Award-winning Bury St Edmunds food writer Nicola Miller makes Tepache and Pera-pina
Plato’s ‘our need will be the real creator’ was the precursor to the now-familiar ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, a quote that springs to mind mostly when I am reading about old recipes, wondering how they came to be.
Many evolved as a response to gluts, shortages, or limited incomes and opportunities to shop; cooks had to devise ways of using every edible scrap to circumvent cries of “Not THAT again!” from the kids/in-laws/farm workers (insert dependent person of your choice).
Back in 2021, I published a recipe for a Rum-Roasted Pineapple and Banana Cake in this column, partly induced by guilt at the pineapple waste in my own home and a need to be creative about it.
“There’s a pineapple in my kitchen: there’s always a pineapple in my kitchen. It’s a fruit I often buy and – shamefully – don’t always get around to eating until it is nearly too late,” I confessed. “I can get one for 75p nowadays, and I find this quite shocking.”
Pineapples are no longer 75p, but they are still ridiculously inexpensive considering the great distance they travel to British stores (their cheapness being something that no doubt has a lot to do with multinational companies land-grabbing then underpaying and exploiting their workers), so it's incumbent on me to channel Plato and ensure I use up any pineapple bought on impulse - and this includes the peel and core (called ‘discard’) where possible.
My teachers? Caribbean and Latin American cooks with thousands of years of experience cultivating, cooking and eating every part of a fruit whose ancestral roots can be traced back to the land bordering the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers. (The Tupi-Guarani Indians in South America were the first pineapple farmers, and its Latin name ‘Ananas’ derives from the Guarani word ‘nana’ meaning ‘fragrant excellent fruit’.)
To eat a pineapple where it is grown is a different experience from one bought in the UK.
There is a marked contrast between the peel and core of a locally-grown pineapple harvested at the peak of ripeness and a pineapple picked young and transported thousands of miles to foreign markets.
Pineapples are non-climacteric; the moment they are harvested, ripening stops. As time passes, they soften and change colour (aka decay), but their sweet juiciness will not develop further.
My local stores are filled with taut, greenish-yellow fruit, picked far too early.
They can be very disappointing. I’ve learned how to spot a good one, but these pineapples are rightly more expensive.
So when I make Tepache or Pera-piña, the two drinks in this month’s column, both of which traditionally use peels and cores only, I add a little overripe pineapple flesh to the mix hoping this will better approximate the juicy and flavour-packed drinks I grew up with and mitigate our underpowered fruit, something that cooks in Latin America and the Caribbean probably do not have to worry about (although renowned Mexican chef and food writer Pati Jinich uses whole pineapple in her version).
In their homelands, these frugal, no-frills drinks are frequently made from pineapple discard only, but they do not lack flavour.
Here, we cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse; something that some British makers of Tepache and Pera-piña fail to take into account when they use just cores and peel from underripe, underpowered fruit. (I was served a truly terrible glass of tepache recently; it was as dull as dishwater and made me sad that the restaurant’s customer base, most of whom are not Latino, now think that is how it should taste.)
TEPACHE
Tepache is a lively, fermented drink originally made from corn; the root source of its name is Nahuatl (Mexico’s Aztec language), meaning “drink made from corn”, and is still made to this day.
“The earliest archaeological records for the fruit [pineapple] in Mexico go back to 200 BCE-700 AD. It’s believed that tepache transitioned from corn to pineapple (and other tropical fruits like guavas and tamarind) in the latter half of that period,” writes Javier Cabral in Imbibe Magazine.
Tepache is sweetened with a traditional Mexican unrefined cane sugar called piloncillo, whose smokily rich caramel flavour perfectly suits a tawny, ripe pineapple.
Some recipes suggest substituting piloncillo with muscovado or dark sugar, but I always use piloncillo; Tepache just isn’t the same without it. I have omitted cloves, though. They are often added to Tepache, but I prefer it without.
NOTE:
You will need a large 1.5L capacity jar and a bottle of the same size. I use the Smiths fermentation 2L jars to ferment my tepache, and for larger batches, the Kilner 3L fermentation set. Your equipment will need to be very clean, but won’t require sterilising.
I strongly recommend reading a reliable guide to fermentation before embarking on this if you are a beginner. Of Cabbages and Kimchi: A Practical Guide to the World of Fermented Food by James Read is a great book, but there are a plethora of other resources online. Seek out cookbooks by Mexican authors that offer recipes and guidance.
You can buy piloncillo online if you don’t have an international store nearby. Make sure it is 100 per cent cane sugar.
