I don't think I could live without kimchi

Nick Vadasz - known as The Picklesman - started out making his homemade pickles from family recipes, and now you can make them too. By ELLA WALKER

- By ELLA WALKER

UNTIL fairly recently, the jars of pickles many of us came into contact with most were the gigantic ones on the counter at the chippy, afloat with whole boiled eggs like specimens in formaldehyde. Or the gherkins in a McDonald's Quarter Pounder...

But things are changing - Britain is cottoning on to a culinary tradition that deliciously fuels large swathes of Eastern Europe and Asia. So it’s not just fancy delis and farmers' markets stacked with artisan kimchis and sauerkrauts now, but supermarkets too. Nick Vadasz, aka The Picklesman, the founder of Vadasz Pickles & Ferments, has run the gamut, from starting his street food pickle outfit in a shipping container, to launching his ferments in grocery stores.

"I always wanted for people to enjoy our products beyond the middle class foodies that go to farmers' markets, of which I am one," he says wryly. "But the fact we're in Tesco now and Morrisons is brilliant. It means everyone can go and try kimchi or sauerkraut."

You can also now make his pickles at home. His debut cookbook, The Pickle Jar, explains the basics of pickling and fermentation, before showing how to use them in meals - from chicken salad with fermented celery, to pea and pickle soup - rather than just “sticking them in a sandwich”.

Nick personally doesn’t go a day without eating kimchi - a spicy Korean fermented cabbage that the 59-year-old pairs with everything. "I don’t think I could live without kimchi," he says, matter-of-factly. After all, pickles and ferments are a very serious business, in both his day-to-day eating habits, and the very fabric of his family’s history.

Nick’s Hungarian grandmother taught him to make the first pickle he “fell in love with’, a fresh cucumber pickle that is, of course, in the book.