Pickled Veggies Escabeche Style
A Jar of Summer in Winter
Summer is the most wonderful time of the year. We have organically grown vegetables coming out of our ears here on the little urban farm. My husband and I love both fresh and pickled veggies. Over the years I have played with a few different pickling combos, but I always keep coming back to escabeche style; a little spicy because we incorporate jalapenos in the mix, and enhanced with lots of whole garlic, dried oregano, cilantro seed (coriander) and olive oil, make it just to my liking. I do like dill mixes too, but there are plenty of recipes for that out there, so I thought I would share this special one. If you've ever had authentic Mexican food and had the homemade pickled carrots, onions and jalapenos on the side, you know what I'm talking about. Although you can make it as mild or as spicy as you want by how many jalapenos you use, if you leave the seeds in; etc. We like ours fairly spicy, but we still want to taste the other veggies too.
I decided to combine a few things I was going to write about in this blog because my daughter and I will be opening the food cart in Portland here soon and I'm not sure how much time I will have (at first) to devote to writing.
Drying the Oregano
If you grow and dry your own herbs, you will quickly realize how impotent most of the herbs you buy in the store are. While some herbs are best used fresh from the garden, oregano is one of those that actually gets better once it is dried. The more whole you can keep the leaves until it is used though, the better. We have a grid of wire that we hang and use to allow the oregano to air-dry outside naturally. We will get at least 2 harvests from a plant each year. Oregano is a great perennial that will grow like a weed if you give it a nice space in the garden and a little love. Actually it is pretty fuss-free.
The leaves pushed through the grid keep the stems in place, and hanging them this way keeps the individual stems separated until you can process it by carefully removing the whole dried leaves from the stems. Definitely worth the extra TLC. Note: if you don't have your own oregano, buy the little packs from the Mexican section of your grocery store - you will save money and end up with a better product than the stuff in the jars.
Harvesting Coriander (Cilantro Seed)
Cilantro likes to bolt (go to seed) as soon as the weather heats up a little - that's OK! Plant some of the seeds you saved from last year to get more fresh coming along, let the first crop go to seed, and you have coriander - arguably one of the most important components of almost any pickling spice concoction, corned beef boil, crab boil and a myriad of other uses. Again, if you grow your own and dry it, the difference will amaze you.
Allow it to stay in the ground or a pot on your back porch until it is fully dry. Cilantro does very well in planter boxes and it's nice to have the fresh stuff handy to the kitchen. Keep pinching the ends of the middle stems off if you don't want it to bolt as soon.
Plant Garlic in the Fall
Garlic grows fairly slowly, so last year we planted ours in the fall when our front yard was blanketed with giant maple leaves from the gigantic trees we have growing there, which we used to cover the garlic for winter. We also have a black walnut, which isn't supposed to be good for compost, so we are careful to keep the two separated which isn't all that difficult. It was much easier to haul them back in a wheel barrow and put a thick layer over our newly-planted garlic, than put them in the street for the city yard compost service to haul away, and the chickens LOVE digging through the leaves all winter long. By the time spring rolled around there were precious little shoots peeking through the soil and leaf debris, quite a treat to get you excited to grow more stuff! At the end of summer, we got a great crop of garlic that should last us until about the same time next year - which is saying something because we love our garlic. We will definitely be doing it this way again this year. Furthermore, it worked so well, we intend to do onions in the same manner.
Canning the Vegetables
The mixture you use is up to you. I avoid adding bell peppers because they tend to take over the flavor of all the other vegetables, in my opinion. This year we used Nantes carrots, whole garlic cloves and Blue Lake pole beans from our garden (along with the herbs), augmented with cauliflower, Spanish onions and jalapenos that we got from another local farmer that runs an honor-system farm stand in front of his house. Another tip I picked up this year is to add a couple of grape leaves to each jar, to keep the vegetables crisper - I'm quite anxious to test them to see if it makes a difference.
Boil the quart jars in the cold packer for 20 minutes and then fill them with the vegetables. To each quart add: 3 Tbsp. sea salt, 1 Tbsp good extra virgin olive oil, 1 heaping tsp. coriander seed, 2 tsp. whole leaf dried oregano and 1 tsp. whole black peppercorns.
In the meantime boil the rings and lids for 20 minutes to sterilize them; and in another pot bring 1 1/2 cups good apple cider vinegar plus 1 1/2 cups water per quart of vegetables to a boil. Add the boiling vinegar/water mixture to the quarts to cover the vegetables, but leave space at the neck for the air to contract as they cool and make a seal. Be sure the edges of the jar mouth are perfectly clean, and then put the lids and rings in place, tightening them, but not too much. Put them in the cold packer in a rack for easy removable with enough water to cover them by at least an inch and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes. Remove them, carefully tighten the rings again, and place upside-down for at least 45 minutes. You will be able to hear them sealing and creating a vacuum as they cool. The lids should be concave when they are sealed. Re-tighten the rings again when they are cooled and store away from sunlight. Let the vegetables cure in the solution for at least 6 weeks before you open them.
