culinary quirks
I’ve been living with a couple crocks of fermenting cabbage this fall, what the peasants of Eastern Europe call saurkraut. No, it’s not really a South End variant of saurnettle … or sour anything for that matter. But it is a tradition at our shack. We shred huge heads of local cabbage with our antique slicer/dicer, 3 horizontal blades on a maple track that a box slides over with the cabbage held inside, a primitive but effective giant grater. Great care should be taken not to mix epidermis, fingernails and blood into the crock below.
You add some salt every layer or so and for our recipe, you add lots, and I mean lots, of garlic. Probably some concoction passed down by a mixed marriage of Pole and Italian fearful of vampires in the neighborhood. When the crock is full, you put a wood top on and weight it down and then you wait. Pretty soon the cabbage starts to break down and just like homebrew, the stuff starts to ferment. Not rot, mind you, although the odor is more than reminiscent.
I will admit that kraut is an acquired taste. If you’re making 12 gallons of the stuff, you probably acquired more than the taste, you might need a 12 step program for addiction. Folks who walk in the front door often stagger backwards first whiff. Explanations don’t really cut the aroma and most guests just smile wanly, probably wondering if next visit we’ll be sporting babushkas and making blood sausage.
The South End may be primitive, but they hadn’t counted on barbarism.
So far the neighbors haven’t complained. Course, they’re usually upwind. If the storms keep pounding the westward coast, they’ll be fine. If we go into sudden doldrum — or, God forbid, an air inversion — I expect For Sale signs to proliferate like mushrooms and property values to plummet. Who’d have guessed South End real estate was so closely linked to sauerkraut and global climate change? I’m just hoping polar bears don’t start changing their dietary habits.
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