Our pickling recipe is more than 100 years old…
The secret to our great naturally fermented garlic and dill brine pickled cucumbers came to Australia with Kaz Kwasnica, my grandfather, a Polish agronomist who immigrated to Australia after WW2. Kaz taught me his recipe and the fermentation process and swore by the health benefits of the kwasne ogorki (what we grew up calling it), but at the time, I was more interested in eating the beautiful crunchy, cold, salty, garlicky, dill flavoured family favourite because they tasted awesome.
Kaz told me that he was taught the process by his parents, and I suspect that the similarity between the family surname and the name for this natural product indicates that the family had been honing the art of natural fermentation for many generations before him.
Family functions became taste-testing competitions with extended family bringing their homegrown and homemade naturally fermented pickles to vie for pickle supremacy. These delicious treats would be eaten with meats, on sandwiches or burgers, in the best potato salad you’ve ever had, on their own or in soup. That’s right — we grate it into a Polish soup, a staple known as Zurek.
Recent family functions without Kaz and his pickles have been a little dry and plain without the tangy treat, so I decided to do something about it by reviving this age old tradition.
The kwasne recipe uses fresh-picked cucumbers, garlic, dill, natural salt, spring water and spices. The process does not require vinegar or pasteurisation, thus having the benefit of keeping available the naturally occurring probiotics that our guts crave.
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