Family recipe Monday: pickled vegetables

Abandoned hotel, Fairburn, South Dakota

Last week may have set a record for the number of miles I have traveled in a 4-day period without ever leaving the state. 1300. 1300 miles, partly to teach a monitoring class, partly to pick up a major donation of fossils that needed to move from one end of the state to another. Week before last, I leased a trailer so that our field leader could bring in a huge plaster-jacketed fossil from Wyoming--one day ahead of heavy rains, as it turned out. I know everyone at the local U-Haul office by name and no longer think twice about driving a heavily loaded moving van. It would be nice if they had better shocks, though. It'd be even nicer if I hadn't been driving a heavily loaded U-Haul with no shocks at the same time that every Harley rider on the planet was on the road headed for Sturgis,weaving in and out of the lanes like enraged hornets. But all worked out well. 

The farmers' markets here are still a little low on produce, but the preserves and canned goods are starting to show up. Rhubarb jam, caramel apple butter, watermelon pickles....the canning season is upon us. I don't know how the older girls managed the hottest activity of the year in the hottest months of the year, but manage they did. 

We are all wondering if there will be apples, chokecherries and wild plums this year after the roller-coaster extremes of the weather. But the vegetable crops look all right for now. Here are a couple of recipes for vegetable preservation that will bring the summer garden to the winter table. 

Chow chow

1 medium head cauliflower, broken into florets

2 cups corn kernels

2 cups green beans, trimmed, cut into 1” lengths

1 each red and green bell peppers, cored, seeded

2 cups yellow wax beans, trimmed, cut into 1” lengths and diced (¼ ”)

2 cups peeled and diced (½”) carrots

1 cup white pearl onions

2 cups diced (½”) celery

2 cups peeled and diced (½”) seeded cucumbers

2 cups fresh lima beans

1 16-oz can dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

6 cups white vinegar

6 cups granulated sugar

2 T coarse salt

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and lightly blanch cauliflower until just tender; remove to a large nonreactive pot. Repeat with the remaining 9 vegetables (all except the kidney beans), one at a time. Add the kidney beans, vinegar, sugar and salt to vegetables in the nonreactive pot. Stir and bring to a boil. Once the mixture comes to a boil, remove from heat. Pack the hot vegetables into 4 hot, sterilized quart jars. Process for 15 minutes in a boiling-water bath.

Dilled beans

2 lb. fresh green beans, trimmed

4 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 tsp. cayenne pepper

4 large sprigs fresh dill

2 ½  cups cider vinegar

2 ½  cups water

4 T coarse salt

Blanch the green beans in boiling water until tender but still crunchy (about 4 to 6 minutes). Drain. Place 1 clove of garlic, 1/4 tsp. cayenne (or more to taste) and a sprig of dill into each of 4 sterilized pint jars. Pack beans upright into the jars to fit within 1/4” of rim. Bring the vinegar, water and salt to a boil in a nonreactive saucepan. Pour the hot liquid into the jars, leaving ¼ “ of head space. Seal and process the jars in a boiling-water bath for 5 minutes. Store for at least 2 weeks in the refrigerator before serving. Serve cold. 

Happy Monday. Enjoy these shots from an abandoned hotel near here. 

There is preservation by ethanol....not recommended for sign carvers....

...and there is preservation by anything that kills everything. If they ask you to name your poison at this hotel bar, run like a citizen of Tokyo fleeing Godzilla.  

Family recipe Monday: let the canning begin: sweet pickles

It's not looking like the best year for the wild fruit--hailstorms and grasshoppers were our plagues of the 2010 season--but there should be enough for a reasonable run of plum jelly, apple butter and those decadent little pickled crabapples. I'll have the fruit recipes up next week. In the meantime, the cucumbers and squash are coming in nicely. Here are a few sweet pickle recipes from the files.

This recipe makes terrific pickles, but is a bit high-maintenance; it calls for reheating and repouring the pickling syrup four times. As always, be very careful when you are dealing with a hot sugar syrup. Do all your pouring over a sink with the pan tilted away from you. Sugar syrup burns are awful. With that caveat in mind, try this one out: the results are wonderful. I would let these stand for at least two weeks before opening, and a month might be even better for the flavors to mature.

Sweet pickles

2 gal. cucumbers, peeled and sliced

Put 1 pt salt over them and pour 1 gal. boiling water over them and let stand 1 week. Keep pickles under water. Pour water out and rinse jar. Pour another gal. of boiling water over them at let stand 24 hours. Pour off water and add a lump of alum (2 T) and boiling water again and let stand 24 hours.

Pour off and fix syrup:

4 quarts sugar
2 quarts vinegar
½ box pickling spices

Boil syrup for 4 minutes. Pour over pickles, pour syrup off and reheat and let boil 4 minutes. Repeat 3 more times.
--Mary Marcella Walker Brooks, Vada Brooks Johnson

Does anyone use alum in pickling any more? I remember it as a staple in my grandmother's pantry.

