Pickle Projects: Garlic Scapes, Sliced Dills and Sweet-Hots

Every week for the past 6 weeks, I’ve put up a small batch of pickles and now I have enough for a crowd. Which is perfect since about 150 people or so will show up for a picnic next week and while I’ll still be sweating the rest of the dishes, the pickles are ready. This has been a good year for small Kirby cucumbers and I took full advantage, since I did not want to hear the whining over a bare pickle pantry sometime in the winter. Last year’s sweet hot pickles were a great hit — chunky, sweet, spicy and peppery — and I made them in volume. (Other than canning tomatoes, tomato sauce and salsa of various kinds, I typically make really small batches of everything – sometimes as few as 2 jars. That way, we have variety and can actually eat all of that preserved produce before the next season arrives.)

I had accumulated about 40 garlic scapes from our CSA the weekend that I was making sliced cucumber pickles with dill, so I decided to pickle them too. Garlic scapes are the curling flower stalks of hardneck garlic plants and are typically cut off so that the plant’s energy is devoted to making a plump bulb. This type of garlic is actually called Rocambole but is nicknamed “serpentine garlic” for obvious reasons. I cut off the scapes of our garden garlic when they were younger than the ones from our CSA, so they were eaten raw or steamed. These needed a more aggressive treatment to tame them. 

Simplistically speaking, there are two ways to pickle fruits and vegetables: raw packed with brine poured over them and heated in brine. Brine typically consists of salt and vinegar (and water) but may also contain sugar, herbs and spices. For the sweet-hots, I macerated the cucumbers in salt and ice water before plunging them into hot pickling liquid, which cooks them slightly. Those were packed in jars that were sealed through a water bath canning process. For the dill pickles, I packed them raw into jars with dill and garlic and poured heated brine over the top, waiting until they cooled to refrigerate and let them cure for at least two weeks.

I treated the garlic scapes in the same way as the dill pickles but they were more of a challenge to get into the jars. After trimming the most fibrous cut end, I cut fairly straight pieces from the bottom, sizing them to fit into a 1.5-cup canning jar, leaving 1 inch of headroom. I cut off the blossom end and coiled the rest around the circumference of the jar. Into the center void, I tucked a grape leaf, which helps keep things crisp (you can omit this), the straight pieces of garlic scape and a fresh head of dill flower. Let this cure for a few weeks. 

I have started to sample the pickled scapes and think they could be used as a garlicky substitute for capers. More to come.

Pickled Garlic Scapes

Trim the tough ends of the garlic scapes. Cut the straight end into lengths that fit within your jar (about 3 inches). Remove the blossom end and neatly curl the scapes inside the jar. In the center void, place a grape leaf (optional) in the bottom, stack the straight pieces of the scape in the center and push a dill flower head into the top. Make the brine: bring to a boil 4 cups of water, 1 1/3 cup of distilled white vinegar or cider vinegar, and 2 tbsp salt, stirring until the salt dissolves.  Fill the jar with the hot brine, poking a chopstick or other narrow implement in the jar to release air bubbles (being careful not to pierce the vegetables). Set the jar aside to cool. Refrigerate tightly sealed.  The pickles will start to be ready in about two weeks.

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Simple Supper: Cabbage Soup, Grilled Cheese and Pickled Okra

I posted this for the pickles. Last summer, I made a batch of okra pickled with vinegar, dill, garlic and red pepper, and we finally got around to eating it.  These babies are great!  The texture stayed firm and the flavor is rich but piquant. A perfect accompaniment to grilled cheese sandwiches made with rustic sourdough and local cheddar. The soup is one of those throw-it-together-and-it-takes-care-of-itself types. I recall that its origin was a three-day cleansing diet some of my friends swore by. I scratched the diet because it involved eating bananas with the soup and I thought that was creepy. The soup endured, and that’s a good thing.

Cabbage Soup

1 small head of green cabbage, cored and shredded

1 medium onion, diced (or a large leek, sliced)

4-5 carrots, diced

6-8 stalks celery, diced

Optional: 2 c green beans in ½-inch pieces

Optional: a  handful of chopped parsley

1 qt + home-canned whole tomatoes and juice or 2 28-oz cans, chopped

Water

Salt and pepper

Optional: rind of Parmesan cheese

Place all of the vegetables, including the tomatoes and their juice, in a large stockpot. Add salt and pepper and water to come up the side of the pot about 1/3 of the way. Add the cheese rind, if using. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook, boiling, for about 10 minutes. Reduce the heat, cover the pot and simmer until tender, about 45-60 minutes.

