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Variations on the Great Wall: Pickled Sweet Summer Turnip Threads with Szechuan Peppercorns

August 22, 2011 MissWattson Leave a Comment

This is not a picture of all the pickled sweet summer turnips I made with this recipe. The other 10 jars are in the dining room…

Last year I made fermented radish threads using one giant daikon radish and a recipe from “Beyond the Great Wall”, a beautiful book about Chinese cooking from the minority ethnic groups in China. This is not your average General Tau, garlic spareribs, or chicken fried rice-kind of Chinese cookbook, though recipes for “standard” dishes can be found in more traditional forms.

I ended up with 1 1/2 jars of the stuff and I gave one jar away to a friend for a thrown noodle-making party. Yes, people have those. And yes, they are generally more successful than I am at it, thank goodness. That’s not a lot of radish left to enjoy myself, but as long as they were appreciated that’s completely worth it. But if you’re going to go to the trouble of actually canning (sealing lids, sterilizing, etc) or even just fermenting (less fuss – there’s less concern with sterilization since you keep these in the fridge, and you don’t boil them after making them, but they require you to wait a day while the jar contents are subtly changed by the vinegar solution and air and all sorts of delicious reactions), you might as well make a big batch. So this year, I decided to overdo it. Balance is an elusive concept to me, though I’m an ace with a kitchen scale:

pickled-sweet-summer-turnip-threads

The recipe is simple – using a foodmill or food processor you shred a giant daikon radish, an onion, and some ginger, and then layer it in a glass jar with salt, toasted and ground Szechuan peppercorn (the mouth-numbing, endorphin-releasing spice that’s nothing, NOTHING like anything else and really can’t be compared or replaced. Just try it), and hot rice wine vinegar.

Except the thing is I hate daikon radish. I find it too earthy and and bitter. This recipe made it manageable, at least. I mean, don’t eat it all in one sitting (both for sodium and digestion reasons), but a small amount as a condiment to any kind of Chinese meal is perfect. It’s got the mouth-numbing quality of the peppercorn, the gentle biting of the vinegar and ginger, the cut of the salt making it perfect with fatty (pig or cow-based) dishes, and a little bit of crunch from the radish. So this year I decided to pickle sweet summer turnips, which are very similar to radishes, but less bitter, and unlike daikon, and less imported (these came from Quebec and were organic).

So I bought 20 lbs of them…because that seemed like a good idea for pickling. Boy I love food processors with shredder attachments.


So I made the recipe again, replacing the daikon with my sweet summer turnips, and 20 lbs of turnip later I had about 10 jars of properly canned pickled summer turnip threads and about 10 jars of fermented summer turnip threads (plus 1 day for the fermentation minus the canning hassle). I also ran out of rice wine vinegar and so I made half of the jars with apple cider vinegar and half with regular distilled vinegar. I’ve only eaten the apple cider fermented version so far, but am very, very happy with them. I’m confident the other will be stellar as well, however – milder in terms of flavour from the apple-free vinegar, but maybe more intense because of that, and without the overpowering flavour of fermentation – so simpler, sweeter. More true to the natural flavour of the summer turnips.

pickled-sweet-summer-turnip-threads

How to make pickled summer turnips threads as a shelf-safe, canned pickle:

Sterilize a ton of jars in a hot water canning pot as per standard instructions (no hands, everything pre-washed in hot soapy water, lids softened 5 minutes before use in hot water, etc.), follow the recipe instructions, and then process the jars in a hot water canner for 10 minutes. It’s kind of like killing off all the potentially deliciousness of the recipe before it has a chance to take over, but that deliciousness involves bacteria, and requires you to keep these things in the fridge to make them safe. So it’s a toss up. Christmas gifts? Want to sell them at a boutique? You need to sterilize. Speaking of which, if you want to buy them, I’m happy to sell them. I have quite a few:
pickled-sweet-summer-turnip-threads

In fact, please buy them from me because you probably can’t get summer turnips anymore this summer, and canning is a nuisance. Plus, look at all these turnip you need to deal with (times about 10 in my case):

szechuan-pepercorn-pickled-fermented-sweet-summer-turnip-threads

…and the greens (the picture is of the stems only. I ended up steaming about 5 pounds of greens – and greens are VERY light, so 5 lbs is a lot – then puréeing for later use in rice or saag-like dishes. It took an AGE!):

szechuan-pepercorn-pickled-fermented-sweet-summer-turnip-threads

You can even buy the fermented version of the pickled summer turnips from me if you’re okay with keeping them in the fridge right away. Once opened, even the sterilized, jarred summer turnip threads need to be refrigerated. In fact, please buy the fermented ones because the lovely woman I live with is going to want her fridge space back when she comes home from her summer vacation. No room for normal things like butter and milk when the fridge is jammed with jam and pickles.

So the canning is a hassle, but the idea of having sweet summer Quebec organic turnips in February is amazing to me. Makes the Montreal winter a little more bearable. Up there with my wild blueberry jam, sour cherries in rum syrup, and dill pickles. This way my heart can race from toasted peppercorns in brine year-round, sustainably. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Let me know if you want me to help your heart race too. I’ll see what I can do.

All Recipes, Canning and Preserves, Chinese, Sides, Vegetarian Beyond the great wall, chinese pickles, chinese recipes, pickled radish threads, pickled sweet summer turnips, recipes, sweet summer turnips, szechuan peppercorns

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