Now you can enjoy a little bit of summer when its cold and blustery outside. Its kind of like opening a jar of sunshine in the cold winter months!
Summer is the most wonderful time of the year. We have organically grown vegetables coming out of our ears here on the little urban farm. My husband and I love both fresh and pickled veggies. Over the years I have played with a few different pickling combos, but I always keep coming back to escabeche style; a little spicy because we incorporate jalapenos in the mix, and enhanced with lots of whole garlic, dried oregano, cilantro seed (coriander) and olive oil, make it just to my liking. I do like dill mixes too, but there are plenty of recipes for that out there, so I thought I would share this special one. If you've ever had authentic Mexican food and had the homemade pickled carrots, onions and jalapenos on the side, you know what I'm talking about. Although you can make it as mild or as spicy as you want by how many jalapenos you use, if you leave the seeds in; etc. We like ours fairly spicy, but we still want to taste the other veggies too.
I decided to combine a few things I was going to write about in this blog because my daughter and I will be opening the food cart in Portland here soon and I'm not sure how much time I will have (at first) to devote to writing.
Drying the Oregano
If you grow and dry your own herbs, you will quickly realize how impotent most of the herbs you buy in the store are. While some herbs are best used fresh from the garden, oregano is one of those that actually gets better once it is dried. The more whole you can keep the leaves until it is used though, the better. We have a grid of wire that we hang and use to allow the oregano to air-dry outside naturally. We will get at least 2 harvests from a plant each year. Oregano is a great perennial that will grow like a weed if you give it a nice space in the garden and a little love. Actually it is pretty fuss-free.
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| This particular harvest is from a plant that is of a Greek variety, very similar to Mexican in that it is nicely potent with almost a spicy edge to it - my favorite. |
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| Nice whole fluffy oregano leaves fully dried and removed from the stem |
Harvesting Coriander (Cilantro Seed)
Cilantro likes to bolt (go to seed) as soon as the weather heats up a little - that's OK! Plant some of the seeds you saved from last year to get more fresh coming along, let the first crop go to seed, and you have coriander - arguably one of the most important components of almost any pickling spice concoction, corned beef boil, crab boil and a myriad of other uses. Again, if you grow your own and dry it, the difference will amaze you.
Plant Garlic in the Fall
Garlic grows fairly slowly, so last year we planted ours in the fall when our front yard was blanketed with giant maple leaves from the gigantic trees we have growing there, which we used to cover the garlic for winter. We also have a black walnut, which isn't supposed to be good for compost, so we are careful to keep the two separated which isn't all that difficult. It was much easier to haul them back in a wheel barrow and put a thick layer over our newly-planted garlic, than put them in the street for the city yard compost service to haul away, and the chickens LOVE digging through the leaves all winter long. By the time spring rolled around there were precious little shoots peeking through the soil and leaf debris, quite a treat to get you excited to grow more stuff! At the end of summer, we got a great crop of garlic that should last us until about the same time next year - which is saying something because we love our garlic. We will definitely be doing it this way again this year. Furthermore, it worked so well, we intend to do onions in the same manner.
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| Baby garlic sprouts poking through the leaf debris in early spring |
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| Mature garlic bulbs that have been braided together after the greens lay over, but before they dry out too much. Hanging them like this is the ideal way to store them all winter. We will put them in our food storage building out of sunlight. |
The mixture you use is up to you. I avoid adding bell peppers because they tend to take over the flavor of all the other vegetables, in my opinion. This year we used Nantes carrots, whole garlic cloves and Blue Lake pole beans from our garden (along with the herbs), augmented with cauliflower, Spanish onions and jalapenos that we got from another local farmer that runs an honor-system farm stand in front of his house. Another tip I picked up this year is to add a couple of grape leaves to each jar, to keep the vegetables crisper - I'm quite anxious to test them to see if it makes a difference.
 |
| Vegetables in the rack ready for the hot pickling liquid |
In the meantime boil the rings and lids for 20 minutes to sterilize them; and in another pot bring 1 1/2 cups good apple cider vinegar plus 1 1/2 cups water per quart of vegetables to a boil. Add the boiling vinegar/water mixture to the quarts to cover the vegetables, but leave space at the neck for the air to contract as they cool and make a seal. Be sure the edges of the jar mouth are perfectly clean, and then put the lids and rings in place, tightening them, but not too much. Put them in the cold packer in a rack for easy removable with enough water to cover them by at least an inch and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes. Remove them, carefully tighten the rings again, and place upside-down for at least 45 minutes. You will be able to hear them sealing and creating a vacuum as they cool. The lids should be concave when they are sealed. Re-tighten the rings again when they are cooled and store away from sunlight. Let the vegetables cure in the solution for at least 6 weeks before you open them.
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