God Didn't Make Little Green Pickles---You Did: Pickling 101

After a chef friend read my first post, he commented, “Why didn’t you share any recipes?  All that Polish cooking you mentioned.....”

The problem is that I write recipes the way I give directions to my Mom’s house:

“Just make a right at the corner where the purple flowers bloom in the spring.”

Never mind that I threw that ice skating party in January…

In short, I’m not good at writing recipes.  I first became fascinated with cooking while watching my Polish grandmother just tossing things by the handful into giant stock pots.  I don’t ever remember seeing a measuring cup or dainty little spoons.

Measurements were for pussies.  At most, you’d get unmemorable phrases like, “a handful”, “a sprinkle” or “a big bunch”.

Maybe it was Grandma’s way of throwing me into the deep end of the pool.  Either I’d pick it up----or I’d drown. 

Luckily, I saw it as a challenge. 

After making my First Holy Communion, I decided to play “church” and whipped up a batch of “communion hosts” by cutting the crusts off some white bread and just smooshing them together into a circular shape. 

I was told by Grandma, in no uncertain terms, that I’d wasted her bread and committed a sacrilege.

Sacrilegious at seven.

And then she sprinkled some holy water on me.    

So I’ll do my best here.       

This is the time of year when all sorts of wonderful, fresh produce hits the market; and one of the most intimidating items you may see is the humble pickling cucumber.

DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE CUCUMBER!

It’s really just a small cucumber.  That’s all.  But for many, it’s the equivalent of Tom Ewell allowing Marilyn Monroe to come down to his air conditioned apartment in The Seven Year Itch---once you get the bombshell in your house, what do you do with her?

Partly it’s confusion.  Pickling is different from canning.  The two can be combined, of course----but you CAN pickle things without fear of becoming Hippie Helen with a cupboard full of homemade jam or giving your family a case of salmonella. 

It’s called “refrigerator pickling”.  They’ll keep a week or two in your fridge----but they’ll likely be gone WAY before that.

And it’s easy.

So let’s get started!

First of all, no one likes a limp, soggy pickle.  Insert your own joke here.  To keep them crisp, rinse them off and then stick them in an ice bath for about an hour.  I’ve heard four hours is better, but I’m impatient.  One hour works just dandy for me.

While that’s working, get your brine on, baby.  A brine is really nothing more than vinegar, water, salt, and sugar.  You can add spices and things in, too.  It’s up to you and the sort of pickles you want to make.

With the four cucumbers I got in my farm share, I decided to make bread and butter pickles.   Bread and butter pickles are a bit sweeter than the kosher dills we put on hamburgers.

PS---what makes a pickle “kosher”?  Garlic.  That’s it.  All kosher pickles have garlic.  Easy peasy.

Second---brine.  Rice wine vinegar is less sour than white wine or cider vinegar so it’s perfect for the bread and butter guys.  And I had it handy so that’s what I used.  Ratio:  1:1 ratio of vinegar and water----with maybe a bit more vinegar added in, if you like.  Whatever your measurements, you want about half that in sugar and an eighth of that in salt.

Example:

1 cup water

1 cup vinegar (+ some if you like)

1/2 cup sugar

1/8 cup Kosher salt

Make as much brine as you need to cover your pickles.  And bear in mind, ALL of this can be altered to taste. 

Put this all in a pot.  Slice up a bit of onion.  Toss that in with some pickling spices (mustard seed, peppercorns, dill seed, coriander, celery seed, and a bit of crushed bay leaf are what I used).  Then a pinch of turmeric. 

Bring all this to a boil.

For this batch, I cut my cucumbers into wedges, but slices work just as well. 

Pack your cucumbers into a canning jar (or any old heat-proof/tempered jar---maybe an old jelly jar) fairly tight.  Some will advise that you boil the jar and lid in water for ten minutes.  If you’re going to eat the pickles in a few days, you can probably skip this step.  But it doesn’t hurt and keeps them fresher longer.

In any case, pour the hot mixture over the pickles.  Close the lid.  Put it in your refrigerator.

That’s it!

In a few hours, they’ll start to taste like pickles.  Even better if left overnight. 

You can pickle any vegetable like this---everything from okra to cauliflower. 

And before anyone snipes about how the pickles in the photo don't look like they're packed tightly together...

I ate half of them already.  Satisfied?

And that’s how you get to my Mom’s house.

If you’re still nervous, there are PLENTY of cooking sites that will give you a better low-down.  I’m just trying to get you to play with your veggies.

So take this advice and go pick up Marilyn Monroe and make beautiful pickles together!  

You can thank me in the morning.

Love's Labor's Lost: or How I Came To Hate My Farm Share

There’s a certain type of person who joins a local farm share program. 

