It’s Pickle Season

“Pickle Power

Forget chocolate, says Julie Pegg. A crisp, crunchy, sour pickle makes this girl real sweet.”

I lack a sweet tooth. The mere thought of a sugary square or frosted cake sets my molars on edge.  This sour puss is fond of racy wines, will put a squirt of citrus on just about anything, and considers a crunchy pickle to be the perfect marriage of cucumber and vinegar. If I’m blue, chocolate does little to assuage me. A little pucker power, on the other hand, comforts me no end. Give me a chunky kosher dill. Slather my rye bread with mustard, and sour makes this girl real sweet.

The custom of pickling can be traced back through the millennia. It’s believed that during the building of the Great Wall, pickled vegetables sustained Chinese labourers. In fact, pickling has seeped into most cultures, salt and vinegar being ideal food keepers. Canada’s immigrants brought pickle recipes from “home,” and cukes grow easily in our country. Polish and Russian immigrants gave us garlic dills, the French contributed the tiny cornichons or gherkins, which are in the cucumber family but are a different cultivar. When dining at L’Express in Montreal, I have to slip out of the place immediately the cheque is settled. The full jar of very good cornichons that was set before me when I sat down will, embarrassingly, be in need of a fill-up.) The English are responsible for introducing sweet/sour brown pickle. Better known commercially as “Branston Pickle,” this medley of brined vegetables, including gherkins, is a marvel with cheddar or blue cheese. I can hussle up a ploughman’s lunch tout de suite with little more than crusty bread and a good brew.

Bread-and-butter pickles represent pure Canadiana to me. Shortly after emigrating from England, our family lived down the road from the Powells. Mr. Powell had been a third-generation Ontario farmer. Mrs. Powell made everything from scratch and preserved every fruit and vegetable imaginable. I’d pop by for her egg salad on fluffy homemade bread, accompanied by thin sweet/sour slices and a handful of potato chips. Another winner was her mustard pickle, to which was added chunks of cauliflower and onion and served as a side dish for cold roast beef.

Recently I spied a special issue of Canadian Living called “Grow It, Eat It,” at the drugstore checkout. A quick leaf through revealed my favourite pickle recipes, including the one for English brown pickle. Methods were simple and succinctly laid out. (Recipes are also available online at www.canadianliving.com/food). Stumbling on a mustard pickle recipe proved a little trickier. Cooks.com offers a couple of good recipes. Not surprisingly so does the Joy of Cooking, although I prefer to omit the beans, peppers and carrots that the recipe calls for.

Forget plucking pickles from the grocers’ shelves. With the season’s plethora of cukes (and other veggies) and the ever-increasing focus on raising and/or eating fresh and local, you can easily put up a few jars. And the added bonus? There are far fewer calories in pickles than pies. Get crunching.

Making pickles is easy. However, there are important pointers for getting your pickles crisp, bright and brimming with briny flavour. The following tips are adapted from Stocking Up: How to Preserve the Foods You Grow (Rodale Press 1977, compiled by the staff of Organic Farming and Gardening).

• Try to find spiny pickling cucumbers—look for “Kirby” or “Liberty.” Cukes should be in prime shape—no soft spots or bruises. Use within 24 hours of picking. Refrigerate until use.

• Commercial white distilled vinegar has the necessary 4-6 percent acetic acid required for brining and will not discolour white vegetables such as cauliflower and onions.

• Filtered or chemical free water is recommended. Chemically treated water can darken pickles and interfere with fermentation.

• Use kosher, pickling or rock salt. Iodized salt may darken pickles or cause the brine to cloud.

• Use fresh, whole spices or herbs. Blanch garlic for two minutes, if using, or remove before sealing jars.

• Heat pickling liquid in a non-reactive pot. Use crock, stone or mason jars for fermenting pickles.

• Taste the liquid before canning to ensure the seasoning is balanced and to your liking.

Note: The third edition of Stocking Up (1986) is available through Amazon.com. It has added seed charts with suitable vegetable varieties for canning and freezing. It is the bible for any gardener, preserver and cook, whether amateur or professional.