How to Ferment Cucumbers, Zucchini and Eggplant

A weekend of fermentation to preserve the harvest thus far

For those of you keeping track, this is a lot of salt. It is because I want this to last for months, not weeks, and salt is the way to achieve that with cucumbers. It isn’t too salty to enjoy, and I will add this to unsalted food, and it will bring zing and flavor.

Zucchini

Zucchini is also a soft veggie that doesn’t want to last long. The process here was very similar to the cucumber kimchi. I have to say, the whole time I was prepping the zucchini, I thought I would make achar, but after finding that gochujang and tasting the cucumbers, I had to do something similar.

The process here was also about removing some of the excess moisture. This will give me a crunchy texture. I know it’s wild to think of zucchini as crunchy at all. Wilting out that water is the trick. This time I used the dehydrator.

Again, I scooped the seeds and pith from the larger ones. I dehydrated them for about 4 hours. I aimed for a 40-50 percent moisture reduction. (Shown in photos)I am home alone this weekend. Our dog and cats are here, and they are making sure I don’t feel alone. The dog and one cat are so clingy as to be underfoot most of the time. Right now, said cat is on my desk and the dog is snoring behind me. I guess they sense how unusual this is to have one human around instead of the usual eight. I can’t remember the last time this happened. Our home is multigenerational, not in the sense of the house itself, but rather our son and his family live in a cabin about 30 feet away. His family is camping in Scotland for a month, and Christopher is in his small hometown in the heartland at his 40^th high school reunion.

To be fair, it is my turn; I was gone last week visiting another son and his girls. Christopher was the one in charge of all the watering (trees, flowers, and garden) and pets ( ours 🐕🐈🐈 and my grandchildren’s 🐕🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🐇🐇 🐇+12). We were in the same place for 22 hours, and tag, I was it. The harvest floodgate is open, he’d gathered a big pile of veggies, and I am bringing up more basketfuls daily, which I plan to preserve this weekend before I drive to Palo Alto next week for a Fermented Food Conference at Stanford. I can’t wait. Two dates of gathering “to discuss, explore, and celebrate fermentation.” And I promise to write about what I learn here.

This weekend, besides the dog and cat, I have been keeping company with the audiobook of My Friends by Fredrik Backman as I pick, chop, or salt veggies. The combination of the characters and their stories and my being stuck with my brain has put me in a bit of a pensive mood regarding time and its slippery nature. The story takes place in two time periods, twenty-five years apart. While my own coming of age was well over twenty-five years ago it feels both just around the last corner and so dusty and distant. In some ways, it is easier to step into my seventeen-year-old self than it is to recall my twenty-seven-year-old self, or my thirty-seven-year-old self. Maybe it is because in my twenties and thirties, I always felt overwhelmed and sleep deprived. And now, in these last few years, I am not sure what time is doing, but some days it slips through as I try to grasp at it.

Okay, complete disclosure: to add to this pensiveness, I must admit that I have also been visiting old journals. Of which there are stacks. I am not great at regular writing, so the fact that there are two plastic totes worth tells me I’ve gathered a lot of weeks behind me. It is illuminating. (Not to mention seriously cringeworthy at times.) I am consistent over decades. There are the few moments of clarity, scattered through the blah, blah, blah, but mostly I started to write, trying to piece together something with the scraps of energy left from the day, and then ended up writing. I am tired, more tomorrow. I kid you not, it is both comical and excruciating to read that over and over again. (Mostly, there was never more on whatever thought I’d interrupted the next day.)

I have more time to do things, like write, yet the days melt into one another. And just like that it is the end of the week, I think, wait…we are already here again? And I wonder where it went, and why I didn’t write? What did I distract myself with? Or, do I just feel empty? But as I stare down at the setting sun, another day turning into a tomorrow. I think about all that I still want to say, and admonishing myself, you don’t have all the time in the world, you know. And yet, I am more content than maybe I have ever been.

Okay, let’s move out of my head and into the kitchen.

This was the harvest from Friday morning, not pictured at all the zucchini, eggplant, and cucumbers in the fridge already.

I had eggplant, a whole lot of pickling cucumbers that were the right size, and a pile that were a little large, a small mound of zucchini, and tons of tomatoes to preserve. The heap of shishito peppers has slowly diminished as I have enjoyed some for every meal. That is the thing with seasonal eating: enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, before they are gone. Everything else, ferment or preserve in some tasty way, to remember the long summer nights when it’s cold and dark. (From the backside of the weekend, I still have a bunch of tomatoes.)

I will ferment tomatoes later in the harvest. Right now they are all going into our meals or the dehydrator.

These Piennol del Vesuvio tomatoes in their yellow and red variation are firm small plum tomatoes that ferment well. I generally make sure I have a plentiful supply of dried tomatoes first though.

Cucumbers

Most of the cucumbers became dill pickles, because pickles, why mess with a classic. (Slight visual fail in that I used pink salt for the brine on white cucumbers. Note the reddish sediment, which could look concerning if you didn’t know it was pink salt.) There is a pickle demo and recipe here.

The larger cucumbers became a cucumber kimchi. It has only fermented a day, and I want to eat it all up already. I will share the process I followed; feel free to experiment with it.

On the large cucumbers, it is best to scoop out the seeds and the pith they are contained in. This is super wet and will contribute to an overabundance of moisture, leading to a soggy ferment over time. In the same vein, I also cubed, salted, and pressed the cucumbers for three hours to release more of the water. I used 1 % of salt by weight of the cucumbers. I drained and squeezed out the excess water.

I put these in a bowl with some diced daikon radish, 3 large cloves garlic, grated and 6 large scallions, sliced. I weighed this and used the measurement to determine how much salt to add. This time, it was 2% of the weight. I also added a tablespoon of black sesame seeds, 3 tablespoons of fish sauce, and 3 tablespoons of gochujang. (I recently found a gochujang I’d made in 2016! So, these feel extra special.)