The fruit of many names...
In China they say chayote.
In America they call it Alligator Pear or machuchu.
In Brazil they call it xuxu.
In Vietnamese it's susu
In Australia they say choko.
My mama grew up in Brazil and over there Xuxu is an esteemed vegetable, so esteemed that it doubles up as a term of endearment, a name you call someone you love.
I have 2 sisters and my mama and papa call all of us Xuxu. Sometimes it's Xuxuzinha which means little Xuxu.
I'm Xuxu 2 because I'm the middle daughter.
For some nations it's a national treasure, but despite being called a Xuxu myself I always thought of the Xuxu as a B-grade fruit. Something McDonald's would use as filler instead of apple in the apple pie. Something my mama would try to disguise alongside the baked potatoes or try to convince me to eat it in stews or when she made Moqueca de Peixe (a Brazilian fish stew).
I never came around to it. Never rated it. It was always the last vegetable in the bottom of my fruit bowl or in the back of the fridge slowly getting more withered and brown until... Until now.
Last year I moved into a beautiful studio with an established garden, and this season the choko vine is going off. It's never-ending; chokos appear out of thin air. Fully grown. You blink and there's another choko. At first I tried to ignore them and pretend they weren't there. But they wouldn't let me be. They were loitering all over the garden beds. Taking over the grass. Haunting me in my sleep. Multiplying by the minute. I gave them away by the basket load, but there were more coming daily. I didn't know what to do with them.
And because my brand is called 'ferment everything,' I thought I better walk my talk and try fermenting them.
And voilà. I have officially single-handedly (me and some threads on Reddit!) made choko great again. I've done a branding total overhaul, so much so that you would never even know you were eating the humble choko. It's sour, it's tangy, it's crunchy, it's pinky purple... Hell, I'm even calling it a superfood. Google says it's rich in vitamins and minerals, that it promotes digestive health, supports immune function, and may lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels. BOOM. Nothing B-grade about it baby! The Hollywood movies are true. The ugly duckling can indeed turn into the beautiful swan with a bit of a glow-up and a rebrand.
This is living proof.
Okay, so here's the secret to your choko success. Here's how you do it. Here's how you too can make chokos, I mean chayotes, great again.
What to do-
Get all your chayotes.
Now, if they're big and the skin is a little tough, you can peel them. But it's also fine to just keep the skin on as the skin has almost all of the nutrients in it.
I've experimented with cubing them in big chunks, but you can also do them in long slices. So do what you will, both work. (The thinner the slices, the faster it will ferment.)
Cut the chayote in half. Remove the pip inside. Slice or dice the chayote. Put in a big glass jar.
P.s Chayotes have this crazy kind of glue that leaks out of them, so when you're handling them alot you might notice a grey film sticking to your hands, you can just scrub it off with hot water. Or just wear gloves instead.
Brine-
This brine is inspired by the Chinese brine recipe that I got from Mrs. Ding's Chinese Pickle from Sandor Katz's book Fermentation Journeys — you can find it here online.
It's a brine that you can use over and over again to ferment your goods. Some of these brines are said to have been going for 100 years or so (kind of like sourdough); you just need to keep topping up the spices and salts.
A good basic ratio for most fermented veg is a 2% brine, which you can deduce by weighing (or guessing) the water you need and adding 2% salt. So to make a litre of brine (1000g/mL), you'd dissolve 20g salt in it!
USE GOOD SALT!!!!
Dissolve the salt in hot water and let the brine cool down.
Flavouring the Brine-
This is when I get all witchy and I literally pretend the brine is an art piece and go wild. There are no rules. Just see it like a painting and use a palette that you think would harmonise well together.
This is what I put in my latest batch:
Grated ginger
Grated beetroot for colour!
Grated turmeric
Galangal
Garlic cloves
Peppercorns
Coriander seeds
Cumin seeds
Whole chilli
Bay leaves
Sichuan pepper
Preserved lemon
Mustard seeds
(Adding a vine leaf or two or some black tea to the bottom of the jar will add tannins to help avoid ending up with soggy pickles. Crunchy all the way!)
Taste it and see what you think. Maybe you need more flavours? If so, go for it.
Fill up the jar with brine and cover the chayote. Make sure the liquid covers the chayote. You can use some vegetable matter or a stone to weigh down the chayote. Also, make sure there is no air in the jar (fill the brine to the top) to avoid getting mould on the top.
Leave it in a cool place for 2 weeks-ish. The chayote should have turned pink and soaked up all the flavour of the brine. Taste the chayote. It should be sour and crunchy! Put it in the fridge once you open the jar.
I add it to everything. Slice it up for soups, use it to dip into hummus, as a garnish for my soups, toss it in salads, feed it to my dog... You can drink the liquid or use it in a salad dressing. You can also save the liquid and add more salt and spices to it and put more chayote in it to keep pickling.
Good luck!
Let's make chayote great again.
Sara xoxo
P.S. If there is white mould, don't worry, it's probably Kahn Yeast. It's very common to have a layer of mould on top of ferments. But please don't fret! Fermented vegetables have never killed anyone, and pretty much 99.9% of the time there's a perfectly tasty good ferment under the layer of mould. Just scrape off the mould (and chuck out the vegetable matter with the mould on it in the compost), wipe down the jar, and pop it in the fridge.