fastest pickle in the west

I once had a boyfriend who was so desperate for pickles, he’d even drink a jar of pickle juice.  I still haven’t quite forgiven him for scarfing down my expensive, hand-crafted practically Kobe-beef-fussiness-quality Japanese pickles that were carefully stowed away in my tiny apartment refrigerator in Tokyo.  Bonzai, cried he, and shinkansened out of town before I could beat him with a keisaku.  Thanks to his quick escape, we are still friends today, and I feed him pickles when I can.

So this post is for him.

It’s also for anyone who likes new dill pickles, the ones you get for free in New York delis, the half-sour ones.  Sometimes called refrigerator pickles, mine are much better (she said, humbly) because they have the spirit of half-sours but take less than half the time of than regular refrigerator pickles.  I developed the recipe while making real new dill pickles, a dubious wild fermentation preparation of whey, brine, and sitting on a counter for a couple days.  (The Master Food Preserver in me says no, the mouth is saying let’s go.)  When they work, they’re wonderful, slightly fermented, bright lime green, crisp, lovely.  When they don’t, well, you could die of botulism.

But the pickles I’m touting here are absolutely safe, and while not as good as real, fermented new dills, they are an excellent substitution and they only take a few hours to make.  Having a BBQ this weekend?  Try making these in the morning and serving them with your ribs in the evening.  The pickles last about a day, but the quality starts to deteriorate after that, so plan accordingly.

The preparation is inspired by Japanese cucumber salad, and also by my great-grandmother’s recipe for sweet and sour vinegar cucumber salad.  In both of these salads, the cucumbers are sliced, salted, and left to sit in a seasoned vinegar and water solution.  The Japanese sometimes add seaweed or sesame seeds; my great-grandma added thinly sliced white onion.  I was making my regular new dill pickles, as I mentioned, and I ran out of the requisite whey before I ran out of anything else, so I was inspired to turn a long wait into something fresh and salad-like, but with dill flavor.  I thought it might be an amenable idea to add pickling spices, garlic, and a couple heads of fresh dill to a brine and serve the cucumber “pickles” that night as a salad.  And sure enough, it worked.

Can you tell I’m super pleased by this one?  I am.  I have pickle addicts to feed.

Fastest Pickle in the West

• 4 cups sliced pickling cucumbers (1/2-inch slices)
• 3 cups cold water
• 1 T. sea salt
• 1 t. white vinegar
• 1 T. pickling spices
• 1 t. brown mustard seeds
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 fresh dill heads, or substitute 2 t. dill seeds (not weed)

Wash pickling cucumbers well and slice.  Make brine of water, salt and vinegar.  Mix well, then pour over cucumbers in bowl or plastic container for marinating.  Add pickling spices, mustard seeds, garlic and dill.  Cover container and refrigerate at least 4 and up to 12 hours.  Does not keep for longer than a day or two.

 

corn-fed

I’ve started in with the hooligans over at the Mid-Willamette Valley Eat Local Challenge, representing the South Valley, an emissary of sorts. The challenge is to incorporate more local products into one’s summer cooking. Frankly, if you’re not doing this already and you live in the Willamette Valley, you’re missing out on some of the best produce, meat and nuts in the country. I’m going to track what I’ve sourced and talk more about the changes we’ve made to our diet over the past five months since I’ve been back in Oregon in a later post, but for now, it’s all about CORNED BEEF made from local brisket.

One of the chief joys in my life lately is, as I have mentioned, my Family Food Education/Master Food Preserver training through OSU Extension. This week, we learned about emergency food storage and root cellars, and spent several hours making cheese. Does it get any better than that? Why, yes, it does. A few weeks ago, we had a presentation on how to corn beef and tongue. My friend Janet is a tongue fan, so she asked me to provide the recipe. I told her I had to make it first to see if I could replicate the deliciousness, and, after three weeks of prep and curing, it turns out I could!

I bought the 5-lb. brisket at Long’s Meat Market (see under Eugene Marketplace links to the right). The meat is from Knee Deep Cattle Company in Coburg, OR, who also makes an affordable and delicious pound-bag of ground beef that sells at Friendly Street Market for $2.99. (N.b., the cows are not corn-fed until you rub ‘em with spices and let them cure in your corning procedure.)

