Shibazuke Quick Pickles

Shibazuke comes from Ōhara, a quiet farming village in the hills north of Kyoto, and it is one of the city's three classic pickles alongside suguki and senmaizuke. Its signature is colour: a deep magenta drawn entirely from red shiso, whose pigment blooms when the leaf is bruised and meets acid. Tradition links it to Kenreimon'in, the imperial consort who, after the fall of her clan in the Genpei War, withdrew to the temple of Jakkō-in in Ōhara in the late twelfth century; the villagers, the story goes, made these violet pickles for her. We label that as tradition — but Ōhara's long association with shibazuke is real, and rooted in the Heian world that produced Kyoto's whole tsukemono culture.

Here honesty matters. True shibazuke is a lactic ferment — salted eggplant and red shiso pressed under weight for weeks, souring on their own with no added vinegar. The bright, fast version most of us make at home reaches for rice vinegar and umezu to get there in an hour. Both are legitimate; they simply answer different questions. The quick pickle is for tonight's bowl of rice. The ferment is for someone with a cool cellar and a month to spare.

Make the fast one first. Squeeze the vegetables hard, work the shiso until your fingers go purple, and weight it well. Then, if the colour and the sharp, herbal sourness hook you — and they will — go find red shiso in quantity and try the slow way that Ōhara actually means.