Cortido - Latin American Sauerkraut

We have a favorite, local, hole-in-the-wall, family-run, cash-only Mexican restaurant that we can literally walk to from our house. Open for longer than I've been alive, it features excellent salsa, pitchers of smooth margaritas and happy, tasty food. And they love my son and happily provide a warm tortilla for him to snack on/tear into a million little pieces, whenever we go.

And my favorite thing of all, maybe even outpacing the terrific chips and salsa, is the bowl of Escabeche they provide on every table. Mexican pickled vegetables, escabeche generally features carrots, radishes and onions pickled in a spicy brine. I love it. I will eat the whole bowl, often before my entree has arrived. This Cortido may soon take the place of that when dining at home . . . enjoy!

Cortido
from Nourishing Traditions

1 head cabbage, cored and shredded
1 cup carrots, grated
2 medium onions, quartered lengthwise and very finely sliced

6 cloves of garlic, finely minced*
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 Tablespoon salt
4 Tablespoons whey

In a large bowl mix all ingredients. Pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer for about 10 minutes to release juices. Place in 2 quart-sized wide-mouth mason jars and press down firmly until juices come to the top of the cabbage. The top of the cabbage mixture should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jars. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage.

Serve with Mexican and Latin American food of all types. Also great with grilled meat.

*My little addition to the original recipe. Once I added the garlic, the mixture smelled "right" to me, beforehand, it was missing something. . . . feel free to decide if it is the right missing ingredient for you! Also, next time I'm adding radishes!

Cooks Notes:

My first and biggest tip, if you have a food processor - use it! Using both the grating and slicing blades, I had all of the ingredients grated, shredded, sliced and minced in about two minutes.

Pour all of the ingredients in your largest bowl, mixing thoroughly before pounding away for ten minutes. I found that my hands were the best mixing tool available (I was just making a mess with that rubber spatula, flinging little bits of cabbage and carrot around my kitchen and not in the bowl) so I thoroughly tossed the ingredients using my fingers prior to pounding.

What worked best for me was using the marble pestle from my mortar and pestle set to mash and crunch. It has a good heft to it and fits perfectly in my hand to allow me to really press down and extrude the goodie out of the vegetables.

When I initially read through the recipe I was confused about where the liquid was going to come from that was to "cover" the sauerkraut once jarred; with only 4 Tablespoons of whey for all of that veg as the only liquid ingredient, I was sure that I was reading it wrong. Well, after ten minutes of pressing, I had figured it out; the liquid comes straight from the vegetables themselves, and there is more than enough to cover! Pressing down firmly and really packing the vegetables in the jar, you will have two tightly packed quart jars once completed.

From beginning to end, this only took me about twenty minutes, from plugging in the food processor to screwing on the lids. And we will be enjoying it for months to come!

I am still allowing the flavors of this to come together, but the tastes that I stole while packing the jars are exciting! We will be serving this with grilled meats, homemade fajitas and as an accompaniment to several bean dishes.

Just joining us? Please feel free to read this introductory post to learn more about the how's and why's of the process of lacto- fermentation preservation.

See you tomorrow . . .