Them Apples, Lactofermented

Simply waiting a season for a seasoning

For me, making delicious food with us is all about celebrating availability and opportunity. A lot of the distinctiveness of great cooking begins with ingredients, and knowing where to find examples that offer more than the norm. Going to the grocery store is the typical way to get what you need, but the selection can lack variety. If you want to get hip to the best (and often most fleeting) flavors, I’ve found that befriending farmers is the way to go.

Jenny and Matt of Muddy River Herbals are the loveliest of humans. I’ve talked about their wonderful aromatic herbs using sustainable agricultural practices before. I met them several years ago at a makers’ event. After tasting their fresh holy basil and winter savory, there was no going back. Flash forward to a couple months ago, I had the honor of co-teaching a basic fermentation class with Jenny at their farm. As one of the elements, I demonstrated how to make a barbecue sauce with crabapples lactofermented with Muddy River Herbals lemongrass from last season.

Understanding a basic lactofermentation technique like sauerkraut, pao cai, kimchi, and so on empowers you to preserve just about any vegetable or fruit. It’s as simple as cutting them up, coating them with salt, and ensuring all the solid matter is constantly covered with a little brine for at least a couple of weeks—and the jar can then be shelved for multiple months or even more than a year. This is how our ancestors managed any excess of nutritious plant matter at the end of the season with minimal effort. When you think about it, it’s pure genius.

I always pick as much as possible from a local crabapple tree that has intense flavor and unusually low tannins. I do like to make jam as you may have read, but it takes a fair amount of energy to cook it off and can it for storage. Turning to fermentation allows me to process it with little effort and it buys me plenty of time to figure out what to do with it (often much later). This is an easy way to stock the abundant pantry we’re always talking about that you can pull from whenever you need.

Poaching fruit is a really simple way to make it more luxurious. Pears are probably the most well known example, but it works with lots of fruit. It’s super straightforward and I’m surprised the technique isn’t employed more.

Add cider, sake, white wine, or beer to cover there fruit in a pot large enough to hold all the fruit. Peel, halve, and core four tart apples, saving the skins and cores. I used a bottle each of cider and sake, but you can use whatever light and crisp alcohol you have handy for poaching the fruit. Combining odds and ends of unfinished bottles of things that fit into this category is the way to go: the kombucha that you let go a little too sour combined with the last bit of IPA from a growler that’s gone flat would work great.

Float the apples in the cider sake mix to prevent browning until all the halves are prepared, then take them out of the pan. Bring the liquid to a simmer, then add the apples back with aromatics. (I added the peels and core pieces to extract their flavor instead of just tossing them.) My friends at Nana’s in Westerly, Rhode Island happened to have huacatay flowers that had pineapple notes, which worked wonderfully. In your case, a sprig of rosemary would be quite nice, or maybe some whole pie spices like star anise, cinnamon stick, and allspice or clove. Bring it back to a simmer and cook the apples until a paring knife easily passes through the fruit.

While you’re waiting for the apples to finish, let’s work on the lacto-crabapple jam. Add one pint of lactofermented crabapples to a medium sauce pan. Any tart lactofermented fruit would work here. Sprinkle enough sugar to coat the crabapples after a good stir. Add water until there’s ½” layer. Bring the water to a simmer until the fruit is soft. Add water as needed to maintain the level of liquid. Cut the heat and use a potato masher to create a chunky paste then pass though a sieve over a medium bowl. The paste must be wet enough to pass the flesh of the fruit, so add water as necessary.

Carefully remove the poached apple halves with a slotted spoon, remove any aromatic bits, and place it on a silpat or parchment lined sheet tray. Separate spent aromatics & remaining solids from the liquid with a strainer, rinse out the sauce pan and return the liquid to the sauce pan. Bring it back to a simmer and reduce to a light syrup, when the liquid just starts to coat the back of a metal spoon. Add a tablespoon of lacto-crabapple jam, mix and taste. (Umeboshi from your local Japanese/Asian market is a great swap.) You’re shooting for a tart and slightly sweet syrup that isn’t notably salty. You may need to add more jam or reduce further to get the desired consistency. A little sugar can be added at the very end as needed, but remember being slightly sweet is the goal.

To enjoy, place the cut half down on a warm dessert plate and coat the apple with lacto-crabapple syrup. A crunchy sprinkle of toasted buckwheat tea, dusting of dried perilla leaves, and a touch of smoky salt have added nice accents in the past. To make it even more extra, having a base of purple sticky rice coconut milk amazake rice pudding underneath with crunchy koji granola on top is really freaking good.

Lacto-fermented fruit opens the doors to a wide variety of possibilities. Use the complexity and slight saltiness to your advantage in application as you would for a condiment/preserve with a similar flavor profile. As always, please report back on your flavor findings so we can learn from each other.