Starter Fasting
Turshija (pickled vegetables)
Autumn vegetables put down in brine and eaten right through the winter, beside beans, stews and bread.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 1 hr
- Cook
- 15 min
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 14 ingredients
Method
- Wash the vegetables and let them drain properly. Anything soft, split or bruised goes in the soup pot rather than the jar, because one failing cucumber will cloud the whole batch.
- Boil the carrot rounds for five minutes, then drain and cool them. They are the one vegetable that stays woody otherwise.
- Bring the water, vinegar, salt and sugar to the boil and stir until everything has dissolved, then take the pan off the heat and let the brine go completely cold. Warm brine softens the cucumbers.
- Pack the vegetables into clean jars or a crock in layers — peppers, then cucumbers, then tomatoes, then cauliflower and cabbage — pressing down as you go so as little air is trapped as possible.
- Tuck in the bay leaves, peppercorns, hot peppers and horseradish, then pour over the cold brine until everything is submerged.
- Weight the vegetables down so nothing floats, with a small saucer or a clean stone, then seal the jars and stand them somewhere cool and dark.
- Leave for at least three weeks before opening. The brine drops as the vegetables take it up, so top it up with more of the same mixture if the tops come clear.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Ajvar peppers (long red kapia)
- Romano or ramiro peppers. Ordinary red bell peppers work, though they are thicker-walled and blander.
- Green, unripe tomatoes
- Small firm cherry tomatoes picked while still hard, or tomatillos.
- Macedonian hot green peppers (feferoni)
- Hungarian wax peppers, or two long green chillies.
