Ginger Pickles

How easy is to quit coffee ? Hmmm … How about drinking it with no milk? Hmmm … Or even better,  with no sugar at all? The quotidian cooks were wondering how easy it is to remove some of our toxic daily habits. Quitting bread and processed wheat pasta, avoiding industrial beer … Hmmmm, it doesn’t look so doable, right? We conducted a small survey among some of our health-oriented friends, family, fellow chefs and the answer is … nope. It is not at all easy.

For us, a much better strategy is to keep on adding food and healthy habits to our lifestyle. We believe that what we eat is much more important than what we do not eat. On this website, we invite you to incorporate healthy foods into your diet recipe after recipe.  We work to bring you delicious and attractive recipes that help you initiate a change and become more conscious about what you eat (and about what you decide to eliminate).

This week we bring you a closer look at ginger, a legendary spice that is available fresh and alive in most food stores. To discuss the benefits of eating ginger, we partnered with Andy Brunning, author of the Compound Interest website. He gave us permission to use and translate his fantastic graphic with ginger’s components and properties. Andy has become the great reference for understanding the chemical processes in our everyday foods and his work Compound Interest: the curious chemistry of food and drink is one of our favorite books.

In this week’s recipe we propose two ginger pickles, a pink ginger, in the traditional Japanese style and a more contemporary golden ginger. Both combine perfectly with all kinds of dishes adding flavor and pungency to your meals. The pink pickle is a version of pickled ginger used as accompaniment in oriental food and gets its color from the red beet added to the marinade. The golden pickle is a sweet version, made with honey and we love it as a sweet-and-spicy touch in our Mediterranean dishes.

In both cases it is essential to select fresh, medium sized ginger bulbs, to peel them and to work with a sharp vegetable peeler or blade to get very thin strips. Its preparation is as simple as combining all the ingredients in a glass jar and let them marinate.

You can serve the ginger pickles accompanying dishes like our Bonito Sashimi with leeks, or the simpler Spelt Berries with Greens. Surely you know which (pink or golden) is the most suitable pickle for each of these dishes.

Ginger Pickles

 

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Prep time

40 mins

Cook time

6 hours

Total time

6 hours 40 mins

 

Author: TQC

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• For the Pink Ginger Pickle
• 1 cup sliced fresh ginger
• ½ tsp sea salt
• ½ cup brown rice vinegar
• ¼ cup umeboshi vinegar
• 2 Tbs maple syrup
• 1 slice of red beet
• For the Golden Ginger Pickle
• 1 cup sliced fresh ginger
• ½ tsp sea salt
• ½ cup brown rice vinegar
• ¼ cup umeboshi vinegar
• 2 Tbs maple syrup

Instructions

1. For the Pink Ginger Pickle
2. Peel the ginger piece carefully and with a vegetable peeler slice paper-thin stripes as wide as possible (see picture)
3. In a bowl massage the ginger with the salt until it starts to release liquid. Place a plate on top and put a weight on the plate to have a pressing effect. Let it stand to press for 1 hour.
4. Drain off excess liquid and blot dry with a towel.
5. In a glass jar with a lid combine vinegars and syrup. Lock the lid and shake until well mixed.
6. Add the ginger strips and beet slices. Leave to marinate for six hours or overnight.
7. It keeps in the refrigerator up to one week.
8. For the Golden Ginger Pickle
9. Peel the ginger piece carefully and with a vegetable peeler slice paper-thin stripes as wide as possible (see picture)
10. In a bowl massage the ginger with the salt until it starts to release liquid. Place a plate on top and put a weight on the plate to have a pressing effect. Let it stand to press for 1 hour.
11. Drain off excess liquid and blot dry with a towel.
12. In a glass jar with a lid combine vinegars and syrup. Lock the lid and shake until well mixed.
13. Add the ginger strips. Leave to marinate for six hours or overnight.
14. It keeps in the refrigerator up to one week.

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