In a Pickle

They had some beautiful sweet peppers at the market yesterday. I especially loved the look of the yellow ones, still streaked with green.

It only takes only one whole pepper for this recipe I found on Judy's wonderful site at Over a Tuscan Stove http://divinacucina.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-02-07T13%3A36%3A00%2B01%3A00 (scroll nearly to the bottom of the page). It's a basic bread-and-butter type pickle altered from a Fanny Farmer cookbook.

The longest part of this recipe is the slicing of the vegetables, a brief tear shed over the red onions, and a simple 3-hour soak in salt water. Easy!

When I made this last night, I threw in three halves from different-colored sweet peppers - red, orange, and the yellow. It tastes great, and you can vary from the recipe by adding cinnamon, garlic, star anise, peppercorns, or other pickle-loving spices. I just tried the recipe As Is.

Diva's suggestion is to use the pickled veggies for a topping for a freshly-baked potato, or other vegetable. Tonight, I'm going to serve them as a condiment atop some sliced boiled Yukon Golds, and a recipe adapted from (I think) a Southern Living magazine recipe titled "Catfish Jezebel," only my fish is pollock and not catfish. That, a crusty hot bread, and a fresh salad should do the trick. I'll post the fish recipe separately, and let you know how it turned out.

Here's the easy recipe, and thanks to Diva (and Fanny Farmer folks) for the good eats!

Diva's Summer Pickles


Ingredients
2large cucumbers
1 red onion
1 yellow bell pepper ( or half a yellow and half a red)
2 soupspoons sea salt ( or kosher salt)
2 cups white wine vinegar
2 cups granulated sugar

1. Slice the veggies and sprinkle with salt, toss and let sit for three hours in a bowl.The veggies will give off their water and this makes a crisp pickle.
2. After the three hours, drain the pickles and rinse off the salt, and place back into the bowl.
3. Bring the vinegar and sugar to a boil and pour over the pickles in the bowl.
4. Place in clean jars.



She recommends that this be a refrigerator recipe, unless you want to process them at this point. Since I don't yet know how to do that, I'm playing it safe. Besides, they probably won't last that long around here after this weekend, anyway :)