Kwas

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Kvas (квас) is an ancient and beloved beverage from Slavic Europe. While it is basically a low-alcohol beer, it is enjoyed as a soft drink, even by small children. Factory-made versions have been available for some time and many are quite good. But homemade will always be best. 

Ingredients

• whole wheat sourdough bread, cubed -- 1 pound
• Water -- 3 quarts
• a red apple
• Raisins -- 2 tablespoons

Method

1. Bring the 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Remove from heat and immediately stir in the bread. Cover with a clean towel and let rest in a dark, cool place for 8 to 10 hours.
2. Pour the liquid through a fine-meshed sieve or strainer, gently pressing one the bread to get the liquid out. Don't press too hard, or your kvas will turn cloudy.
3. Pour into a 1-gallon pitcher or container. Add the raisins and pieces of apple and cover tightly with plastic wrap and a rubber band. Set in a dark, cool place for 4 or 5 days , it should bubble a bit.
4. Carefully pour off the clear liquid into a clean container or individual bottles. Chill well before serving.

Variations

• Add 2 tablespoons of fresh mint leaves with the raisins
• Some recipes substitute berry juice for 2 to 3 cups of the water, giving it a refreshing, fruity flavor.
• Kvas is often served unfiltered, with the yeast sediment. This gives it a richer flavor and boosts its vitamin content.
• The final fermentation can also take place in stoppered bottles if you like. In step five, pour the strained liquid into individual beer bottles. Add one or two raisins to each bottle and rest for 4 or 5 days. Move to a refrigerator and store chilled until consumed. CAUTION: the bottles have an alarming habit of popping open from pressure during the fermentation. So it's best if you know what you're doing.

Cool(ed) pickles

Since the 4 years I live in Thailand, I have made a lot of fermented cabbage (sauerkraut), but recently my pickle teacher (Bill Hetting from http://www.perfectpickler.com/) told me that my room temperature (30 degrees Celsius-86 degrees Fahrenheit) is too warm to pickle and it could create some less beneficial bacteries, and indeed after a while my sauerkraut gets a bit too dark and the taste is not that "sauer" anymore.
So I decided to cool my pickles during the first 4 days of fermentation to less than 25 degrees Celsius-77 degrees Fahrenheit, so I bought myself a big waste bin, filled it partially with water and ice and put my pickle pot in it, so it was cooled "bain Mare" style. After the initial 4 days I put it in the fridge, where I can keep it for at least 8 months.The pickles "bain Marie" style  gave me a much better result, thanks Bill.

Lactic Fermented Food

Lactic fermented food, also called natural pickles, are of all ages and of all cultures.
I use Annelies Schonecks book for over 25 years now, in the beginning I used earthen pickle jars, but those jars were way to heavy, and made pickling hard labour.
Since 3 years I use the jars of the Perfect Pickler, and since then, I enjoy pickling much more.




My basic pickle is sauerkraut: with  3 kg white cabbage, 30 gr sea salt, 20 grams fresh grated ginger and some dried herbs (clove pods, bay leaves,fennel, juniper berries, etc...) I make a very healthy pickle that reduces cholesterol, stimulates digestion, lowers high blood pressure and is just a delicious thing to eat. Indeed a pickle a day keeps the doctor away.
And of course, the sky is the limit, you do not have to limit yourself to white cabbage: with Napa cabbage you can make a delicious kimchi, last month I made for the first time pumpkin pickles, in the past I made pickles  with asparagus, and with sourdough bread and apples, and I will still experiment in the future.
Sometimes you can find books about pickling, where they use vinegar: natural pickling is never done with vinegar, as vinegar pickles contains not the beneficial bacteries you can find in lactic fermented food.

Pickled Watermelon Rind

Watermelon rind is especially high in an amino acid known as citrulline. Our bodies use citrulline to make another amino acid, arginine, which helps cells to divide, wounds to heal, and ammonia to be removed from the muscles and the liver. Use the white inner rind, not the outer green part of the rind. This relish goes deliciously well with summer marinated and grilled foods — especially with proteine rich food.

Take a watermelon, remove the outer rind, like you can see on the picture. Then remove the inner rind, till you can see the red part .From one watermelon you get abound 400 grams / 0.90 lb rind.

Add 8 grams of natural sea salt, a teaspoon of mustard seeds, 1/2 teaspoon of celery seeds, 1/2 tea spoon cinnamon, 1/2 tea spoon ginger and a few cloves. 

I also added some pickle juice from my sauerkraut, you also can add a bit umeboshi liquid. Fill up with water till your recipient is full, and close.

Keep it 24 hours in room temperature  and one week in the refrigerator and then it will be ready .

Pickled Pumpkin

Image via Wikipedia

A original recipe  is  pickled pumpkin:

Ingredients:

5 pounds of  pumpkin
3 red capsicum
3 cloves of garlic
2 table spoons of fresh grated ginger
0.5 pound of green apples
3 ounces of sea salt

Peel the pumpkin (later you can put the peel on the bottom of the pickle jar).
Cut the pumpkin, apples, tomatoes and capsicums into dices of 0.5 inch, mix it with the herbs and the salt, add  bottled water till the pickle pot is full.
Pickle for at least 5 days, put everything in a tupperware box in your fridge for at least one month.

Bon apetit.

Even kids will love this pickle.