep out molds.

The salt used should be pickling salt, or kosher salt would probably work. Pickling salt is of a high purity without iodine. In old recipes you will find different amounts of salt used, but I try to keep to a strict ratio of 3 tablespoons to 5 lbs of shredded cabbage. I shred cabbage and weigh it in a large bowl until I have 5 pounds, then mix it with the salt and put it into the crock, with pushing down to express juice. I finally bought a hand-crafted sauerkraut stomper from Lehman's ; it looks like a table leg but really works.

After the crock is filled to a few inches from the top, put a plate (best fit) over the cabbage and press down. Brine should come up over the plate. If it doesn't, the cabbage can be topped off with boiled and cooled brine ( 1 1/2 tablespoons pickling salt per quart of water). Weight the plate with a couple of clean quart jars filled with water. By now the crock should be resting where it is going to stay for 4-6 weeks, in a place with low traffic and relatively constant temperatures. Drape a clean tea towel over the jars and crock, then a heavy bath towel over that. Disturb as little as possible, but check after several days and then weekly to see if any molds or yeast scum need to be removed. Some foam formation at first is expected, since the bacteria are producing carbon dioxide. According to Ohio, when temperatures are between 55-65, fermentation will take place in 5-6 weeks. At 70-75, it is 3-4 weeks. Much cooler and it won't ferment. I had to throw out my entire batch one year because it never fermented, and other years when it was too cool, the brine turned a dark brown over an exceedingly long fermentation time. Ohio says that above 80 the cabbage may spoil. According to my max/min thermometer last year, temperatures through September were 64-76 and the kraut was perfectly fermented in 5 weeks. Small amounts can be taken out with a clean fork and tasted to see whether it is "done".

My friend Dan, who helped last year and carried away some of the cabbage to ferment on his own, refrigerated all of his and is still happily eating it out of his refrigerator. He believes that the lactobacilli are healthful. I canned most of mine in glass jars (hot water bath method) and this is perfectly satisfactory for most cooked dishes. However, with Dan's encouragement, I kept several quarts in my refrigerator and this made a lovely fresh kraut slaw with just a little vinaigrette.

Choucroute

Most people in this country call it sauerkraut, but I thought that Voltaire would better recognize choucroute. Either way it is cabbage preserved by lactic acid fermentation. I've always loved it and I'm also fascinated with the fermentation process. Lactobacillus bacteria occur naturally on plant surfaces, especially cabbage. The cabbage is salted (to make the tissues weep and inhibit other microorganisms) and incubated for four to six weeks. The bacilli pull oxygen out of the liquid (they are facultatively anaerobic) and lower the pH by breaking down available sugars into lactic acid. This preserves the cabbage from molds and rotting and putrifying bacteria. A similar process is the secret of yogurt and other fermented milk products. Lactofermentation is a very old means of keeping vegetables out of season and whole cuisines are built around it. It probably prevented scurvy in most of Middle Europe for hundreds of years.

Last year we enjoyed an authentic course of choucroute à l'alsacienne prepared by our friend Francis, who is a chef. We contributed the sauerkraut and Francis added several cuts of pork (sausages, loin, among others), juniper berries, wine, and other mysterious things. I think some duck fat may have been implicated. This was served simply with boiled potatoes, followed by a green salad and then a cheese course. Wonderful.

Other people may simply think of sauerkraut as what you put on Reuben sandwiches or eat with sausages. I like that too, but my favorite meal for two is two pork chops placed on top of sauerkraut in a baking dish, some white wine poured over both, then the chops are anointed with a mixture of ketchup and Worchestershire. Bake uncovered at 275 for 2 1/2 hours. The chops are completely tender and falling apart, fat has disappeared into the kraut, and with that and a baked potato you have dinner.

Sauerkraut is good on pizza, too. Not too much, and it simply makes it moister and more flavorful. We learned this last year that it can be eaten as a salad, especially if it is fresh. Simply rinse and add a mayonnaise dressing or a simple vinaigrette (I like to add a chopped scallion too) and serve like a slaw. I've heard of it mixed with creamed noodles and here in Michigan there are rumors of something called sauerkraut balls. (I think they are fried fritters with sauerkraut in the batter.) Of course sauerkraut pirogies are the best.