This was transcribed as written from Gran Brooks's penciled recipe notes. I use large white enamel stockpots for this kind of preparation. Obviously, Gran Brooks assumed that you know how to can these once they boiled for three minutes, no more no less. If you will be using them soon, they can be refrigerated; otherwise, crank up the canning gear.

Gran Brooks’s bread and butter pickles

25 medium cucumbers

Soak over night in cold water, next morning slice real thin but don’t peel and use 8 small onions sliced lengthwise. Cover onions and cucumbers with 1/2 cup salt and let stand 1 hour. Put into large kettle 1 quart vinegar and 2 cups sugar, 2 large T of white mustard seed, 2 large T of celery seed, 2 T brown ginger, 1 T turmeric and bring to good boil, turn cucumbers and onions into mixture and boil 3 minutes, no more no less.
--Mary Marcella Walker Brooks

Sweet pickles

6 cups white vinegar
3 cups sugar
3 cups water
1 gallon cucumbers soaked overnight in salt water (½ cup salt)

Next morning rinse cucumbers. In large pan mix vinegar, sugar and water. When mixed put in cucumbers and heat on low until cucumbers change color. Don’t boil. Pack in sterile jars and seal.
--Gene K. Hess

Happy, and sweet, Monday.

Family recipe Monday: let the canning begin: melon pickles

August on the prairie. Feel the heat?

For the first time in three years, we broke into triple-digit temperatures on Sunday. Classic August: the heat is on, the farmers' market was bursting with produce, and the Central States Fair has started. We may check out the quilting and canning displays later in the week, when the cold front predicted for tonight brings the high back down to the 70s.

I realize that our friends and family in Texas are howling with laughter at our wimpiness in the heat. Don't forget that we could have our first snow as early as five weeks from now, if last year is anything to go by.

So we are stocking up on the fresh produce and hauling out the canning gear in earnest. The jars and spices are back on sale at the feed store. I bought a pint of chokecherry jam at the farmers' market and will report on the taste as soon as the biscuits are done. You have to have biscuits for a jam taste test, after all.

Canning in August is counterintuitive--no one wants to work on a hot day in an even hotter kitchen. The older girls knew that this was the right time, though, and that the work could not wait, especially pre-refrigeration. Anything that could be preserved was canned, smoked or salted. Out here, berrying was (and is) in full swing.

I'm especially intrigued with melon pickles. I've seen more varieties of watermelon rind pickles up here in three years than I ever had before. It takes a truly gifted cook to figure out how to make an apparently inedible rind or a very watery, juicy fruit into a splendid preserve.

The cantaloupe pickles are new to me, and they are amazingly good. Here you are preserving the cantaloupe flesh itself, not the rind. Heed the warning about selecting non-mushy cantaloupes, though.

Cantaloupe pickles

3 firm (not mushy) cantaloupes
4 T pickling spices
1 cinnamon stick
3 cups cider vinegar
2 cups water
4 cups granulated sugar

Seed and peel the cantaloupes. Cut into 1” cubes (about 12 cups). Tie the spices and cinnamon into a double layer of cheesecloth. Place in large nonreactive pot along with the vinegar and water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat. Remove from heat; add melon ands let stand for 1 ½ --2 hours, tossing occasionally. Add the sugar and stir well to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes or until the cantaloupe becomes slightly transparent. Pack the melon into 4 sterilized pint jars, making sure there are no air pockets in the jars. Cover with the hot syrup, leaving ¼“ head space. Seal and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes.

Watermelon pickles are just the opposite: you can't really save the flesh (so eat up!), but the rind makes a lovely, savory, translucent preserve that goes well with anything just off the grill. There are  dozens of recipes for watermelon pickles: here is my favorite. Note that, in all watermelon pickle recipes, the green outer rind is peeled and discarded. You can't save everything, but you can come close.

Ginger watermelon pickles

White part of rind from 1 small watermelon (~5 cups)
4 T salt
6 cups water
2 sticks cinnamon
1 tsp. whole allspice
1 tsp. whole cloves
4 cups sugar
2 pieces preserved ginger, sliced thin
2 cups white vinegar
1 3” piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 lemon, thinly sliced

Peel outer green skin off whole water melon and cut watermelon into wedges. Cut off white rind and reserve pink flesh for another purpose. Cut white rind into 1” pieces and put into a large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and add cold water to cover. Soak overnight for at least 12 hours. Drain in a colander and rinse well with cold water. Place in a saucepan, cover with water, bring to boil and boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Drain in colander. Combine remaining ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook 10 minutes, then add rind and simmer gently, uncovered, for about 1 hour or until the rind is clear. Remove the fresh ginger. Ladle pickles and liquid into hot sterilized jars, leaving ¼ ” headspace. Divide lemon slices and spices among jars. Top with lids and screw bands tight. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes. Store in cool dark place.

Give these until at least November before you open them. You'll love the aroma in the cold months. Happy Monday, and stay cool.

