I think a lot of people have a love hate relationship with cranberries. As the holidays have rolled around and Thanksgiving came I was thinking a lot about cranberry sauce and how I like it and yet I don't like it but, something in me wanted to redeem what magic cranberries do have so I took it to the kitchen and with the power of fermentation by my side decided to whip up a fermented cranberry relish and the result was a good one! I packed multiple jars for friends and family on a recent Thanksgiving trip to Virginia and Washington DC and it was a hit! Lovers of cranberries and non lovers alike enjoyed this tangy fermented gift. With the hollidays in full swing we hope you'll take a stab at this yummy ferment for the holidays.
Fermented Cranberry Relish
Ingredients:
Fresh cranberries (3 cups)
Dried cranberries (1 cup)
Ginger root (2 inch piece)
Sugar (3 tablespoons)
Sea salt (1 tablespoon)
Cinnamon (optional)
Walnuts (optional)
Take your cranberries and put them in a food processer and rough chop them. Move to a bowl and add a sea salt. Stir well to allow the brine to start coming out of the cranberries. Grate the ginger root. Add the ginger, sugar, and dried cranberries to the bowl. Mix well. Add cinnamon or chopped walnuts as an optional added bit of magic. Move the mixture to a jar and pack it down, add a weight to keep it submerged below the brine. Cover with a lid or towel and put in a cool dark place to ferment. We let our sit for about 5 days before harvesting.
When I was a kid at basically every dinner there would be either applesauce or apple butter on the table. The apple butter usually came from the Amish farm or the local apple farm, and the applesauce...well, Mott's was what we had.
Thinking about my love of applesauce and over the years of hauling home a huge CSA loot of apples and pears I started making a slow cooker Apple Pear Sauce somewhere around September. Always the maker and always the person wanting to re-invent things I decided that this year we would do a few batches of Fermented Apple Pear Sauce to add to our fall goodies...promptly followed by Apple Cider Vinegar, Hard Cider, Cyszar, and a fall Apple Kraut.
Here's our recipe for our Fermented Apple Pear Sauce. Hope you enjoy it as much as we have!
Ingredients:
5 medium apples and 2-3 medium pears
2 Tbsp. water kefir
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. vanilla extract
pinch of salt
Instructions:
Chop apples and pears into chunks. Optional is to peel them -- we like them with peels on with the cores removed. Throw them into a food processor and blend until you get your desired consistency.
Mix in water kefir, ginger, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt.
Transfer to a quart jar, leave room for the ferment to do it's thing, we suggest 1 inch (or at the curve of the jar).
Cover the jar with a cloth, lid, airlock, pickle pipe, or whatever method of your choosing.
Ferment for 1-3 days until you reach a flavor and texture that you like. We suggest tasting it daily to see how the flavor profile changes daily. It's really the best way to learn how you like your ferments! Once you like the flavor, put a lid on the jar, and store in the fridge. We suggest eating within 1-2 months.
The First Annual NYC Fermentation Festival was a couple weekends ago here in Brooklyn, NY. It was a fantastic turnout and filled with amazing vendors, workshops, and more! Erin Cramm and I taught on Fermentation and the Human Microbiome this year at the festival and we wanted to share out list of favorite reads and more on this topic with you. So here are our picks and we hope you get a chance to enjoy them as much as we have!
Erin’s List:
I Contain Multitudes- Ed Yong
Food Rules- Michael Pollan
Gut - Giulia Enders
The Human Super-Organism - Dr. Rodney Dietert
Brainmaker - Dr. David Perlmutter
This is Your Brain on Parasites - Kathleen McAuliffe
