As promised – pickles. These are pickles I grew up eating, turnip pickles dyed fuchsia with the addition of a beet. Perfect for this box – one small beet, all your turnips and a clove of that fresh garlic. This recipe actually comes by way of ABC. Diane Sawyer made a trip to Syria and brought back turnip pickles – the folks on “The Chew” provided a recipe to make these stateside.
First, a warning. You’re going to get lots of pickle recipes this year. Not sure why, but I’m on a pickling binge. And you can pickle anything. Really. These are going to be refrigerator pickles – really just seasoned vegetables that you can keep refrigerated for up to a month or so. Lots of health benefits from pickles and fermented vegetables, so I hope you’ll enjoy them.
Justin Burdett of Miller Union demonstrated this recipe at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market just about a year ago. Put up some of those pretty green onions you got today. Won’t be long before they’ll just be a fond memory.
Justin called for champagne vinegar, which sounds a bit more decadent that it really is. It’s pretty reasonably priced, but you could substitute white wine vinegar or even apple cider vinegar and still get good results. He also cools the brine before pouring it over the vegetables – that keeps the green onions from turning olive green right away and preserves the fresh flavor a little more. Since the green onions are tender, they don’t need even the little bit of cooking that happens when you pour boiling liquid over your vegetables. And it also means these are absolutely, positively refrigerator pickles. No sitting around at room temperature for these savory bits.
I’m excited to see the return of radishes. It gives me the chance to provide another pickling recipe for those of you into that sort of thing. This is from Roy Eyester at Rosebud. Cut the recipe in half for a small bunch of radishes.
I’m sorry I don’t remember the provenance of this last recipe, but it’s a fairly traditional way to make pickled squash. I can eat it by the pint. The directions are for processing the pickles in a boiling water bath. If you want to skip that step, just pack the pickles into jars after they’ve been heated in the vinegar, and seal them up. Let them cool and then keep the pickles in your refrigerator. They should keep about 2 months without processing but they have to be refrigerated. The recipe also says to wait a month before eating, but I don’t generally have that much patience. They’re really fine right away.
Makes 4 pints
Refrigerator dill pickles could not be easier to make. Last year when my garden was producing a huge crop of cucumbers, I made up the brine and refrigerated it. When I came in with my cucumbers-of-the-day, I would rinse them and put them into quart jars, add dill, etc. and fill the jar with brine. Tucked into the spare refrigerator to “ferment”, these pickles make half sours in a day or two, and full sours in a week. They’ll keep for a month or so, but really not much longer since they’re not processed. The nice thing is that you can just make up a jar or two. So if you want to give it a try, don’t worry about needing 3 pounds of cucumbers. Make up the brine and fill your jars with as many of this week’s cucumbers as you want to pickle. We’ll cross our fingers that there are more cucumbers in our future.
If you have any leftover green beans from last week, they’d work fine in this recipe as well.
Adapted from a recipe that appeared in Southern Living
Makes about 8 cups
And Shirley Yarbrough reminded me this week of two simple ways to preserve the peppers in your box. There’s nothing easier. These ideas work for the banana peppers and jalapenos. Not for the bell peppers.
The next time we have a watermelon I’ll give you a recipe for making watermelon rind pickles, but love this idea from Fine Cooking magazine for a watermelon rind relish. No canning required! The recipe calls for 1/2 of a jalapeno, but of course you can vary that by the tolerance for heat in your household. Although I have to say, every jalapeno I’ve cooked with this year has been pretty spicy! This should keep pretty well in your refrigerator – maybe for a month? 1 (4-pound). watermelon
Love this idea for a differently flavored pickle. Make it with the rounds of zucchini or the tiny little okra in today’s box, or both! The original idea came from seriouseats.com.
I am so excited that we have all the makings of this recipe from our box this week. I was afraid I’d have to save this recipe for next year, but the tomatoes are back! This recipe is adapted from one demonstrated by Atlanta mixologist Lara Creasy at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market.