Ingredients:
1.2 litres of cold water
110g piloncillo or panela sugar
1 very ripe-to-overripe large pineapple
1 stick of cinnamon
Method:
• Piloncillo and panela are incredibly hard and sold in cones. You will need to grate it; make sure your box grater is sturdy. Alternatively, place it underneath a clean tea towel and whack it with a hammer.
• Pour the water into a large pan and add the grated/chunked piloncillo. Heat until the sugar has dissolved, giving the water an occasional stir, then remove from the heat and allow to cool.
• Wash your pineapple to remove any debris. Chop off the leaves and then the base. Slice away the peel into strips that are long enough to coil around the inside of the glass. This ensures they will remain submerged. Chop the core into 5cm chunks and chop 200g of pineapple flesh into chunks.
• Place the strips of rind into your fermenting jar as I described, then add the chunks of core and flesh, making sure they are firmly wedged in. Push them right down. Pour the sugar water over the pineapple until it is completely submerged, but leave a gap of at least 6cm from the top of the water to the rim of the jar; tepache will froth up as it ferments.
• Find a warm and dry spot (around 21-22°C) for your fermenting jar and leave it for at least two days and up to four, monitoring it at least once a day for signs of fermentation (it’ll start to look fizzy and frothy). If your room is cooler, the tepache will take longer to ferment; if it’s hotter, the process will speed up. Add the cinnamon stick after the first 24 hours or when you start to see signs of life; I have found adding cinnamon at the start can retard fermentation. A frothy white layer may form on the liquid’s surface. This is an aerobic kahm yeast that forms when a ferment is exposed to oxygen, but it is harmless. I spoon it off because if it gets too thick, it can make the tepache taste a little odd.
• Start to taste your tepache, opening the jar carefully as it can get a bit lively. When the flavour is to your taste, use a funnel to strain it into a bottle (don’t overfill as it will continue to ferment at a slower rate and needs a little space for gas formation) and store in the fridge where it will keep for another five days or so. You will need to let off some of the gas every day.
PERA-PIÑA
Hugely popular in the Dominican Republic (DR), Pera-piña has a wonderfully misleading name.
“Although its name suggests that Pera-pineapple is made from pears, in reality, it does not contain pears.
Possibly, this pineapple and rice juice was given this name because its flavour and texture resemble that of pear juice,” says Inés Páez, widely known as Chef Tita, chef-patron of Aguaj Restaurant in the DR and author of La Nueva Cocina Dominicana.
Pera-piña is a soothing, gentle drink, best served icily cold, and kids love it too.
“In my family, my grandmother used to make it in her house. When I tried it for the first time, it gave a feeling of being full,” adds Páez, telling me how she uses it “as a base for sauces and foams to show our culture and a little history.”
You’ll find variations of this drink with different names all over Latin America (Chicha de Arroz con Piña/Chicha de Piña are just two), some of which omit rice, add milk, or use different spices.
I particularly liked a pineapple and coconut version, and it makes a great, simple cocktail with the addition of white rum.
Ingredients:
2 litres of water
Peel and core of 1 large and very ripe pineapple, plus 200g of its flesh
50g long-grain white rice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
200g granulated sugar
Method:
• Scrub the intact pineapple under running water to remove any dust or dirt trapped in the peel. Slice off the peel, discarding the top leaves and base, and cut into small pieces (around 7cm). Slice away the flesh and cut 200g into 7cm pieces. Chop the pineapple core into similarly-sized chunks.
• Pour 2 litres of water into a large pot and add all the rice, pineapple peel, core and flesh. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently until the rice is well-cooked and the pineapple chunks tender. Add more boiling water if necessary. Don’t worry if the pineapple takes so long to soften that your rice overcooks into a porridge-like texture; you’re going to liquidise everything anyway.
• When the pineapple-rice mixture is cooked, remove it from the heat and let it cool to room temperature. Now, add the vanilla extract and blend the mixture until it is fully liquidised and as smooth as possible. You might be left with a few stubborn solid pieces of rind: if this happens, strain them out, using a spoon to push the juice through the fine mesh of your strainer. Start stirring sugar into the Pera-piña, tasting as you go, until you are satisfied with its sweetness. Pour into a clean bottle and store in the fridge for two days maximum. Serve over ice.
Follow Nicola on Bluesky: @nicmiller.bsky.social
Winner of the Guild of Food Writers Online Food Writer Award 2020 Fortnum & Mason Cookery Writer of the Year 2022