Admittedly this would possibly upset any of the good gut flora I’ve been cultivating with the trendy proliferation of fermented food of late. Don’t get me wrong, I’m partial to fermented products (see miso, apple cider vinegar, wine), it’s just that Kombucha and Scoby sound like they should be particularly errant Pokemon characters and kombucha drinks confuse me because I thought sugar was supposed to be the site of the power struggle. It seems not, as long as it is expensive and combined with probiotics and some kind of exotic tea flavour and preferably home made.
My recent foray into making fermented edibles includes, and is limited to, making a quite satisfactory, if a little rocket-fuelled, batch of cider from the apples in our back garden. That, and sauerkraut. Sauerkraut. I know. Weeping in the pantry for a week and now languishing, purple, taunting, in the fridge. Because, why?
Growing up, sauerkraut was something my Polish relatives had on hand thanks to necessity, creativity and cabbage. But people have been fermenting food since long before my granny. Archaeologists have found evidence, in Norje Sunnansund, Sweden, of a massive vat of fermented fish, more than 9000 years old. Around the same time, honey rice wine was being made in ancient China. Sauerkraut doesn’t get a look in until around the BC/AD divide, when it was made in China with cabbage and rice wine.
If 2017 is the Year of Fermentation, spare a thought for 1769. Back then a balanced diet was basically a beige beef and biscuits combo at every meal. But then this guy James Cook decided to take a whole tonne (or probably a whole lot of whole tonnes) of sauerkraut on a voyage to stop all his sailors dying of scurvy, as they were prone to do. The rest is history. Nobody had to drink their own pee to protect their guts and teeth (though it is debatable whether sauerkraut tastes much better), none of the sailors died, they all arrived healthy in the South Pacific and lived to pillage and the other thing. It’s perhaps a tad too drastic to blame fermented cabbage for colonisation, but a case could be made.
And don’t you sort of feel that weird tension fermenting anyway; when we the privileged, with access to shiny benchtop accessories, well-stocked shops and modern refrigeration techniques, get all rustic and bygone about preservation? Like, are we harking back to ancestral insecurities, or do we just have too much time to peruse the latest pseudoscientific wellness trends? What do you care more about, chopping your cabbage in your sanitised environment: the bioavailability of nutrients or getting through the winter? I mostly just wonder how long the cider’s going to last and whether any of the bottles will blow their heads off, or just mine.
Here’s my prediction for the Next Big Thing. Though some of those superchef types are thinking fungal koji cultures, I reckon it’s going to be scurvy grass wine. Cook’s crew discovered scurvy grass, aka Cochlearia, on arrival in New Zealand, and snacked up large on it. I’ve condensed this recipe, from an 1823 book called Five Thousand Receipts in all the useful and domestic arts, into three easy steps.
1. "Take the best large scurvy grass tops, bruise them well in a stone mortar, then put them in a well-glazed earthen vessel and sprinkle them over with some powder of crystal of tartar, then smear them with virgin honey and being covered close let it stand 24 hours."
As you can see, there are a good few opportunities to buy expensive equipment to complement your foraged products. Stone mortar. Proper earthen vessel. None of your plastic stand-ins, please.
2. Heat some water and, for every gallon, add three pints of honey. Take out another mortgage for the honey if necessary. It’s authentic. It’s honey, sweetie. It’s worth it.
3. Ferment for three days in a vat with a bung or, if you don’t have a bung, you can use bread covered with mustard seed, so that’s good to know. Continue "until it is fine and drinks brisk". If it’s not quite there yet, you can add egg whites, flour, grape juice or "6 pounds of the syrup of mustard".
Perhaps don’t try this at home.
