3. Good Organic Gardening - May-June 2016 AvxHome.in

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Pickles | FERMENTING & PICKLING Shelf preservation An overview of the art and history of pickling fruits and vegetables Words Chris Stafford People have been pickling all manner of foods for centuries, originally to preserve them out of season and, later, purely for the taste. The practice is thought to have begun in India 4000 years ago and by the end of the Roman Empire had spread all over Europe. Today, the Italians have their colourful Mason jars These classic preserving jars get their name from Philadelphia tinsmith John Landis Mason, who invented and patented this style of jar in 1858. Their lids allow easy sterilisation and provide a hermetic seal for their contents. There are many other types of preserving jars that also have airtight seals. Making whey Line a colander with cheesecloth and stand it inside a bowl or jug. Pour 1L of plain yoghurt, kefir or other fermented dairy into the cheesecloth. Tie up the ends. Let the whey drip out for 24 hours. Store in an airtight, clean jar in the fridge where it will keep for several weeks. Make labna with the firm yoghurt left in the cheesecloth by rolling it into balls and storing in light olive oil. giardiniera of pickled onion, celery, zucchini, carrot and cauliflower, while in northern Europe, it’s herring and rollmops. Appropriately, Amerigo Vespucci, the man who gave his name to America — home of the dill pickle — was a pickle merchant in Seville, Spain. Before he went from marinades to mariner and set sail for the New World, he provisioned ships with preserved meat and veg. A century and a half later, what we now call Manhattan was home to a huge Dutch pickle industry. The word “pickle” actually comes from the Dutch pekel, meaning brine, just one of the agents commonly used in pickling (others include salt, vinegar, whey and oils). What people had discovered, long before the invention of canning, was how to preserve food through the process of lacto-fermentation. Napoleon, who had a large army to feed, kick-started the commercial pickling industry when he offered a cash prize to anyone who could safely preserve food in bulk. The prize was claimed in 1810 by a confectioner named Nicolas Appert who’d figured out if you expelled air from a food container and boiled it, the food didn’t spoil. It would be another 50 years before Louis Pasteur explained what was happening: when you make the bottle airtight, no microorganisms can enter; once you boil it, any microorganisms already there are killed. At first, commercial pickling was a labourintensive, expensive business until industrialists developed methods to do the job on a large scale. The trouble is, processes such as hightemperature pasteurisation or refrigeration kill the beneficial bacteria in the food and reduce its shelf life. In other words, a typical food industry trade-off of nutrition for convenience. To pickle and preserve fruits and vegies at home, you don’t have to work on an industrial scale. They can be made in the kitchen with just a few wide-mouthed, sealable Mason jars or similar and a wooden pounder. Use homemade whey (see box) rather than commercial whey for best results, especially with fruit. Whey supplies the lactobacilli, without which pickles, however tasty, don’t have the same nutritional value. If you don’t have whey, add an extra tablespoon of salt. Some of these ingredients will be available now from your garden, but you may have to buy others that your local climate doesn’t support growing right now. A word about safety: When properly fermenting pickles with a live culture such as whey, it’s not necessary to sterilise jars but they should be perfectly clean. Putting them and their lids through a dishwasher cycle will do the job well, but if you are more comfortable using sterilised jars, by all means do so. Good Organic Gardening | 75
FERMENTING & PICKLING | Olives Star ingredient: Black olives Pressed Black Olives As you may already know, olives play a huge part in Greek cuisine. Here’s how to make pressed olives Greek style. Ingredients • 5kg ripe black olives (preferably Kalamata) • 1kg sea salt • Olive oil • Fresh oregano, thyme or preferred herbs Method • Place olives on a large, clean piece of hessian or canvas. Pour sea salt over them. Mix thoroughly. • Wrap olives in the hessian or canvas and place a weight on top (around 10kg will do the job). • Over the next two weeks, check every two days and remix if necessary, making sure all olives are well covered with salt. • After two weeks, remove the olives from the cloth and wash them thoroughly to remove the salt. • Place in sterilised jars and fill to cover with olive oil. Add your choice of herbs, garlic, lemon etc, seal and store. Make sure all solids are beneath the oil. 76 | Good Organic Gardening
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CONTENTS 48 Things to Do Jennifer S
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Feeding skin for 90 years 100% Nat
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With Melissa King | THE SEASONAL GA
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PLANT PROFILE | Apples The original
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PLANT PROFILE | Apples How to store
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POWER PLANT | Turmeric Good as gold
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FAMILY HEIRLOOMS | Rhubarb The pie
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