What are your favorite pickles to make?

[Mottmott]

I like keeping some freshly homemade pickled vegetables in my fridge, but my repetoire is limited. I'm not into making a whole year's supply in the end of summer heat, but prefer making small batches of this or that as I go. In common parlance, pickle tends to mean pickled cucumbers, dills, gherkins. But many other vegetables and even some fruits can be pickled.

Lately I've made Judy Rodgers' pickled red onions and love them for their wonderful aromatic flavor and texture. My old standbys are a quick sweet/sour cucumber pickle (with only a 2 day life) and carrot/daikon pickle. Sometimes I make pickled watermelon rind.

So what are some of your favorites to make for your fridge - or has freshly made salsa completely eclipsed pickled vegetables?

[Milagai]

I like to make fresh salsa, especially toward

the end of summer when tomatoes are abundant,

and I like to add fruits (e.g. mango, peach, etc.) to salsa.

But now that fall is here, I'm starting to crave Indian pickles;

there are too many types to list, sweet, sour, hot, long lasting,

short-term etc etc for just about every fruit or veg you can

think of.

Here's a very short list:

http://www.indianfoodforever.com/pickles/index.html

But as soon as the weather forecasts 5 days in a row

of bright sunny weather, I am planning to make

Punjabi style Cauliflower, Carrot and Turnip pickle:

http://www.indianfoodforever.com/pickles/c...rot-pickle.html

This one has a lot of mustard seed in the spices, so it's very

tangy that complements the earthy sweetness of the root

vegetables and cauliflowers.

Or hmmmm.... here's another one that looks great to try:

http://greenjackfruit.blogspot.com/2006/06...vegetables.html

This one's more hot....

Milagai

Edited November 12, 2006 by Milagai (log)

[Carolyn Tillie]

I'm a huge pickle fan and am fortunate to live near Japantown in San Francisco where I can get a bounty of really interesting Japanese pickles.

However one thing I've made for years and adore is shredded pickled beets -- simply grated and put into a left-over pasta sauce jar with a combination of good red wine and balsamic vinegars. Something about them being grated versus sliced and diced makes them taste better. And I can pull out a tablespoon or two as a quick garnish.

[Christine Barbour]

Pickled turnips, like my Lebanese grandmother used to make! Turnips, washed and sliced, plus one roasted beet (can use canned) for color, sliced, salted to taste and covered with vinegar, maybe chile, maybe a clove or garlic, or some peppercorns. Takes a week or so for the turnips to pickle (you can tell when they are there when they are pink all the way through) and they last a long time. Just bought a good supply of turnips at yesterday's market for this very thing. Love 'em!

[Gifted Gourmet]

Check out for some ideas this ...eGullet discussion on "quick pickeling" ... and perhaps even this discussion as well ...

Edited November 12, 2006 by Gifted Gourmet (log)

[ChefJohnny]

We use pickled fruits and vegetables ALL the time at our restaurant. They are one of my absolute favorite additions to any plate. Depending on the season, we pickle strawberries, raspberries, pearl onions, red onions, cucumbers, ramps, cherries, fennel, rhubarb, grapes... just about anything we can find. We almost always pair foie gras with a pickle.

-Chef Johnny

[Mottmott]

Thank you all for your replies.

Melissa and Milagi, I did do a search on pickle before posting and came up with less than a pageful of threads, not including the helpful ones you suggest. Feeling doltish at having missed your on point suggestions, I searched pickle again and came up with pages in response. I can only guess I must have misspelled it the first time - or perhaps search was tired. On a google search I found the websites for the Indian pickles, but most of them are more complex in flavor than what I'm looking for right now.

ChefJohnny, I'm interested in your process when you put together a pickle as I would imagine you most often make up your own recipes. Do you have a basic brine you use most of the time? tweaking for different foodstuffs? 1:1 vinegar:sugar, perhaps somewhat less sugar for sweeter fruits? do you add wine to some (does that call for reducing the vinegar)? and vary the vinegars and/or spices per the fruit or veggie that stars? All chef's trucs are welcome.

It makes perfect sense to pair a pickle with an unctuous food such as foie gras. The upcoming holidays with their typically fatty foods set me on a quest for some pickle outside my usual repetoire. While salsas will also serve that counterpointing function, I often prefer a single pickled fruit or vegetable to the more varied flavors in a salsa, especially when serving something that has been braised to bring varied flavors together. I tend to use salsas in meals where there is a simply prepared (sauted, fried, grilled) piece of fish or meat,. The other thing about pickles is that they tend to be flavored more with spices while salsas lean on herbs.

That's a wonderful suggestion about the beets, Carolyn. I'll be sure to try it as my gdaughter (11) is wild for beets. We usually prepare a meal together about once a week and this is simple enough that she could do it without boiling up a brine if she used jarred pickled beets. Do you simply roast the beets, then jar up the shredded beets with the vinegar and wine without cookin the brine?

I'll also give the turnips a try, probably after the holidays (though I did once get them at Sahadi's (Brooklyn) and was disappointed).