The Morton’s Tender Quick might cause some issues with those of you — it’s a blend of nitrates, nitrites, sugar and salt used to fix the color and help preserve the meat. Paradoxically, it turns raw meat brown and cooked meat red. Science! I’ve seen recipes without it, and if you’d like to omit the Tender Quick, please don’t alter mine but use another recipe, like this adaptation from Julia Child, at your own risk. Tender Quick can be found at many grocery stores and places that have big canning sections in spring, like Fred Meyer.  (The image is from a product website, so you have a sense of what you’re looking for.  Try the spices aisle as well as the canning supplies aisle.)

This recipe is my adaptation of OSU Extension Service document LC 712, “Deli-Style Corned Beef or Tongue.” Other cuts to try include pork loin (for Canadian bacony taste), bottom round, and shoulder. Check to make sure your brisket will fit into a ziplock bag before the process starts, and plan for several weeks of curing time!

Corned Beef or Tongue

1 beef brisket (or tongue), 4-6 lbs.
2 T. Penzey’s premium pickling spice mix, toasted (or another brand, or make your own, using the ingredients listed here)
5 T. Morton’s Tender Quick
2 T. dark brown sugar
1 t. ground pepper
1 t. smoked Spanish paprika
1 t. ground allspice
1 t. garlic powder
4-5 fresh bay leaves, chopped, or 1 t. dried, powdered bay leaves

Toast spices in the spice mix in a small pan over medium heat until mixture smells aromatic. Crush spice mix spices in a mortar with pestle. Mix together sugar, all spices, and Tender Quick in a small bowl.

Prepare brisket or tongue by removing whatever surface fat you can. In a bowl or platter, rub mixture well into the meat, covering all exposed areas. Place meat in ziplock bag, seal tightly, then place into another ziplock bag for safety, and set on clean plate.

Allow meat to cure in refrigerator for five days per inch of meat thickness (measure at the thickest part). A corned beef brisket is usually around 2 inches wide; tongues are much wider, so plan for three weeks for a large tongue.

Turn bag over every other day.

Place fully cured meat in a large stockpot, and add generous amounts of water to cover. Bring to a boil, skim surface, and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until tender, about 3 to 4 hours. Tongue will be done when you can skin it, and you should skin it before serving. Do not do this in room with vegetarians.

In the last 30 minutes of cooking, you may add whole new potatoes and/or cabbage to the cooking liquid.

Let sit for 10-15 minutes before slicing, or meat will fall apart.

 

my staples: preserved lemons

We always have lemons hanging out in our refrigerator. I’m sure it’s a relic of living in the Bay Area, o those lemon-tree-having days of yore. Every once in a while, I go a little crazy and find myself with an extra bag or two. When this happens, I decide friends will need gifts in a few weeks, and I make a batch of preserved lemons.

This recipe is so simple that anyone can do it, and it’s really, truly a unique addition to your stock of condiments. Homemade preserved lemons are much better than what you can buy in a jar. A quarter of a preserved lemon, pulp removed and very finely chopped, is delicious over roasted asparagus or steamed green beans, and you can use the lemon pulp in marinades and dressings. I even put little pieces of preserved lemon on skewers of BBQ shrimp or chicken.

Although it seems like Meyer lemons would make a terrific version, their lack of acidity, whereas delicious in many dishes, is a detriment in preserved lemons, and they tend to go bad more quickly. I have made this recipe with Meyers, and stored the jar in the refrigerator, but I found they also get bitter. Plain lemons, known in the biz as Eurekas, are best. And try to get organic lemons, since you will be eating the peel.

Preserved Lemons

An easy-delicious way to instill punchy lemonitude into anything you use lemons for, except, maybe, lemonade. From Morocco, these little darlings can be used for all kinds of different preparations. There are other recipes that include spices such as cumin and coriander and clove, but I like the versatility of the plain salt version. Add seasonings as you please.

3-4 pints jars, cleaned well, with lids
a dozen or so juicy organic lemons
kosher salt
a few peppercorns

Wash lemons well, remembering you will be using the peel, and pare off discolored spots. The lemon’s shape doesn’t matter as much as its freshness, but if you’re gift-giving, look for pretty specimens. Ugly ducklings can be juiced and used to fill the jar with juice — plan to devote at least two lemons to juicing.

