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What happens when fermenters get excited:
Three recipes in one
Last month I introduced many tasty, unique ways to present seasonal fruit. Here is another unique idea - actually three. Adjust ingredients  depending on your farmer's market bargains and what is growing in your garden!
Last week I went camping with a bunch of friends. After breakfast we had more than a gallon of fruit salad left over. Being the gal that I am, I refused to compost the delicious fruit. I had to ferment it! It turned out great.
1: Fermenty Fruit Salad
Make a fruit salad, any way you like it. Eat as much as you want. Ferment the leftovers. This is how you do it:
Put your leftover fruit salad in a plastic bucket (food-grade) or glass jar with a wide mouth. Make a solution of water or honey in water**. Pour your sweet solution over the fruit salad and mix. Don't seal the jar, but keep it covered with a fabric so flies don't get in. Stir several times a day until the salad becomes bubbly. It will take 1 - 3 days for this to happen. It may even start to foam and that is ok. That means it has fermented! You can just keep eating the salad until it is all gone. Or seal the jar and store it in the fridge as you eat it.
This fermented fruit salad is great as a chutney or as topping on ice cream, (pound) cake, scones, waffles, or pancakes. Whatever!
Why eat fermented fruit salad? My top 7 reasons: It is yummy. It is a different twist on the basic and boring fruit salad. It preserves fruit that might rot or get thrown away. It improves your immune system. It gives you an added Vitamin C boost. It might just strengthen your gut, helping you to digest and assimilate your nutrients. It travels nicely, not needing refrigeration.
2: Rumptopf
Germans are great fermenters. They even have a name for this fruity-fermenty dish. Called rumtopf, it is the same recipe as above BUT it also includes rum. The fruit, sugar and rum is a layered (not stirred) mixture that is started in spring/summer when fruits ripen. It is traditionally harvested/eaten at Christmas time.
Many recipes exist for rumptopf, none of them are the same and all of them call for a ton of sugar which I think is unnecessary. If I were you, I would just dump some rum, brandy or whiskey on top of the fermented fruit so it covers by about 1 inch. 150+ proof is supposed to kill any bad microbes, though I am not worried about bad microbes as they don't tend to harm us via fermentation (they do through canning, but that is another story.)
Store in the fridge or another cool place till winter time or hunger sets it.
But, I couldn't wait that long. And I had a lot of fruit salad.
So, I made my fermented fruit salad into granola.
3. Fermenty Fruit Granola
 | | Enjoy your summer granola by topping it with fresh made almond milk and berries |
I put about 3 cups of fermented fruit salad into the blender with 1/2 cup of pitted and soaked dates, plus a pinch of salt and stevia. I blended this into a syrup. Then, I dumped the syrup into a bowl with about 3 cups of soaked buckwheat, 1 cup chopped almonds (soaked and dehydrated) 1 cup sesame seeds, 1/2 cup goji berries and some finely cut dried ginger. After stirring completely, I spread this out on 3 tefflex sheets and dehydrated them for about 36 hours at 105 degrees. Voila!
Variations:
Mix up your granola with any nuts, seeds or dried fruit you have on hand. Try pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and raisins too! Or pecans, walnuts and dried cherries. Or, omit the ginger.
Fermented Fruit Salad and Rumtopf ideas courtesy of Sandor Katz book "Art of Fermentation"
**How much sugar to water to put into your solution. It doesn't really matter. Your fruit will ferment without any honey. The honey just speeds up the process. I started with 2 tablespoons in about 1/2 cup water. I added it to my gallon+ of fruit salad. It worked great.
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