Quick Dills

This month's Tigress' Can Jam focus was cucurbits or The Cucurbitaceae, picked by Laundry Etc. It's a family affair, you know? A big crazy family those cucurbits. And I totally did not rise to the challenge and make a cantaloupe jam like I wanted to. Or watermelon rind pickles. Nope. Not me. I couldn't find local melons, sadly. But I found local cucumbers and a few of them were even from the garden, so good on me. For this recipe, which is a solidly easy, crunchy pickle, I used some lovely lemon cucumbers and some mixed in double-yield picklers.

These are Quick Dill Pickles, and the recipe is from that trusty tome, The Joy of Cooking. You don't want to let these sit for too long in your pantry, as the brine is weaker and the curing quicker than for traditional pickles. This recipe is perfect for the first of the crop, so you can enjoy some pickles during the rest of the summer, while the crock brines the big haul.

Quick Dill Pickles

adapted from The Joy of Cooking

4 pounds of pickling cucumbers, sliced into 1/4 inch coins or in the case of lemon cucumbers, slice them in thick rounds, then quarter the slices. You want to go for some sort of shape uniformity.

Pack the cucumbers into hot pint jars along with a clove of garlic, a teaspoon of pickling spices, and a pinch of extra dill seed and peppercorns.

Combine in a non-reactive pot until just boiling:

3 cups cider vinegar

2 1/4 cups water

1/4 cup pickling salt

Add the hot vinegar solution to the jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Process for 10 minutes.

Another Random Salad

I just thought this was the prettiest salad. First of the cucumbers with local crumbled feta, and local black raspberries macerated with some sugar and white balsamic vinegar.

Greek Roasted Lamb and Potatoes

A couple of years ago (okay, more than a couple, but hey, who's counting?) I had the extreme good luck to get a New Year's visit from my friends Eve and Adam. Eve is an incredibly talented and intuitive cook who I've learned tons from. I often wish she'd start a blog cataloguing what she eats, because it's always the best stuff. She has turned me on to so many great things, from Hog Island oysters to Seattle's finest Dan Dan Noodles. When I lived with her in Oakland, Ca., she would take me everywhere. This was her home turf. I was a New Yorker, new to the Bay Area. Her curiosity and unrelenting spirit for all things good is unparalleled. Wine and cheese, falafels stuffed with french fries, Walnut Grove's best burger joint, the Cheese Board, Berkeley Bowl and Berkeley farmer's markets are just some things that come to mind from the distant past. A few years after the Greek New Year's we had, they visited again. This time Eve packed her suitcase to fly across the country with the most incredible oysters I've ever had, Totten Virginicas. I mean, need I say more?

Back then on that New Year's Day, Eve showed me how to make a Greek New Year's Day meal. I wish I had documentation from that day so long ago, but all I have are some scattered doodles on notecards. I'm sure I've lost some nuances but I'm never disappointed, so I'm doing something right. Right now I'm nursing the first of the year's colds, so I won't go into detail, but we had a lovely local lamb roast, with lemon potatoes, creamy tzatziki, and feta. This is somewhat truncated (what? no olives??) but we relished it nonetheless.

Thanks, Eve! And, Chronia Polla!

Pickling Time

The lemon cucumber plants that seemed so prolific are now getting covered in some kind of mold and seem to be dying quickly. I wonder: is this normal senescence, as the weather seems to be turning autumnal very quickly, or is this truly a disease of some sort? No matter. I have picked and pickled all I can and will move onto other endeavors. Last night I made six pints of quick dills. It is the easiest recipe ever. We shall see how they taste in six weeks!

Recipe: Joy of Cooking, Quick Dills