What if you just erased Fruit Cake from your collective memory of Christmases past?
Enter: pickling.
With several well-known pickle outlets around the city, and hipsters at Murray's Cheese and the Greenmarket snapping up jars of unusual flavors like Rick's Picks' Windy City Wasabean and Phat Beets, pickling is the new black. But despite their trendier-than-thou packing and friendly, easy-going service, it's just not as fun to buy some other guy's pickle, especially at $9 - $11 per jar.
It's easier than you may think to pickle. For holiday gifts, you should start now. So let's begin together. Post your questions on The Pickle Project threads you will see in the next few days, and send us an email.
Here are a few recipes to get you started:
The spicy dill recipe you linked to is really awesome, and I plan to make a big batch to give to my coworkers this holiday season.
hey -- any chance those funny things called dilly beans are pickled? i think my mom is nuts for them. green beans. i was once served a martini garnished with an exotically pickled string bean.
also -- i'm not sure if this is true for all malaysian restaurants, but the nice folks at Franklin Station serve their vegetable and chicken curry dishes with a side plate composed of rice, some fresh sliced vegetables and these super crisp sort of tangy sweet little pickled vegetables. there's definitely carrots and something green and something white. maybe a radish? i'd love to find out how to make those!
looking forward to the pickling posts!
hey jenblossom -- have you done that recipe for gifts before? i'm a little worried because it says to refrigerate and i don't want to have them sitting out at work all day. i did home canning once with jam and it wasn't too difficult. i wonder if i could process the jars for that pickle recipe in a hot water bath.
Abby, I haven't really done them as "gifts" before, though I have brought several jars in to my office so my coworkers could sample them, and I have also given away jars to coworkers and neighbors. I think after the initial 10 day refrigeration period, they'll be okay if you give them to someone and they sit unopened for a bit before going back into a refrigerator... I made labels for the tops of my jars with "Please Refrigerate Until [date]" on them. So far, nobody has gotten ill!
amy
dilly beans are in fact pickled
if we can keep the pickling thread going til next weekend, i would be happy to get my mom's KILLER dilly bean recipe for posting here (she's a, ahem, bit of a luddite, hasn't really figured out this whole internet thing yet, therefore can't email to me)
she'll be in nyc next friday, so she could hand deliver that to me
she also has a recipe for pickled red beet eggs which are not only incredibly yummy, but also GOREGOUS when you cut them open, like little reverse sunsets!
I really like pickled okra - the hot one - that comes in a jar with an outline of texas on the label. I've been wondering if I can reuse the brine after we snarf up the okra -- you know, just stick some little kirby cukes or carrots in there or something.
what do you think?
I'm not sure what they serve at Franklin Station, but it's probably a version of acar, Malaysian pickle. There are a million variations, but they generally contain vinegar, sugar, chiles and tumeric. And often peanuts or sesame seeds. They're kind of more like salads than condiments.
There are a handful of acar recipes here:http://kuali.com/recipes/search_results.asp