Pickled apples
I've never liked pickles, but Marty (the only regular commenter here, thanks Marty!) talked me into fermenting some pickled apples. Now, if there's one thing I like, it's apples. If there's another, it's fermentation. (beer, yogurt, cheese, bread, wine - all great ideas!)
So, adapting a recipe from the Joy of Pickling, I made pickled apples. (If I had read all of the Joy of Pickling, I would have been able to smartly adapt it further - you'll see what I mean.)
The way I made it was like this:
9 smallish Empire apples, sliced with one of these babies (peel and all)
3 quarts water
1/4 cup honey
8 tsp pickling salt (fine-grained with no additives)
spices (see below)
I whacked all nine apples with the slicer, and put three sliced apples into each of three quart jars.
Then I prepared the brine according to the recipe: boil the water, honey, and salt together. Let cool, and pour over the apples.
The original recipe called for sour cherry leaves for crispness, but I couldn't find any. (I should have gone U-Picking for apples at an orchard that has cherry trees - but I didn't think of it in time). I was gonna substitute a pinch of alum, but I couldn't find any.
In one jar, I sprinkled tarragon (the original recipe called for fresh tarragon sprigs). In another, I put cider mulling spices: a lot of cinnamon, plus some cloves and allspice and a little nutmeg. In the third, I decided to imitate a "pickling spice", so I looked up the ingredients of a pickling spice blend. They included most of the things in my spice cabinet plus a lot that weren't, so I just put in a random assortment. I remember dill and ginger were in it. I have no idea what this one will taste like.
With the salt concentration given, this one ferments for 6 days at room temperature (with a brine-filled freezer bag stuffed in the mouth of each jar) followed by 30 days in the fridge. I learned later, when I actually got Joy of Pickling out of the library (instead of asking Marty to pass along the recipe), that you can adjust the salt content to make half-sours or lightly salted full sours.
I also learned that I should have been checking daily for white yeasty scum, and that the little scum I got was harmless - eastern European traditions call for encouraging a little bit of scum flavor.
How did the pickles turn out? After their 6 days of room-temp fermentation, I tried a pickle and it was sweet, sour, and salty. (Next time, less salt). Definitely a flavor worth exploring! I'll do a more thorough taste test once they've done their 30 days in the slammer.
One last thing I learned from the Joy of Pickling: there are cannable sweet pickles! Reading the sweet pickle section was, ironically, bittersweet - the season of peaches and watermelon rinds is over. I'll have to wait till next year, or just experiment in the meantime with apples.