Agrodolce. Spontaneous vinegar. Ferment

Travel

13 Sep

Ferment is happening all around us. The fizz of transformation is sparkling in the air, alighting on surfaces and permeating all form. The painstakingly gathered-in fruit and grain of the Virgo season begins its transmutation. Libra will bring a period of hanging-in-the-balance. Microbes thrive in this in-between stage, this moment between ripeness and rot. A sort of battle ensues, a siege is laid to the perfected matter of grape and apple, dried grass and green leaf. On their very skins and in the air are the seeds of their dissolution. Yeasts, bacteria, eventually a battalion of microbes and other critters set to work turning material into transmuted substances like wine, pickles, vinegar, and compost.

I uncaged and turned one of my round compost piles one warm late-summer afternoon. After the very hot dry period of July and August the upper and outer layers of old hay, cardboard, thistle stalks and sawdust were crispy and caked. I forked these into a mound, sprinkling several buckets of water over as I went. Miraculously, at the center of the old pile, dark, sweet smelling, slightly damp earth emerged, already perforated by wriggling red worms. These quick moving compost worms (Eisenia Fetida) turn organic matter into the finest ‘worm casting’ compost. The newly inverted pile offered the worms the undigested matter — now dark and dampened at the center — so they could continue their job. This still warm yet increasingly wetter season speeds up the composting process. Spring and fall are the big opportunities to advance your compost piles. This one will ‘cook’ again before winter slows it once more.

Up in the high hedgerow of hawthorn, bowing elder and sturdy cherry trees around my home acre, the rogue Pinot Gris is ripening. Birds rustling tell me the fruit is ready. Using an orchard ladder I pluck out a bin full of rosy gray clusters from amongst the blood-red haws, thorns and lacing blackberry canes. Apparently the Etruscans grew grapes up trees. It is the grape's natural tendency to clamber its way up any obliging structure. But it makes harvesting tricky. I trim excess stems, damaged berries, and pack the grapes into a clean stoneware crock. I press down firmly until juice emerges over the top of the fruit. Then I weigh it all down with a plastic bag full of water, excluding air. A covering of cloth and an elastic band excludes the inevitable fruitfly onslaught. After a couple days at room temperature the fermentation spontaneously begins. A pleasant periodic ”blurp” comes from the crock over the next week or two.

Given this ‘specialized’ environment of excluded air, medium warmth, the microbes already present in this time and place, minus undesirables like fruit flies, and a gentle daily pushing of the fruit back under its liquid, it will turn to wine. That is, almost all the natural sugars will be converted into alcohol. Afterwards I will allow more air and thus acetobacter to do its work creating vinegar.

Several Sicilian dishes are accented by this sensation of agrodulce — sweet and sour.

A dish such as Caponata incorporates deep notes of caramelized onion and eggplant, fragrant peppers, sweet stewed raisins with sharp vinegar and capers. Sauté the onion, eggplant, sweet peppers, zucchini and tomato each separately then combine them in a large dish. Deglaze the pan with red wine vinegar, evaporating some of the sharpness. Add to the vegetables with some capers and a few basil leaves and combine all to marinate. It will be better the second day and is even lovely eaten cold with cheese. A terser green version uses lightly oven-dried cubes of apple, onion, celery, sultanas, and white wine vinegar.

Agrodulce best expresses this moment between the full sugar of summer and the sharp melancholy of fall.