A friend came over to learn how to make a simple veggie ferment (Kimchi or Sauerkraut), which I thought would be nice to base around wild food. So we had a short walk around the block gathering a variety of tasty specimens to add to our bowl of sliced carrots, leek, peeled root ginger, sweet red bell pepper and celery.
Luckily for me around the corner from where I live is an old deep banked gully that the lane comes down through. This makes a moist, dark habitat much like that of a woodland floor that many of our yummies favour, so what with the “weeds” in the garden I never have to trek too far to gather a dinner full of food. So here is what we gathered to add to our veggie ferment.
Having washed and lightly chopped this little lot up they were added to the bowl of kitchen veg and sprinkled with 2 tbsp of crushed sea salt. Having tossed all of that together I lightly crushed the veg with the end of a wooden rolling pin to break down the the fibrous tissue and encourage the release of the plants juices. After a couple of hours the salt should have drawn out enough liquid to produce a good amount of brine, this is the bed rock of your ferment and needs to completely cover all of the vegetable matter whilst fermenting. As I was taught by my my friend Vicky Manning of The Little Foragers Kitchen , “Veggies in brine, everything’s fine”.
If your veg haven’t produced enough brine after a couple of hours then make some salted water and add to your veg. Pack it all down in a jar, a kilner type snap lid is ideal as they are designed to release the gas through the rubber gasket, but if you don’t have one cover with kitchen roll and elastic band or similar. Then leave in a cool dark place for 3 or 4 days, then taste daily until it stops tasting salty and has a slight fermented sweetness to it. The alchemical process here is quite magical as one day your veg are unedibly over salty and the next there is no hint of salt, just fermenty sweetness. Once you’re happy with the flavour, strain off the excess brine and decant into smaller jars, keeping it in the fridge to halt the fermenting process and enjoy daily 😋
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