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Homemade Pickled Herring for the New Year

When I was growing up, we always had pickled herring around for the New Year, as well smoked fish. I always thought it was a cultural superstition but later figured that it was a cure for a hangover since those were the days of big New Year’s Eve bashes held at people’s houses. By happenstance, on this New Year’s Eve, I was standing in a long line of shoppers at a purveyor of Polish food at our local farmers’ market, waiting my turn to buy some homemade sausage, when I saw a sign for Russian herring. The herring wasn’t pickled: it was a bright-eyed whole 12-inch fish that had been gutted. For the $2 price, I couldn’t resist the experiment to come.

I took it home, rooted around for how to pickle it and came up with a simple sugar and vinegar solution.  After filleting the fish to remove the bones and get two types of even pieces (inner and outer), I soaked it in water overnight and then overnight again in the sugar and vinegar solution. It was amazing, delicious and refreshing. I will definitely do this again.

Keep the proportions of vinegar to sugar but vary the amount according to the amount of fish. You want the solution to cover the fish.

I plated this Scandinavian-style, with diced pickled beets and cucumbers, hardboiled egg yolks and whites chopped separately, and a garnish of pickled carrots and dill. For an appetizer or a light supper, I served it with Russian black bread and sour cream with dill.

Pickled Herring

Fresh herring, gutted, filetted and cut into 2-3 inch lengths (mine yielded ½ lb of fish meat)

¾ c white vinegar

¼ c granulated white sugar

1 small onion, thinly sliced

Optional: 1 carrot, peeled and sliced

6 -10 black peppercorns

4-6 whole allspice berries

1 bay leaf

1 clove

After cleaning and preparing the fish, soak it overnight in cold water in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. (Even when very fresh, herring is often salted on the boat to preserve it since it contains fat that can turn the fish rancid.) The next day, prepare the sugar and vinegar solution, stirring to dissolve the sugar and adding the other ingredients. Drain the water from the herring and cover it with the solution. Again, soak overnight in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. It keeps for quite a while (at least a month) and continues to pickle. Serve cut in small pieces with dark rye bread, pickled carrots and radishes (if not added to the solution), hard boiled eggs (whites diced and yolks grated), pickled beets, fresh cucumbers and other condiments.

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Turnip and Beet Pickle

At the beginning of July, when the temperatures start to climb, simple foods served cold or grilled are an antidote to the cloying weather. While I do put up pickled vegetables and other condiments, we don’t tend to eat them throughout the year. Hence my new interest in short-term, small-batch pickling. This one, adapted from David Tanis’s lovely book A Platter of Figs, can be made in two ways: a quick overnight version made by heating the brine and pouring it over the vegetables, or a week-long version in which the brine is unheated.

His recipe is for “Pickled Turnips” and he has an endnote that suggests the addition of a small red beet, omitting the turmeric from the original brine.  I had the freshest, most picturesque light red chiogga beets from our CSA, the ones with the striped rings, so I added enough to fill the jar. Since mine were super fresh, I cut them into the same size chunks as the turnips. If either had been older, I would have sliced them. I used fresh oregano instead of dried and coriander seeds from my bolted cilantro. Tanis used olive oil, which I knew was not going to work well in the refrigerator, so I omitted it, knowing I could add it at the end. The finished product was delicious as part of an antipasto, worth trying again.

Turnip and Beet Pickle adapted from David Tanis, A Platter of Figs

1 lb small white turnips (e.g., Hakurei variety)

1-2 small red beets or light red chiogga beets

1 sprig thyme

1 sprig oregano

2 cloves garlic, sliced

Brine:

2 cups water

½ cup cider vinegar

1 bay leaf

2 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

¼ tsp red pepper flakes

2 tbsp salt

Prepare the turnips and beets. Scrub the turnips but do not peel. Slice a little off the stem and root ends and slice into wedges. Peel the beets, remove stem and root ends and slice them into wedges similar in size to the turnips, or into slices. (You want them to pickle at the same rate and beets will typically take longer when raw.) Place them in a quart jar with the thyme and oregano sprigs and the sliced garlic.