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a spotless, antique-y, sunshine-filled kitchen.  It’s a stunning dichotomy of a room with a top-of-the-line refrigerator, a root cellar, and Alice Waters sipping tea at the marble-top pastry station.  As you look out the kitchen window, you see fresh herbs growing feral-like in rustic catalog-model pots.  It’s so beautiful in fact, that Ina Garten suddenly shows up with three gay friends and is throwing a casual luncheonette with a pâté and some rustic bread.  You didn’t invite her.  She just showed up with a bottle of white burgundy and the buyers from Bloomingdale's.

But your farm share came today.  So without a care in the world, you quickly whip up a vegetable terrine and a Rousseau-approved pastoral salad.  You toss back your hair as you laugh at something that was apparently funny and the world is perfect and beautiful and yours. 

All yours.

And isn’t it just stunning and lovely and beautiful, crazy happiness.

Well…I wanted that. 

So I signed up for a farm share.

The Corbin Hill Farm Project’s mission is to bring fresh, locally-grown produce to Inner-city areas not otherwise served.  With a focus on Harlem, Washington Heights, and The Bronx---their program even allows members to use their food stamps to participate. 

But the program is meant for EVERYONE!  Rich, poor, white, black, Latino---everyone!  It looked so good, in fact, that I made sure to skim the fine print; worrying that to get my vegetables, I’d be required to listen to a sermon about Jesus or look at a timeshare in Branson, Missouri. 

Happily, there was no fine print.  So I quickly typed in my credit card info and for $21.50 each week, I would get a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables AND a dozen farm fresh eggs.

What could be nicer?

That first week I showed up at the pick-up station on 116^th St. in Harlem with my basket.

Yes.  I brought a basket.

I picked out my fruits and vegetables, put them in my basket, and practically skipped thru Harlem in my floral dress with my basket full of goodies like Laura Freaking Ingalls.

By the end of the first week, I’d managed to nibble my way thru pretty much everything---with some extra cabbage left-over.  

But I’m Polish.  My people are good with cabbage.  If I could just get some beets, I’d throw together a borscht.

And lo and behold!---the next week there were beets.  Enough to make a small pot of borscht. 

Well…and a lot of other stuff.  There were a lot of vegetables in there.  So I got busy.

But it just kept coming. 

With eggs. 

Every week, a dozen farm fresh eggs.

One saving grace about eggs is that the ones that are at least a week old are the best for boiling.

And I like egg salad.  I mean, I wouldn’t want to live on it…  But I’ll just pop half a dozen eggs into some boiling water---even tho New York City is experiencing a heat wave and it’s 98 degrees and you could already fry eggs on my coffee table.

But egg salad.  Check.

Next thing you know it was Tuesday again.

MORE cabbage?  For the love of god. 

Okay.  Calm down.  You can turn it into sauerkraut and the fermentation period will buy you some time.

But another giant bouquet of basil?

Oh no.  I have to make pesto. 

NOW!

And MORE eggs?  

I went online and looked up the farm where they raise the chickens just to be SURE they weren't giving them hormones to keep making all those damn eggs.

What are those chickens eating?

But okay.  Take a deep breath.  You know how to make quiche.  A nice vegetable quiche.  It would also help you get rid of a lot of those vegetables.

My refrigerator was FULL of vegetables.  I'm a single, 105 pound woman who lives by herself.  I can only eat so much.  But at least I can freeze a quiche.

But to make quiche tomorrow, that means I have to make a pâte brisée---TONIGHT!

So just around midnight, I got out my pastry cutter and fresh butter and the homemade lard I rendered....

And suddenly it was Tuesday again...

Pickling cucumbers?  

aaaahahahahahahaaaaa.....

I started losing my mind.  I was waking up at the crack of dawn to make a brine.

My dream kitchen suddenly turned into a windowless room in the basement of a Lutheran church holding an AA meeting.

"Well....it all bottomed out the day I found myself looking in my refrigerator and screaming, 'Quick!  Just eat the goddamn plums to make room for the kale!'"

This is not the kind of person I wanted to be.  This was not my happy place.

So I put my farm share on hold for next week.  I feel bad because they're all so nice there---and now I'm going to have to make up some imaginary vacation or some really important reason I couldn't get vegetables on a Tuesday.  

Or maybe I should just come clean and admit that I just couldn't handle it.  I needed a break from all those vegetables.  

And eggs.  I can't eat any more eggs.

I really do love my farm share.  But, like any relationship, sometimes you need a little break to make the bond even stronger.

So, yes---if any of our friends ask:  We're taking a little break.

But a week from now, I will be an entirely different woman.  The sort who, once again, squeals with glee and delight at the sight of garlic scapes and turnip greens.  

I have one week to get my life in gear.  

And a lot of eggs to eat.