Transitive Property of Pickling

I did not know what to do with those funny rat tail radishes this year. The novelty had worn off, frankly, so plain old crudite was out. The Days of Endless Salads were drawing to a close, and I didn’t have any brilliant ideas for, you know, actually cooking them. And then I saw a post on one of the, ahem, 39 food blogs in my google reader, adapting David Tanis’s pickled turnip recipe to use for kohl rabi. And I started thinking, “Hm, turnips and radishes are practically the same thing, aren’t they? And a rat tail radish is just a radish in bean form. So this pickling recipe should be perfect for them!” All of which makes perfect sense to me.

So I pulled out my copy of A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes (which I hadn’t cracked open in far too long) and mixed up a batch of the brine.  It’s a cider vinegar base, with a bit of olive oil and a pantload of herbs and spices, including thyme, oregano, turmeric, coriander, fennel…

I trimmed the tapered bit off the radishes, because I’ve noticed that they are a little tough at the end, and I didn’t think even the pickling process would change that, but otherwise left them whole.

The various pickled things I’ve made in the past usually involved cooking the vegetables somewhat, either by roasting, or by pouring the hot brine directly onto them. And then basically you wait a day and, presto, pickles! But Tanis wants these things to actually go through a pickling PROCESS. How tedious. So into a jar they go, and wait a week.

In retrospect, I should have stuck a post-it note on the jar to remind myself just when I put them in. In any case, I got bored waiting by Monday and decided they were ready. VERY spicy, which is probably in part because the radishes themselves have quite a bit of kick, and partly because this is yet another recipe that calls for a certain number of teaspoons of red pepper flakes, rather than, say, 1 dried red pepper, crushed. (Am I the only person who keeps them whole in my spice rack? Does no one else run into this problem of measurement? Or does everyone else have the patience to crush one up and measure it out?) Point being, I probably put in a bit more than necessary.

End result: not as delectable as the carrots, and not going to be as useful as the peppers (which, for the record, AMAZING draped over a grilled cheese sandwich. and now I’m hungry).  I feel slightly compelled to make the chicken terrine in aspic that is the main course from this menu in A Platter of Figs, though, if only to experience the proper effect of that pairing. But who’s going to eat a dish of jellied chicken with me? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Briney Carroty Goodness

So Orangette and her husband just opened a restaurant (which my friend S. says is wonderful), and is down to about 1 new recipe every three months.

And Smitten Kitchen just had a baby, which we all know means we’re not getting another innovative use for cabbage at least until the kid is in high school.

So rather than mope and whine about how my favorite food writers are too busy to blog these days, I decided to pickle some carrot sticks. I made these once earlier this year, just with carrots from the store across the street, and I searched desperately for dill seed. Well, not desperately. I did not go to the Penzey’s stall in Grand Central, and I did not go to Kalustyan’s, both of which I now know carry dill seed. I looked in A LOT of other places, though, and ultimately settled for dill weed, which is fine but not the same. But they were delicious anyway, and I knew when I wound up with 2+ lbs of carrots in my fridge this week that it was time to make another batch. And this time, I was prepared. On a visit to the shore last month, I was poking around in my mom’s spice cabinet and found an ancient tin (yes, actually metal!) of dill seed. It couldn’t be that old, because there’s a ZIP code on the container.

The preparation is quite simple. The only part that takes any time and technique is the chopping of carrots into roughly even sticks. You can peel yours if you like; I prefer not to when they’re organic.

Then you simmer cider vinegar, water, sugar, salt, and dill for a couple of minutes.

Pour it over the carrots, and wait for it to cool.

Then transfer to a container. (Note that if you intend to keep these long-term, you’ll actually need to use proper canning techniques, which I do not bother with because I’m likely to devour these within a week and a half.)

Ok, the other hard part is waiting a day for the pickling to be done before testing the results.

A Pot of Pickled Peppers

When we were kids, my sister and I had very few overlaps in which vegetables we liked to eat. I think this made life kind of difficult for our mom, but she dealt with it pretty well. My sister would have green beans and I would have broccoli. And I would have carrots while she had bell peppers.

As an adult, I’ve come to like bell peppers well enough if they are IN something, and even raw if they are red/yellow/orange. But Stoneledge so far has given us purple peppers, which I can’t say are my favorite variety. I sliced up one as a topping for the eggplant/spinach dish, but that left me with 3 more, plus a funny longish light green pepper. So I thought I’d try my hand at pickling them.

According to Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for Pickled Garlicky Red Peppers, first you have to roast the aforementioned peppers.

So roast we did, though peeling off the skins was kind of a bitch. I’m not sure if purple peppers just have thinner flesh than red & yellow, or if I just roasted them too long, or what.

And the funny green one was almost completely a waste–I ended up tossing out the bits that were totally charred from roasting and tossed the rest into the brine as is. The brine is very simple–water, vinegar, sugar, and salt–though I substituted white wine vinegar for distilled white, because that’s generally what I have in my pantry. Plus some chopped garlic.

And the end result? Mostly tastes of pickled. Which is quite good, if you like that kind of thing.

I think we’re going to need a bigger fridge

Or else I’m going to have to start sharing, which is not something I do as well as the dog does. It is now Saturday of week #3, and I still have a full head of red leaf lettuce in the fridge, a bunch of oregano, half a bunch of chives, half a head of escarole, and (oops) some butter lettuce from week #2. And what space isn’t full of plastic-bagged greenery is full of leftovers in tupperware.

As much as I’d like to blame my fridge runneth-ing over on several recent birthdays that resulted in eating out more than I usually do, it ought to be clear (to me) already that 1 share is more than 1 person can eat. Even someone who is very happy eating mostly vegetables all the time.

In any case, here’s where the rest of this week’s bounty went:

2 summer squashes (that doesn’t sound right. is squash both singular and plural?)

became Chilled Zucchini-Yogurt Soup with Fresh Mint
adapted from the New York Times and with mint from my window box!

half of the head of escarole became Escarole Salad with Avocado and Parmesan
courtesy of Orangette (who should really come back from hiatus one of these days)

Mowgs and I packed up some of the soup and the salad and headed to Carl Schurz Park for a picnic in the shade

Then home again, and I decided to wing it with pickling the 1/2 head napa cabbage (first half became a salad with quinoa and a yogurt dressing that was just ok, so I won’t go into detail.) The inspiration for this was the little dish of pickled veggies you get before your meal at certain Chinese restaurants.

Pickled Cabbage and Carrots a la Chinoise

1 lb. napa cabbage, sliced into 1″ strips
2 carrots, peeled into ribbons
3 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1/2 Tbsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. minced ginger

toss all ingredients together. cover and refrigerate. see how it turns out. (jury is still deliberating)

Then tomorrow, I think I’m going to make a pain de campagne with oregano. The sage (week #1) muffins I made (2 varieties) turned out so well that I really want to try baking with other kinds of herbs.

Meanwhile, here’s what is scheduled to arrive on Monday evening:
Sugar Snap Peas (we’ve been warned that the weather might preclude this)
Garlic Scapes-4
Red Leaf Lettuce-1 head (ack! haven’t eaten this week’s yet!)
Green Leaf Lettuce-1 head
Escarole-1 head
Silverado Swiss Chard-1 bunch
Summer Squash-2 pounds
Parsley-1 bunch

Who wants to come over for dinner?