Combine the brine ingredients and pour over the vegetables. Seal with a lid and put on a shelf in the kitchen, turning it over every day for a week. After a week, refrigerate and use within a month.  (I refrigerated the pickles the next day since the house was hot and cured them for three weeks in the refrigerator.)

For an alternative quick version of a turnip pickle, simmer the turnips in the brine for about 8 minutes until cooked but still firm. Cool the pickles in the brine, then refrigerate overnight before serving.

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Pickles: Sweet and Hot

There’s a certain large picnic that I cook for every August, so I start pickling as soon as small pickling cucumbers show up at the farmers’ markets. This year I did not can any dill pickles, at least not so far, but decided to go back to an old family favorite, bread and butter pickles. The recipe comes from an old index card with childish handwriting that’s been in my notebook for a long time, but I have adapted to the amounts typically sold as a unit in the market (2 dry quarts) since I prefer to can in small batches. Sliced very thin, and accompanied by a lot of onions, these pickles become almost a condiment.

After all of the jamming for the Tigress Can Jam monthly blogging event (this month it’s about cucurbits, a plant family that includes cucumbers), I’m saturated with sugary concoctions, and intrigued with making things that are both sweet and hot. So for my sweet hot pickles, I cut them in thicker chunks (1/4 inches) than the slivers of bread and butters and dropped the celery seed in favor of cloves, garlic, and dried West Indian peppers (they looked like cayennes). I canned most but set aside some in the refrigerator to cure so that I could check on the hotness. These pickles take at least two weeks to cure, better a month. If the taste test is a disaster, I will decant what I canned and figure out the next step. I saved some pickle juice in the fridge just in case. Now nearly 10 days later, I can report so far so good.

Bread and Butter Pickles

2 dry quarts pickling cucumbers (about 3 lbs)

3 medium yellow onions (about ½ lb)

½ c pickling salt (I used coarse Kosher salt)

Water

3 c apple cider vinegar (or 2 white vinegar and 1 apple cider vinegar)

3 c sugar

1 tbsp yellow mustard seed

1 ½ tsp celery seed

1 ½ tsp ground turmeric

(See notes below for sweet hot variation)

For bread and butter pickles, slice the cucumbers and onions very thin and layer them in a large bowl with the salt. Nearly cover with ice cold water and set aside in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or overnight. Drain, rinse well and drain again, setting them aside to continue to drain while making the syrup.  Prepare the jars for canning.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.  As soon as the liquid boils, add the reserved cucumbers and bring the mixture just to a simmer. Remove from the heat and spoon the cucumbers into the prepared jars, leaving about an inch of head space for 1 11/2 pint jars or ¾ inch for 12 oz jars. Pour the liquid over the top, making sure to distribute the seeds among the jars and eliminating air space. Cap and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes. Turn off heat, remove the lid and let stand for 5 minutes before removing to a cool place to sit undisturbed until cooled and sealed.

Makes about 3-4 pints

Variation: Sweet Hot Bread and Butter Pickles

Slice the cucumbers into thicker rounds (1/4 inch or more) than for bread and butter pickles. Eliminate the celery seed and substitute 4 cloves (1 for each jar), a head of garlic separated into cloves and coarsely chopped (1/3 – ½ c), about 8 dried cayenne peppers (2 per jar). Note that the larger peppers are typically less hot than the little ones.

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The Season’s First Dill Pickles

With the heat wave this last week, my dill flowered and I saw pickling cucumbers at the farmers’ market, so I decided to make the first of the season’s cucumber pickles. I didn’t can them because I am conducting an experiment. When my grandmother canned dill pickles, she added powdered alum, which supposedly keeps them crisp. I have read that grape leaves have the same effect. So I picked a couple of grape leaves and added them to the jar. This is a refrigerator pickle, so I used a light (3:1) ratio of water to vinegar, went light on the salt, and added a clove of green garlic from our CSA, a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes and the dill.

Pack the pickling cukes in a 1 ½ quart jar with a bale (I got about 12 in there), adding 2 grape leaves, 4-6 heads of dill flowers with stems, and a sprinkle of hot pepper flakes. Bring to a boil 4 cups of water, 1 1/3 cup of distilled white vinegar (could use cider vinegar), and 2 tbsp salt, stirring until the salt dissolves.  Pour over the pickles and set the jar aside until cool. Refrigerate tightly sealed. The pickles will be ready in about two weeks.

