Sour Pepper Ferment

Last year while on holiday in my grandparents’ flat in Southern Serbia, mum pulled a jar from the fridge to use in lunch she was making. It was a slightly fermented pepper mash. I was puzzled; I couldn’t remember ever seeing mum make it or use it in her cooking. She added it to a pot of vegetarian beans she was cooking, to “enhance the flavour of the dish and replace some of the salt added when cooking food”. I was intrigued how this “secret” eluded me as we cook a lot with fermented food in the Balkans and eager to put it to the test in my own kitchen. I have subsequently made a serendipitous discovery of a similar recipe in an old regional cookbook and made it many times since.

Here is the basic recipe:

2-3 de-seeded red peppers

1 tsp sea salt

Mash the peppers with a stick hand blender, put them through a mill or blitz in food processor. add salt and mix well so it the salt dilutes. Secure the lid and let it ferment at room temperature for 4-5 days, then moved to the fridge where flavours mellow and change over time. 

Since I am a recipe tinkerer, you will always find garlic in my sour pepper condiment. I have a mellower version adding already fermented (pureed) garlic (5-6months) to slightly fermented peppers before they move to the fridge. 

This is just one of many dishes I add sour pepper condiment to. It also finds its way into vegetarian Serbian bean soup, our version of shakshuka (called przeno), goulash and paprikash.