Slice 3-4 long gashes into whole lemons, leaving ends intact. Sterilize pint jars. Put a tablespoon of salt and a few peppercorns in the jar. Stuff a bunch of salt into gashes in lemons. Pack lemons into jar tightly, pouring in some lemon juice and adding a bit of salt every layer or so. Cut a few lemons in pieces to stuff in cracks, if you like. Top off jar with lemon juice to cover. I’ve seen some recipes that say cover with boiling water, but I don’t do that. Don’t worry about “wasting” lemons by juicing them into the jar. You’ll want all the delicious salty juice you can get. All recipes caution against using that nasty-ass fake lemon juice. Seriously, don’t.

You should be able to get 3-4 whole lemons into a pint jar if you really press down on the lemons, and you should.

Close jars tightly and keep unrefrigerated in a cool place for a couple of days (the refrigerator is, I find, too cool to allow the lemons to properly cure), then add more lemon juice, if necessary, to fill the jars. At this point, I like to smush down the salted lemons with a wooden reamer to extract more juice in the jars, as well.

After 2-3 weeks unrefrigerated, you will see the lemons have considerably softened and become a bit viscous and juicy. This means they are ready. After opening, keep in the refrigerator. As you use lemons, add more juice. You’ll find the preserved lemons change character over time, and they keep for a long time, if properly acidic and salted.

 

in a pickle

Pickle is such a great word. I love its air of transformation, its fortitude. It defies the odds. A pickle is something that’s lived two lives and perseveres, salty, for *you*. And yet, the colloquial expression, “to be in a pickle,” means you’re in difficult situation. I can see that being stuck in a briny solution, your fluids being drained out of you as salt works its magic, would present a problem for you.

But pickle, in my house, is also a celebratory word. It means I’ve secured something like French haricot-style skinny green beans or tomatoes or, say, a few pounds of Korean cucumbers that miraculously showed up fresh and pretty at Sunrise Market the other day. Yay for greenhouse gardening!

My husband, being an East Coast boy, hankers for the half-sour, or “new,” pickles one gets at Jewish delis in New York (and, if you’re very lucky, Northern California). The ones made by Bubbie’s are all right, but nothing like homemade. So I decided to surprise him — fresh home from a week of eating British food (ugh), mostly at a cafeteria in Cambridge (UGH!) — with some love pickles. They won’t be ready for a few weeks, but he can at least look at them and dream of pickle heaven.

My dill pickles were made without vinegar in the Mittel-Europe style. Instead, I use whey made from organic local yogurt and a salt brine. As with the sauerkraut, I don’t feel confident about my recipe, which was cobbled together from several sources, to share it until I’ve tasted the pickles, but I will once I can prove no one will die eating these beauties. That would be a pickle, indeed.

And speaking of which, I will literally be in a pickle come April, when I begin my certification as a Master Food Preserver. Oregon State Extension, housed locally at our fairgrounds in Eugene, has an excellent program, operational for almost 30 years, for disseminating information about food safety and preservation during the summer months. Volunteers in the Family Food Education/Master Food Preserver program receive over 40 hours of in-house training, take a state exam, then volunteer for another 40 hours per season handling questions from the community on a hotline and at workshops and booths at our many local venues for such things. Since the training requires a full day once a week for a few months, I normally wouldn’t be able to devote the time, but since I’m now only (only!) working on my dissertation and not teaching, I am able to do it this year! YEAH! GO TEAM PICKLE!

I’m also really excited about being able to volunteer for our community in a way that shares information about my two passionate hobbies: cooking and gardening, and to meet new people. It gets lonely sitting here all day by myself! Canning has such a devoted niche of followers, and there’s something kind of exxxxtreme sports about it, too. It’s like the snowboarding of cooking. During my interview for the program, one of the women in charge urged me to take her class on canning fish. Canning FISH? That is so badass. She looked like a sweet, grandmotherly type, but I could just tell she had a can of sardines tatooed on her bicep and could stick her bare hand in a pot of boiling water to retrieve a Ball lid without even flinching.

And this, this is what I yearn to become.