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Pickled Broccoli Stems

The stems of broccoli are as great as the florets but because of their different consistencies, some people don’t see how to use them together unless the head is cut lengthwise into slim slices so that the tops and bottoms cook at the same rate. I often cook the tops and stems separately and then combine them, as in broccoli salad, or broccoli pesto on pasta. Having come back from our CSA farm last week with 12 heads of broccoli – yikes – but having a bunch of family folk here over the weekend, we had a kind of broccoli-fest. Not overtly a fest but a large batch of soup (separate post) and pickles and a large “salad.”

Pickled broccoli stems have been all over the net for a year, in my world seen mostly in The New York Times. I experimented with two ways of making these fresh pickles, which are ready to eat in a matter of hours.  In both batches, I trimmed the thick outer skin, and cut the stalks into matchsticks of about ¼ inch or less square by 1½ inches long.

I salted one batch (Martha Rose Schulman, NYT) and let it sit for a couple of hours to draw out the excess moisture, then dressed it with a vinaigrette of sherry wine vinegar, olive oil and minced garlic, letting it sit for another half hour or more before serving. It would definitely last longer but not in our house.

For the other batch (Molly O’Neill, NYT), I blanched the broccoli matchsticks in salted boiling water for a minute. Then I combined them with rice vinegar, crushed coriander seed, cumin seed, and pink peppercorns (newly re-discovered) or red pepper flakes, (she used a red chili), minced garlic and salt.

They were different but both great.

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Tiger Lily Carrots with Daikon, Ginger and Sesame

For the February Can Jam event brilliantly organized by Tigress in a Jam,  I was inspired by a carrot salad that I make in the summer – carrot ribbons cured in lemon juice, spritzed with toasted sesame oil and tossed with toasted black sesame seeds. I call it a tiger lily salad because of its resemblance to the flower. Decorated with actual tiger lilies, it makes a stunning side dish on a buffet. Glam and refreshing.

The sub-title of this canning adventure could be called “This Way That Way.” It’s dangerous to leave me cooped up indoors with a bagful of anything that can be cooked. Once I figured out the base of this pickle (see below), I played with the seasonings and the cut of the vegetables, starting with the julienne suggested in the master recipe, moving to the standard round slice, experimenting with shredding, and finally landing on the winner – long ribbons of carrots.

I’m addicted to those slices of carrots and daikon radishes found on the salad buffet in Japanese restaurants. That would be a pickle I would pull out of the pantry and eat, especially since we try to avoid excess salt. When I make these pickles at home, I use rice vinegar and mirin, so even though the rice vinegar that I have in the cupboard is over 5% acidity, I checked to see if the FDA would approve of using it for water bath canning. Nope. Disappointed, I went to Plan B and started researching a suitable base for carrots and fennel, a different adventure.

And there, in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine, is a recipe they call Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon Pickle. Back to the original plan! They use white vinegar and plentiful white sugar, plus grated ginger and an optional piece of star anise. I tested the base with the vegetables and it was delicious. Since the authors added the star anise to the jar before processing, I couldn’t tell how it would alter the delicious pickles, so I made a test batch and canned one jar, setting it aside for a week. My advice is to go easy on the anise, but it was good.

Because I wanted to put up different cuts of carrots, I made an entire recipe of the base (dissolving the sugar in the water before adding vinegar) and divided it for the separate batches, all to keep the vinegar from dissipating with too much heat. From the basic recipe, I decreased the sugar a little but in retrospect, it was probably about right. I also increased the amount of ginger just a little. Both a matter of taste.

Because I didn’t want to add ginger to the carrot ribbons, I cooked them first, tossed them with sesame oil and toasted black sesame seeds and jarred them. I then added grated ginger to the base. Grating it allowed the flavor to come through quickly and strong. The jars with shredded carrot and daikon have ginger, sesame oil and sesame seeds. I can’t wait to spoon them over the top of a tuna steak or burger.

The julienned vegetables won the star anise, shining through the side of the jar like a jewel.  The slices were canned with only the base.  I used one of my favorite low-tech kitchen gadgets – child chopsticks – to place the vegetables in the jar. Children’s chopsticks are joined at one end and are like long tweezers. One of the daikon radishes, a recent purchase, was huge and a single slice was just about the diameter of the jar. The other radish and the carrots were local, including a few left over from the end-of-season at our CSA farm.

