In this edition of our Festival Recipe Series, we explore Fermented Foods! This awesome Spicy Vegetable Pickle Recipe is a festival must. Pickles and sauerkraut might not be the first examples that jump to mind when you think of health foods. But a growing body of research shows that a diet that includes a regular intake of fermented foods can have huge benefits. Fermented foods are preserved using an age-old process that not only boosts the food’s shelf life and nutritional value. These can give your body a dose of healthful probiotics — live microorganisms crucial to good digestion.
Your gut biome plays a crucial a role in fine-tuning the immune system and wards off damaging inflammation inside the body. This may lead to conditions ranging from obesity and diabetes to neurodegenerative diseases. These are all great reasons to include a range of fermented foods in a festival tool kit. There are lots of great examples of fermented foods like yoghurt, kimchi, kombucha, kvas. These will be covered in future fermented edition posts. Today There is a great recipe to prepare and take to festivals for convenient use
A Spicy Pickled Vegetable Recipe
These spicy pickles are reminiscent of the Mediterranean and Latin American culinary technique known as escabeche. This recipe leaves out the sugar. Traditionally, the larger vegetables would be lightly cooked before pickling, but we prefer to use a quick fermentation method and leave the vegetables a bit crisp instead
Ingredients
2 cups filtered water
1 to 1¼ tablespoons sea salt
1 jalapeño or a few small hot chilies, or to taste, sliced
1 large carrot, cut into ¼-inch rounds or diagonal slices
1 to 2 cups chopped cauliflower or small cauliflower florets
3 small stalks celery (use only small inner stalks from the heart), cut into 1-inch sticks
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 cabbage leaf
Method
Step 1
Warm the water (no need to boil). Stir in the sea salt until it dissolves completely. Set aside to cool (you can use this time to cut the vegetables). The salt water can be made ahead of time and stored in a sealed glass jar on the counter to use when ready to pickle.
Step 2
Set a quart-size canning jar in the sink and fill it with boiling water to sterilize. Empty the jar and tightly pack the cut vegetables and bay leaf inside to within 1 to 2 inches of the top of the jar. Add the vinegar to the salt water, and pour the mixture over the vegetables to fill the jar to within 1 inch of the top. Wedge the cabbage leaf over the top of the vegetables. Yuck around the edges to hold the vegetables beneath the liquid.
Step 3
Set the jar on the counter and cover with a fermentation lid. (Alternatively, use a standard lid and loosen it a bit more each day for the first few days, then loosen it incrementally every other day, to allow gases to escape.) Let pickle for three to five days, depending on the indoor temperature (the vegetables will pickle faster in warmer climates). Check the taste at the end of the third day, using clean utensils. Make sure the vegetables stay packed beneath the level of the liquid, adding salted water (2 teaspoons sea salt dissolved in 1 cup warm filtered water) as needed.
Step 4
When the vegetables are pickled to your liking, seal the jar with a regular lid and refrigerate. The vegetables will continue to slowly pickle in the refrigerator. They will keep for about one month. Taste for saltiness before serving and, if desired, rinse gently to remove excess salt.
Wrapping up
Enjoy this great Spicy Vegetable Pickle Recipe! Bring it with you on your next festival adventure, leave a jar in the fridge at home for when you return.
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