Pickled Bracken Fern
This was a wacky experiment that went exactly as I’d hoped. I soaked, boiled, and soaked again a bag of dried bracken fern (aka fernbrake, gosari, etc.) and then fermented it in a 2% brine with Sichuan peppercorn, garlic, facing heaven chiles (from Chengdu), and a ton of ginger. After a week and a half, it smelled suuuuper funky, but I drained off the brine and packed the pickle in jars with homemade ginger-scallion-garlic-chile oil (more Sichuan peppercorn here), seasoned with a little salt and sugar. It’s divine with mushrooms on a pizza, on top of congee, in fried rice, or just eaten straight from the jar.