Kohlrabi will be sent to us quite soon in our vegetable box subscription, so I am VERY interested in learning how yours turn out.

I broke open one of our big 5 litre pickling pots last night - always nerve racking, but not a speck of surface mould in there, phew! - and gave this white/green cabbage ferment its initial taste test. This was the first time I’d included grated ginger along with some onion. It was delicious, hard to explain what ginger brought to the party as the result wasn’t quite what I’d expected. MrLapLap again brought up preserved rakkyo as a comparison. This sauerkraut has turned out to be the perfect “hybrid” for him, it’s a lovely, refreshing cabbage sauerkraut but with a tsukemono “edge” which goes particularly well with rice. He had beef, pumpkin and renkon curry last night as well as plain white rice and my first attempt at Doria, he ate the sauerkraut with everything. I found it went very well with the curry.

I’m still not sure what would happen if I allow it to continue to ferment (has only been about 18 days), so I stuffed about 1.5kgs into jars for the fridge and re-set the rest of the sauerkraut in the water seal crock and will give it another try at some point this weekend. Lesson learned so far is that ginger doesn’t make sauerkraut overly “gingery”, flavour becomes more interesting, elegant even. Definitely worth trying!

And the lemon is developing exquisitely. Will keep an eye on it keenly from now as it is reaching somewhere beautiful but the perfume might “turn” too far if I don’t put it in the fridge at the right point. Beyond my expectations, nothing like the commercial stuff I’ve had.