Sauerkraut!

If you haven't already read Michael Pollan's Cooked, or at least watched the Netflix series of the same name, give it a go. In addition to diving deep into the methods we use to cook and preserve our food, it gives some really practical recipes that put those ideas to work. Last Thanksgiving I began baking his whole wheat sourdough loaf on almost a weekly basis. It is absolutely killer. This week I'm making sauerkraut, an even easier ferment which is nothing more than cabbage and salt, using the bacteria that already exist on the leaves of the cabbage. 

The experiment started with a 1.6 lb head of cabbage that I finely shredded and then massaged with 1 tablespoon of salt. All the brine in the picture was expressed by the cabbage - no water added. After three days, with the mass pressed down by my handy mortar, I had my first taste - and it tastes salty, not "salted." There's also not much activity in the brine, maybe a handful of small bubbles, but there's really no smell, and the cabbage is still crunch and taste, well, like cabbage. If things don't improve on day 4, I'm going to try and salvage it by diluting the brine with some fresh water.