Family recipe Monday: pickles

We are all ready for the farmer's market to start up again this year. This being the northern part of the Great Plains, the season of productivity starts later and ends earlier than the season in the southern extent of the plains (aka the tropics of the Texas Panhandle), where I grew up. My colleagues in the tropics of DC and the Southeast are gleefully writing about tilling gardens and planting containers full of lovely greenery. Yesterday, I was looking at three-foot-high piles of snow left over from the last storm that hit the Black Hills. This is just what spring is like up here. Last year at this time, we were only halfway through the blizzard run for the month. The container plantings will have to wait a bit.

In the meantime, I am pulling together the various pickling recipes from the Simple Gifts files. Here are some I'm planning to try this year, in addition to the various crabapple, wild plum and other preserves that worked well last year. Here's one from my aunt Melba's mother, from Louisiana.

Slack lime pickles (sweet)

1 gallon cucumbers, sliced
1 cup slack lime
2 gallons water

Slice cucumbers and soak 24 hours in lime water. Wash and soak 1 hour in clear water. Drain well.

Mix:
3 quarts vinegar
8 cups sugar
2 T salt
1/2 box pickling spice

Cook pickles 1½ to 2 hours, or until tender in vinegar, sugar, salt and spice. Put in jars and seal.
--Mrs. Royal D. Campbell (Melba Campbell Johnson’s mother)

Note: slack lime (or slaked lime) is the same as pickling lime. Up here, we can get it at the feed store, in pickling season.

It seems that everyone in the family had a different recipe (and even a different name) for the mixed-vegetable preserve that my grandmother called chow chow. This one could be mild to outright scary, depending on your choice of hot peppers.

Chow chow

1 gallon green tomatoes
5 large onions
1 large cabbage head
1 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ green (bell) pepper
12 hot peppers
1 ½ tsp. each cloves, cinnamon, ginger
1 T salt
3 to 4 apples
4 cups vinegar

Chop green tomatoes fine. Salt and let stand overnight. Press out juice and add other chopped ingredients and cook 20 minutes. Can. To double: use 1 peck green tomatoes, 10 large onions, 6 cups vinegar, 3 cups sugar, 1 T of each of the spices, 2 T salt.
 --Vada Brooks Johnson

Notice that doubling the recipe does not necessarily meaning doubling all the ingredients. If you are following the casserole philosophy of one to keep, one to share, you will find that you need to be careful about the doubling proportions in spicing and canning. In this recipe, for example, you already have enough peppers for taste and heat before you begin doubling. Trust us on this one.

Here is a classic from the 1950s. Red food coloring, cinnamon sticks AND Red-Hots cinnamon candy are used for an unexpectedly zippy preparation. I have to admit that I have not tried to make this one, myself...

Cucumber rings (Lois’s pickles)

1 gallon cucumber rings, peeled, sliced, and centers cut out
1 ½ cup pickling lime
8 ½ quarts water

Combine and soak 24 hours. Drain and wash enough to get rid of all lime. Combine 1 cup vinegar, 1 T alum, and 1 small bottle of red food coloring. Add to cucumber rings and add enough water to cover. Simmer 2 hours and drain off. In another pan, mix 2 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, 10 cups sugar, 8 sticks cinnamon, and 1 10-oz pkg. Red-Hots candy. Bring to a boil and pour over rings. Repeat a second day. Heat all to a boil on third day and seal.
--Gladys Brooks Strickland

More on this subject next week. Happy Monday.

Family recipe Monday: bread and butter pickles

This is an interesting variation on an old favorite.  Bread and butter pickles are crisp sweet pickle slices, said to be good enough to use as the filling in a bread and butter sandwich with nothing else added. They were popular during the Depression, urban lore has it, for that reason.

Why I call it a variation: well, there are several reasons. First of all, the sweetener is honey, rather than sugar. I have to wonder if that goes back to the beekeepers of the family. This is my grandmother Johnson's handwriting, and she is a direct descendant, so it's not unlikely. Next, this is a refrigerator pickle recipe, with no processing or canning, which helps with the crispness. Finally, I have not seen another recipe that calls for pickling squash as well as cucumber slices. Maybe this will help with the late-summer zucchini overload.

My grandmother used gallon glass crocks for refrigerator and countertop pickling. Living near the prairie, I can get all my canning and pickling supplies at the farm and ranch feed/equipment store just down the street, in season. It's wonderful. It's like a time machine. Gallon glass crocks are hard to find these days, but canners and picklers are thick on the ground up here. Last year I managed to produce spiced local crabapples. This year, I'm trying this one.

Bread and butter pickles

4 cups vinegar
2 cups honey
1/3 cup pickling salt
1 ½ tsp. celery salt
1 ½ tsp. turmeric
1 ½ tsp. mustard seed
3 medium onions
1 gallon of slices of cucumber and squash

Let vinegar heat until sugar and spices dissolve and let cool before pouring over vegetables. Refrigerate.

--Vada Brooks Johnson

Mack and Vada Johnson, probably late 1920s