Curtido?

[lagatta]

I had a couple of pupusas in a Salvadorean hole-in-the-wall nearby the other day, and as usual they were served with curtido, a slightly-pickled cabbage salad with a bit of carrot and some other things. It is sounds very simple, but is it tricky to do properly?

Wikipedia tells us that there is more carrot than cabbage in the Mexican version, but I'm sure that it depends on the region, locality and even particular curtido maker.

Here is one recipe: www.whats4eats.com/salads/curtido-recipe

Usually I only use white vinegar for cleaning; is it acceptable in this recipe? Should I try to find pineapple vinegar?

I like the idea of making it from pineapple scraps, if one has any: www.whats4eats.com/sauces/vinagre-de-pina-recipe

[Don Cuevas]

I have more vinaigre de piña than I know what to do with. Where are you located, Lagatta? I'll give you some.

By the way, if you halt the fermentation process in a few days, you can end up with the tasty and refreshing drink, tepache.
mexkitchen.blogspot.com/2006/02/batch-tepache.html

If you don't want to go to all that bother, I'd recommend apple cider vinegar.

[lagatta]

My location is in my byline, Don Cuevas. Near Marché Jean-Talon, to be more precise.

There is a guy at the market who peels pinapples and sells just the edible parts (obviously one can buy whole pinapples as well). Wonder what he does with the peels and cores?

Apple cider vinegar is very common here, as you can imagine.

[bixaorellana]

The main reason not to substitute plain white vinegar volume per volume in some recipes is because the white vinegar is much stronger. I once did that when making Mexican-style pickled pigs' feet, and they came out far too puckery. Diana Kennedy says that wherever a mild vinegar is called for, you can use Japanese rice vinegar. Diluting apple cider vinegar with some water should give you a decent approximation of the pineapple vinegar.