Endless Summer

A summer morning visit to the market plunges one into a sea of grandmothers selling fruits and vegetables brought from their cottages, gardens, and villages. Each week sees the arrival of one variety and the departure of another; everything is extremely seasonal as all of it is grown within 100 kilometers of the city. The only consistent factor is the double-take prices. I bought organic tomatoes for about 20 cents per kilo, cucumbers for 15, cherries for about $1 per kilo. The downside of this frenzy is that come winter, the prices jump almost fifteen-fold. So, I, like a good Ukrainian, bought kilo upon kilo of vegetables this summer and heated up my apartment with afternoons of canning. Now in January I can enjoy the bounty of the Ukrainian summer. Here’s a sampling of some of the prettiest jars in my closet.

From left, back row: salsa, peeled and seeded tomatoes, salted tomatoes, giardiniera; front row: melon jam, roasted bell peppers, mosarda, pear-lemon-ginger jam, pickled eggplant.

The Salsa is a very standard fresh salsa– tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, salt, lime juice, onion, parsley, cilantro. I didn’t use garlic because it is known to harbor Clostridium botulinum, and since the salsa doesn’t contain high levels of salt, sugar, or acid, the canned environment would be an easy place for botulism to develop.

The Tomatoes are simply peeled and seeded tomatoes that I heat treated and sealed.

The Salted Tomatoes, however, are an incredible Ukrainian specialty. I started by dropping whole black-pepper corns, chunks of fresh horseradish, bay leaves, sprigs of fresh dill, and a cherry leaf into the bottom of the jar. I then packed the jar with tomatoes, chunks of onion, and garlic cloves, and then covered everything with a vinegar-water-salt solution. After a couple months of aging, the tomatoes become soft inside, but their skins hold them together. The result is a preserved tomato that literally explodes into the eater’s mouth (or on his shirt) at first bite. These are quite possibly the best chaser for horilka in existence.

Giardiniera is the standard Italian medley of vegetables pickled in vinegar. This particular jar contains cauliflower, cucumbers, button mushrooms, hot peppers, and carrots. I added some black-pepper corns and a couple cloves for flavor.

The Jams are also very standard. The melon jam had to be simmered for hour upon hours as melon has little pectin; I also added some lemon zest to help with this. There are some blanched almonds in there too for flavor and to look pretty. Ukrainian pears are have a floral sweetness to them, and I combined them with ginger and lemon to create a sweet and hot jam that works perfectly as a glaze for pork.

The Roasted Bell Peppers I made by roasting 3 kilos of bell peppers, putting them into a paper bag for 10 minutes, and then peeling them. I then jarred them– those 3 kilos just barely filled 3 half-liter jars–, and dumped a vinegar-sugar-salt solution flavored with black pepper, dill seed, and mustard seed.

Mosarda is Italian fruit mustard. I made it by taking a mixture of fruits and an almost equal amount of sugar and letting it soak for 3 days. Once a day I would drain the fruit and concentrate the syrup to allow the sugar to extract more water from the fruit. After 3 days it was already starting to develop a nice musky flavor from oxidation; the sugar content is high enough to prevent spoilage. I then reduced the syrup one last time and added some white wine that I had infused with ground mustard. When this mixture had reduced quite a bit, I recombined it with the fruit and jarred and sealed the mosarda and put it in my closet to age. It has a complex musky flavor from the various fruits along with a hot mustard bite that is tempered by the sweetness.

The Pickled Eggplant is another Ukrainian specialty that I love. I sliced several kilos of eggplant and put all the slices into a big, enamel stock pot. Then I coated them with hot peppers, onions, and garlic that I had run through my meat grinder and mixed with a cup of vinegar. I then put a plate on top of the mixture and moved the pot to my closet. I stirred the mixture twice a day for three days; each time I was sure to compress the mixture a little more. After three days, the eggplants were soft and darkened from the vinegar, and I jarred and sealed them. After 4 months they have a sweet, bitter taste and the interior of the slices are creamy while the peel remains just tough enough to hold each slice together.