A final note. I was comfortable canning this range of jars — half-pint, 12-ounce and pint – together since the cooking time of ten minutes after the water resumes boiling is the same for all three. I wrote separate recipes for the carrots versus the carrots and daikon since, despite the same base, I didn’t want this to seem complicated. It wasn’t.

Tiger Lily Carrot Pickles with Sesame (2 pint jars)

6 large carrots, about 1 lb

1 ½ cups white vinegar

1 ½ cups water

2/3 – ¾ cup granulated white sugar

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

2 tsp black sesame seeds, lightly toasted in a dry pan

Prepare the jars for water bath canning. Prepare the carrots: slice them into thin vertical ribbons the whole length of the carrot using a straight-end vegetable peeler.

Prepare the pickling liquid. Combine the vinegar, water and sugar in a large shallow pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Add the carrots and cook for about 1 minute (until the water returns to a boil, being careful not to overcook). Strain the carrot ribbons, reserving the liquid, place in a bowl and add the sesame oil and seeds.

Place the carrots in hot jars and pour on the reserved pickling liquid. Remove air bubbles (put a dinner knife into the jar, being careful not to cut the ribbons) and adjust headspace, leaving ½ inch clear. Wipe the rims, add the flat lid (previously dunked in boiling water) and screw on the band. Process in boiling water for ten minutes (after the water comes to a boil), let sit for 5, then remove to the counter to cool.

Carrot and Daikon Pickles with Ginger and a Sesame Variation (for 2-3 half pints and 2-3 12 oz jars) Adapted from Kingry and Devine’s Complete Book of Home Preserving

2 lbs carrots, more or less

1 daikon radish, more or less

3 cups white vinegar

3 cups water

1/13-1/12 cup granulated white sugar

1 tbsp grated ginger

Star anise (optional)

Toasted sesame oil and black sesame seeds (optional, see variation below) *

Prepare the jars for water bath canning. Prepare the carrots and daikon: lightly peel the vegetables, julienne them into sticks 1/8 to ¼ inch x 1 ½ inches OR slice them into rounds 1/16-1/8 inch thick OR grate them lengthwise into thin strips. Combine the carrot and radish. If using more than one cut, set each aside to cook in batches.

Prepare the pickling liquid. Combine the vinegar, water, sugar and grated ginger in a large shallow pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Add the carrots and cook for about 1 minute until the water returns to a boil, being careful not to overcook.**

Place the carrots in hot jars and pour on the reserved pickling liquid, adding the optional star anise if using. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, leaving ½ inch clear. Wipe the rims, add the flat lid (previously dunked in boiling water) and screw on the band. Process in boiling water for ten minutes (after the water comes to a boil), let sit for 5, then remove to the counter to cool.

*Sesame option: After the carrots are cooked, drain them, reserving the pickling liquid, remove them to a bowl and sprinkle with sesame oil (approximately 1 tsp per pint) and sesame seeds (approximately 2 tsp per pint).

**Multiple batch option: If cooking more than one type of cut from the same batch of base, first dissolve the sugar in the water, add the vinegar and ginger and divide the base into the number of batches. This keeps the vinegar from losing its strength batch to batch.

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Pickled Asparagus

Back in June when asparagus was in season locally, I put up a batch in tall 12-ounce jars. Like the carrots destined for the February Can Jam, asparagus is a low-acid vegetable and therefore requires the addition of an acid such as vinegar in order to be safe for water bath canning. I got the recipe from Erica Bone’s excellent book, Well-Preserved.  The book is great for several reasons: it’s well designed graphically, which makes it pleasant to use; the techniques and recipes are well researched and clearly explained, which makes the food safer; and best of all, it provides suggestions for using the canned ingredients.  Plus, I like her idea of small batches. Three or four jars of pickled asparagus are as much as we can absorb in a year, though now that I’ve successfully tried this, I could make some for gifts next year.

The pickling base for the asparagus was composed of 2 ¼ cups each of water and 5% acidity white or white wine vinegar plus ¼ cup of pickling salt. I added garlic, dill seed and hot pepper flakes, but spices like allspice, and the seeds of cumin and coriander are also recommended. It’s a bit salty for my taste but the tang was a good counterpoint to a full-flavored whitefish. It probably would be good with chicken too, or potatoes, or eggs. I realize that salt is part of the preserving process but I wonder whether it could be cut back. More research required.

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