Sweet Dill Quick Pickles

Here is the recipe for the pickles that Jessica posted.

4 cups thinly sliced unpeeled cucumbers
2 cups sugar
1 medium onion, thinly sliced into rings
1½ cups white vinegar
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp mustard seed
Sprig or two of washed dill (chopped or left whole)

Combine sugar, vinegar, salt, and mustard seed in a non-reactive pot and bring to a boil to combine. Let the brine cool for a few minutes. Meanwhile pack cucumbers, onions, and dill into a clean jar. Pour brine into the packed jar, cap, and refrigerate. The pickles may be eaten within an hour, but are best left for a day in the fridge. They won't last a week because you'll eat them too fast.

You may also add things like red pepper flakes and whole peppers or tone down the sugar if you'd like it less sweet.

Quick Salt Cucumber Pickles

I visited New York City a few weeks ago and landed around 9 PM arriving at Jessica's at about 9:30 PM. We thought it would be no problem finding a restaurant open that late: it's NYC of course! However, by the time we got downtown and wandered around trying to find a place it was 12 AM and none of our choices were open (fail Lombardi's). Wait! Momofuku Noodle Bar is open to 2 AM! Score! Having only their late night menu available was no problem and we settled into a meal that included chicken wings, kimchi-pork tamale, and ginger scallion noodles. I had heard that the noodles were one of the best recipes in Momofuku's cookbook so I was excited to try them. I wasn't let down. They were delicious and came topped with vinegar-pickled mushrooms, which were FANTASTIC (likely from left over ramen broth makings), toasted nori, bamboo shoots, and quick salt cucumber pickles. Ever since trying it I have wanted to make it at home and accompany it with quick salt pickles. Tonight was the night and it was great. Here are Momofuku's quick cucumber salt pickles:

2 large cucumbers (I used one huge hot house because it was the only one I could find)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Simply thinly slice the cucumber and toss with sugar salt letting it sit for 5-10 minutes. The cookbook says they last up to 4 hours in the fridge, but I'm going to see if they last until tomorrow night. Serve! You could also do this with radishes or daikon.

Kosher Dill Pickles

Been awhile since I posted, but that might have something to do with the slow build up of pickles within my fridge. I chose to do these because they were quick and required no vinegar and only a brine of water and salt. There are two ways of doing these pickles: in spears and whole. I did both just to experiment, but the spears should develop their flavor and be ready quicker. All you do is leave them out for a couple of days allows for a bit for fermentation to occur.

-Brine: a ratio of 4 quarts of water to 6 tablespoons Kosher salt

-Kirby or pickling cucumbers

-Fresh dill

-Whole garlic cloves crushed, still in their skin

-Pickling spice

Basically you just heat 1 quart of water with the salt to dissolve it and then combine it with the rest of the 3 quarts. Pass your jars through a dishwasher or some boiling water before packing them. I did cut up spears in one jar and whole in the other (though I did score the bottoms of the cucumbers). I think these jars were around 1 quart and I added about 2 branch thingies of dill (descriptive, right?) to each along with 2 cloves of garlic and 2 teaspoons of pickling spice. Pour the brine over and loosely seal if using lids or cover with cheese cloth (I used a paper towel) and let sit out for 2 days for spears and 3-4 for whole cucumbers. Refrigerate when they are ready!

Bread & Butter Pickles Four Ways

It's about time that this blog had some bona fide pickles on it and here they are: bread & butter pickles. We went to the Pasadena farmer's market on Saturday since it was a beautiful day out. Since I hadn't seen an pickling cucumbers at the grocery store recently I decided to have a look at the market this Saturday. One of the stalls had a great selection of produce including some strawberries that were subsequently made into jam. They also had Kirby cucumbers and I picked up 3 lbs. Side note: do not bring your stroller with your child that is clearly to old for it to the marker...you block the entire pathway. Anyway, I pulled the base for this recipe from the "Joy of Pickling" and then added a few twists of my own. I decided that I'd make four different types of bread & butter pickles: regular, red pepper flake spiced, chile de arbol (left whole), and sriracha (or, rooster sauce).

Basic ingredients:

-Kirby cucumbers

-Mustard seeds

-Celery seeds

-Tumeric

-Either: red pepper flakes, chile de arbol (whole), or sriracha

-Sugar

-Salt

-Cider vinegar

I began by slicing the cucumbers into relatively chunky slices, tossed them with salt, and let them sit for ~4 hours with ice on top.

While the canner heated up, I brought the vinegar, water, sugar, and tumeric to a boil and poured it over the cucumbers packed into pint size mason jars. These were then processed for 30 minutes at 180-185 degrees, which is a low temperature pasteurization method (point of that is too keep the cucumber slices crisp, which is harder to do when they are processed at a boil). The cans sealed correctly since the tops no longer pop back up when pushed down These will sit for a month before eating so that they develop the correct flavoring.

Mixed Quick Pickle

Yesterday I did a really small batch of quick pickled Persian cucumbers and they were so good I thought (and Jessica thought), why not make more? Today at Whole Foods there were these wonderful Rainbow carrots that I decided to get.

I also picked up some pickling cucumbers and fennel since I've never quick pickled fennel before. Looks good...hopefully it'll taste good!

*Update: Tastes great! Fennel did really well and didn't spread its flavor to everything else, which was good. The Rainbow carrots did dye the liquid pink though...

Quick Pickled Cucumber

Sometimes you just can't wait the few days or weeks that it takes for a cucumber to "mature" in flavor or ferment itself into deliciousness. That is why quick pickles are so great and simple to make! This recipe was adapted from the "Momofuku" cookbook's vinegar pickles.

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar (plus or minus a tablespoon or two to taste)

4 tablespoons of sugar (more if you like it sweeter)

2 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

Vegetable of choice (I did it with a Persian cucumber we had in the fridge)

I like to heat all the ingredients minus the vegetable(s) on the stove until the salt and sugar dissolve, but today I just added hot water from a kettle to all the other ingredients (Momofuku calls for hot tap water, but I like my method better). Then you just pour over the vegetable(s). These were eaten right away, but they get even better in the fridge after each day and keep for about a week. You could use cucumbers, cauliflower, beets, carrots, daikon, fennel, ect. Momofuku even suggests cherries or watermelon/cantaloupe/watermelon rind!