Salt, of the Earth

I've been thinking about salt recently.  No, not the metaphorical salt of internet shitlordery, consumed in the tears of your antagonists, but actual salt.  Sodium chloride.  Table salt.  White powder.  Salt and vinegar.  Salt.

Anyway, according to legend and maybe even history, Roman soldiers were paid in salt.  From the Latin sal we derive the words "soldier" and "salary", suggesting some kind literal connection.  Being "worth your salt" idiomatically speaking, indicates this too.  Salt was a valuable commodity in ancient times for various reasons, one of which seems to have been its use in food preservation, hence why my mind has been wandering though this territory.  I like to imagine Roman soldiers tucking into some sweet, salty picked onions around their campfires or in their tents between pillages, orgies and crucifixions and whatever else they did for fun, though more likely they preferred their salted meats and almost certainly wouldn't have had much time for vegetarianism.  Imagine a Roman vegan.  Not easy is it?  So there probably weren't any.

Actual photograph of an actual Roman soldier not being a vegan.

The Romans are dead though, and I'm alive - and I'm vegan, which means I win.  As I experiment more with pickling and lacto-fermenting foods, I find myself accumulating portions of food not substantial enough to preserve on their own in one go (unless I get some really, really tiny jars) which means I need some temporary storage solutions while I gather enough material to pack into a jar of any worthwhile size.

One example is nasturtium seeds: abundant in their own way, but only enough to gather by a couple of handfuls at a time.  What I've been doing as I collect them is submerging them in salt water until I've collected enough to make a jar of "poor man's capers".  Let me tell you, this is well worth your time, because pickled nasturtium seeds are absolutely bloody delicious. 

Nasturtium seeds, in salt water, ready for pickling.

The recipe I've followed actually advises soaking your seeds in salt water for 48 hours to "mellow the hot peppery flavour" which is fair enough - completely raw, nasturtium seeds are pretty spicy - even if not absolutely essential.  So what I do is add the seeds to a jar of unsealed (but covered) salt water until I've enough to make a sizeable jar's worth of pickled seeds.  What this also means is that some will have had more time to de-pepper themselves than others in the meantime, which I think adds a certain depth to the flavour of the pickled end product.

It's an impossible recipe to go far wrong with, requiring only white vinegar, salt, sugar and a bay leaf.  And as I said, very much worth your time.  Take a look at how pleasing to the eye the end product can be:

Also pictured: piccalilli.

So, yes.  Let's hear it for salt.  And seeds.  And the Romans.  And stuff.

Related posts

More Fun With Food in Jars
Wild Garlic Experiments
Spring Onion Afterlives

Made another scrappy allotment video today.  Here it is:

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