Fermentation is great, and this is one I highly recommend! Cherry tomatoes become fizzy and zesty, like balls of carbonated tomato sauce. Okay, that may sound terrible, but they're quite tasty. Here we see them served with a little fish sauce and lime juice.

Recipe

You'll need:

• A mason jar
• Some parchment paper
• Something to weigh the tomatoes down to avoid floating (small stones that have been boiled, or a glass fermentation weight, or anything else heavy enough to prevent floating but not so heavy that it crushes tomatoes).
• Salt (pickling salt or sea salt is best, iodized salt tastes noticeably different)
• Optional: Spices, I like dried minced garlic and corriander seeds.
• Water
• A kitchen scale
• a graduated measuring container (such as a 1L pyrex cup)

What to do:

1. Create a 3.0%w/v salt brine. Measure 30 grams of salt by weight and thoroughly mix into 1L of water.
2. Put spices at the bottom of the jar - this helps avoid too much floating up.
3. Add tomatoes, leaving about half an inch below the next free to the air.
4. Stuff parchment paper above the tomatoes to form a layer that tomatoes can't float past.
5. Add your weights on top of the parchment paper. There should be mostly air in the neck, and the parchment paper should not stick up above the weights anywhere, be sure it's thoroughly stuffed down if needed, but avoid breaking the tomatoes.
6. Slowly pour brine until the tomatoes, parchment, and weights are completely covered, and there is some empty air at the top of the jar. 
7. Seal the jar. This recipe works best by burping, the increased pressure helps the fermentation gasses avoid bursting the tomatoes prematurely. Don't use pickle pipes or one-way gas valves on this one.
8. Ferment for about a week, burping about daily. You'll know these are ready to harvest when you can see bubbles form under most of the tomatoes' skins, or when some of the tomatoes start bursting.

How to eat:

I like eating these as a snack. Drain the brine and carefully remove the tomatoes. Inevitably some of them will burst and the skin will be loose, but most of them should be plump and round as if they were fresh. Toss them with a salty or acidic dressing and go for it!

Some dressings I've enjoyed on these:

• Fish sauce and lime juice (go for that southeast asian flair!)
• Mushroom Ketchup (google it, or wait for me to write a blog post the next time I make some. I recommend Townsend's recipe.)
• Sesame oil and rice vinegar (go for that Japanese flair!)