COMING BACK FROM SUMMER #2
Or how to still catch some ripe fruit for groovy experiments
Lately I’m very much into fruit. Not jams, not fruit in alchohol but fermented fruit, following Korean and Indian techniques. This summer I was so busy with umeboshi that I couldn’t do much else at the same time. But once the ume were safely in their wooden barrel, I started looking around. To my dismay, the apricot harvest was over and in the north of Italy, finding nice organic fruit (when I say nice, I mean organic that is not produced on an industrial scale) is not so easy. I had brought with me from Brussels a small jar of apricot atchar (an Indian recipe using fenugreek, mustard and chili), adapted from more classical mango atchar. It had turned out divine but it was such an infinitely small jar and now there were no more apricots to be found…
I was travelling to Marche, a region in the centre of Italy, where I have good friends and good friends who grow fruit and vegetables. But the time of apricots was long gone…
I made some fermented watermelon instead, which was a big success and I began the first gigantic jar of fermented red tomato, in preparation for an event that will take place in Milan at the end of September (https://www.naturalefestival.com/).
When I drove back to Belgium, through Switzerland and France, I hoped to come across farmers selling perfumed apricots and Mirabelle plums. There are late varieties that are just marvelous. I saw some in Switzerland, very tasty but not organic and did not feel about making a nice toxic concoction for me and my friends. I drove on and sadly France did not deliver this time.
So once, in Brussels I was simply scanning the territory for fruit until I came across a small miracle: la ferme du planois, tucked away among fields and woodland. They sell lovely goat cheese, eggs and meat. But they also have two old trees of Mirabelle plums that were so full of fruit this year that they offered people to pick it up themselves. A friend passed the info to me and there I was with my bucket, a stick and an old bed sheet. Oh bliss! Even wasps are calm and polite in Belgium! I could pick the plums away from them easily and later turn them into a classical atchar and a very unusual kimchi.
They taste amazing. I think fruit is my cabbage, when it comes to kimchi. I love its soft texture and the sweet aroma mixed with the spices and pungent fermented juice.
These experiments are feeding into a workshop I will give on fermenting fruit (not for alcohol, nor beverages but for kimchi and atchar that will keep your meals colorful and remind you of summer on a cold day).
MARIA TARANTINO @ WILDUNDOMESTICATED 
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