In a pickle: fermenting Tasmania's flavours
As fruit trees and veggie patches wake from their winter slumber, it's time to prepare: excess is on its way. Three passionate Tasmanians share their love of the art and process of preserving seasonal bounty and their top tips for beginners.
Sally Wise loves nothing more than bottling the flavours and tastes of Tasmania alongside friends and loved ones at her home and cooking school in Molesworth. The bestselling author of A Year in a Bottle and Complete Preserves even received an OAM for service to the hospitality and culinary sectors and community in 2021.
Sally grew up observing the preservation of good food but didn’t dive into it herself until she married Robert, who had picked up skills when he worked on a Huon Valley farm.
“He had this tin preserver that he used to sit on top of the stove to preserve bottles of blackcurrant juice,” she recalls. “He’d be up all hours of the night, into the early hours of the morning, watching a thermometer. I thought, ‘You’re crazy, just go to the supermarket and buy some!’ But then I tasted it… and I was converted overnight.
“And we’ve just preserved together ever since, which is about 50 or more years now.”
She says our state’s love of preserving is multifaceted.
“It’s nostalgia. It’s something lovely from the past with lots of memories associated with it, but it’s also the practicality of it: not wasting anything, with seasonality and food miles," she says.
“There’s the sense of comfort and companionship, too, because you preserve things together – at least, we do. Even if you just do it in your own kitchen, that’s a lovely thing, but to preserve with other people, it just has the best feeling to it.”
Credit: Veronica Youd
Make it a party
Sally and her husband host annual get-togethers to preserve seasonal bounty, including their famous Apple Day, which Sally likens to an Italian passata day, where many hands make light work of kilograms of produce. They also do an apricot hunt, where they go through the Coal River Valley in a convoy with friends.
“We have an abundance here of such beautiful, exquisitely flavoured fruits because of the cool, temperate climate," Sally says. "Things ripen slowly and when they get that burst in summer – berries, for instance, and stone fruits – the flavour profile just goes up astronomically and makes these beautiful things you simply can't waste. They just have to be captured in a bottle!”
Fermented cultures
Stanley’s Sue Glynn and her husband Tom sell kimchi and other fermented products through their business KimchiMe.
Kimchi, a traditional Korean side dish made of salted and fermented vegetables such as cabbage or radish, adds an intense flavour to savoury dishes and is also good for gut health. Sue grew up watching kimchi being made in her family’s kitchen in South Korea, learning by looking over her mother’s shoulder.
“Making kimchi in Korea is a big thing we do; it’s a part of daily life. I saw my mother making all different things, over her shoulder, and I would taste it when she made it and she asked me my opinion – ‘What do you think, do we need to put some more salt?’ – and I just enjoyed that. This is part of me. This is part of my culture.
“The taste is just beautiful, with a zing to it – it refreshes your tastebuds. I have noodles, soups or rice always with kimchi. I eat it every day, probably two or three times a day. If I travel to somewhere else and have no opportunity to eat kimchi then I’m craving it,” she laughs.
Sue’s commercial kimchi features seasonal flavours such as beetroot or kale, but there’s one hero ingredient that really makes it shine: garlic.
“Especially purple garlic – it’s the best Tasmanian ingredient for making kimchi,” Sue enthuses. “It gives it a robust flavour when you ferment it and it brings an aroma and taste that is really lovely.”
There’s always something brewing on Sue’s bench. She makes her own soy sauce, pickles, miso, fermented chili paste and rice wine too. When her garden gave her more greengages, nectarines and white peaches than she could eat or give away last year, she made fruit vinegar – five barrels of it.
“When nature brings a lot of food, I can't just waste it, you know?”
Waste not, want not
Another Tasmanian preserver who was motivated to save excess fruit is Liz Gower, aka The Jam Lady, based in northern Tasmania.
“I’d been seeing this [fruit] waste, and I asked people whether I could pick it up and use it to make stuff at home. And then people kept saying, ‘You should sell this at a market.’ I didn’t really think my stuff was good enough, but I ended up having a go," Liz says.
"There was a lady there selling jams and she retired, and the stallholders asked me whether I’d take her place because they couldn’t have a market without someone selling jams! So that’s where it started, because then I had to produce a bit more, and now I’m up to about 80 varieties a year.”
Her bestsellers are tomato relish and raspberry jam, but there's always an appetite for new flavours.
“One thing I’ve found to be popular is anything with licorice in it. Blackberry and licorice and raspberry and licorice have really taken off. But I just picked up 11 kilograms of kumquats today, so I’m making kumquat marmalade this week.”
Just get started
Liz's advice for beginners is simple: just give it a go.
“I think people are scared to experiment. I just try all different combinations all the time, like strawberry and redcurrant, rhubarb and raspberry. If no one likes it, well, I don’t make it again,” she laughs.
Don’t give up if your preserve doesn’t come together as you’d hoped, she adds. It can be difficult to predict how effective pectin, the setting agent, will be – a balance that can depend on whether the fruit used is fresh or aged.
“If you have trouble with something setting, bring it up to 220 degrees, and then it will set. Over the years, many a time I’ve taken jars, poured them all back in the pot and boiled them again because they haven’t set well. That’s the beauty of it – you don’t ruin it.
“Oh, and tell people if you have problems, because there’s always someone out there who has solutions.”
