Last week's share brought with it the smell and taste of the summer harvest from Rogowski Farm! We received all sorts of vegetables we had not yet seen this CSA season, including baby kohlrabi. If anyone has seen an "adult" kohlrabi, you know just how daunting they can look: big, purple, with multiple limbs stretching out into its greens, the root of the kohlrabi really looks like a purple alien before you undress it of its skin and find something very similar to a jicama and which can be used in similar ways.
I usually make a kohlrabi slaw with my CSA kohlrabi, but I wasn't in the mood this time, and sometimes when we get into a fixed mindset about a vegetable, we can forget there are other things to do with it. So on and on my kohlrabi sat during the week, pretty much forgotten until I finally got some time to work on the project I had in mind to use up the large amounts of sweet, hot, and Banana peppers we have received in the last few weeks, namely pickling them to enjoy their crunchy, tangy, spicy goodness in later months.
For more information on how you (yes, YOU) can pickle in your refrigerator with a minimum of work and a small amount of space, read on!
For me, and I am sure for a lot of you, pickling is not something we consider to be necessarily accessible to the apartment-dwelling vegetable eater or to the novice cook. This preconception was turned upside down a few years ago when I learned that I.J., one of our CSA members, pickled his bok choy without the use of canning equipment (the procuring of which was nixed by my husband due to a lack of storage space in our apartment). This was during one of our CSA seasons in which we had bok choy and its many brothers and cousins (tat soi, baby bok choy, Chinese cabbage, and so on). From then on, I always used my bok choy this way, shredding it in a food processor to make a sort of sauerkraut or curtido, until I also found other ways to cope with the inundation (for example, beef and bok choy over rice noodles is pretty amazing).
So the method itself isn't too hard, and I decided to use a riff on I.J.'s method to make pickled peppers and a jar of pickled kohlrabi for some friends of mine, using an Indian-inspired spice mixture. However, you can use this method on all sorts of vegetables, including good old standard cucumbers!
Recipes with pictures are below, although the method is the same.
Brine:
1.5 C water
2 C vinegar (I used a mix of white and apple cider)
1 tsp salt (you can use canning salt, but less)
1/4 C of sugar or to taste (you can taste the brine before you add it to the vegetables)
(makes about three pint jars)
Spice:
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp madras curry
1/2 tsp coriander seeds toasted on a dry pan for 30 sec-1 min
1/4 tsp cumin seeds, toasted on a dry pan for 30sec-1 min
Vegetables
Bunch of baby kohlrabi (will make enough for one pint jar)
6-10 assorted peppers (banana, sweet, poblano, red--any! will make 2 pint jars), cut into rings or cut into strips
3 garlic cloves, whole
3-6 small hot peppers or to your liking (optional, too), minced or cut into rings
2 onions, sliced
1.) To make the brine: combine all ingredients in a pan and bring to a boil. Boil for one minute and turn off heat.
2.)To make the spice: combine all ingredients.
3.)Put a garlic clove and 1-2 small hot peppers in each jar.
2.) Pack jars tightly with vegetables, alternating layers of kohlrabi or peppers with onion slices. Leave about .5" of headspace at the top of the jar. Add a spoonful of the spice. Don't worry about the spice being at the top; it will filter down through the jar when you add the brine.
3.)Add the brine to each jar, still leaving 0.5" of headspace. Close the jars with the lids.
4.)Here's the hardest part: You have to wait 1-2 weeks before you eat them. The longer you wait the stronger the pickle, but a week will do ya rather nicely.
Enjoy!
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So the method itself isn't too hard, and I decided to use a riff on I.J.'s method to make pickled peppers and a jar of pickled kohlrabi for some friends of mine, using an Indian-inspired spice mixture. However, you can use this method on all sorts of vegetables, including good old standard cucumbers!
Recipes with pictures are below, although the method is the same.
Brine:
1.5 C water
2 C vinegar (I used a mix of white and apple cider)
1 tsp salt (you can use canning salt, but less)
1/4 C of sugar or to taste (you can taste the brine before you add it to the vegetables)
(makes about three pint jars)
Spice:
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp madras curry
1/2 tsp coriander seeds toasted on a dry pan for 30 sec-1 min
1/4 tsp cumin seeds, toasted on a dry pan for 30sec-1 min
Vegetables
Bunch of baby kohlrabi (will make enough for one pint jar)
6-10 assorted peppers (banana, sweet, poblano, red--any! will make 2 pint jars), cut into rings or cut into strips
3 garlic cloves, whole
3-6 small hot peppers or to your liking (optional, too), minced or cut into rings
2 onions, sliced
1.) To make the brine: combine all ingredients in a pan and bring to a boil. Boil for one minute and turn off heat.
2.)To make the spice: combine all ingredients.
3.)Put a garlic clove and 1-2 small hot peppers in each jar.
2.) Pack jars tightly with vegetables, alternating layers of kohlrabi or peppers with onion slices. Leave about .5" of headspace at the top of the jar. Add a spoonful of the spice. Don't worry about the spice being at the top; it will filter down through the jar when you add the brine.
3.)Add the brine to each jar, still leaving 0.5" of headspace. Close the jars with the lids.
4.)Here's the hardest part: You have to wait 1-2 weeks before you eat them. The longer you wait the stronger the pickle, but a week will do ya rather nicely.
Enjoy!
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