A gardener’s pickle

Posted by Anita on 03.19.10 11:06 PM

(c)2010 AEC *All Rights Reserved*Trying to plan a suitable entry for this month’s CanJam — the theme is alliums — left us a little perplexed. It’s not that we haven’t been known to preserve onions: I’m a big fan of the bright-pink Yucatecan pickled onions served with cochinita pibil, and Cameron has a special fondness for English-style pub onions.

But because we prefer them very crisp, we usually make both of these recipes as refrigerator pickles. (Processing seals the jars and kills any lingering toxins, but it also cooks whatever’s in the jar.) Neither of us really cares for sweet condiments with our savory dishes, so onion jams were out.

Then it occurred to me: Giardiniera.

Now, strictly speaking, onions are just one of this Italian-style pickle’s many components, but the little devils take an ungodly amount of time to prep, way more than all of the other parts combined. First you have to slice off the hair-like root end, but oh-so-carefully so as to not dislodge the onion’s layers from one another. Then you have to peel each tiny onion — no mean feat when natural sugars keep papery skins adhered firmly to outer layers of the onion’s flesh — without cutting them in half or otherwise mangling them.

It’s a labor of love, I tell you, but it’s all worth it when you open up that first jar and taste. The onions are integral part of giardiniera, the linchpin of its piquant flavor.

Giardiniera means “gardener” in Italian, the implication being that this hodgepodge of different vegetables would be a great way to preserve the bounty of an active kitchen plot. But its traditional components — red peppers, carrots, celery, onions, and cauliflower — are never simultaneously seen in abundance in any garden I’ve ever known. Even in Italy, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find red peppers and cauliflower in the same patch. (I did a little research on how this seasonal impossibility got its start, and came up empty; if anyone knows how these ingredients ended up in a single pickle, I’d love to hear!)

Other than the peppers, though, we’re able to get everything we need from our own garden, or nearby farmers, even in late winter. In place of the bell peppers, I used a bunch of skin-on piquillo peppers I’d stashed in the freezer last summer, but added them to the mixture just before portioning the cooked vegetables into the jars, to avoid softening them any further. Their texture wasn’t so hot, but they’re mostly there for color, anyway. Next year, I might just — shhh! — buy an imported pepper or two.

(c)2010 AEC *All Rights Reserved*(c)2010 AEC *All Rights Reserved*(c)2010 AEC *All Rights Reserved*(c)2010 AEC *All Rights Reserved*(c)2010 AEC *All Rights Reserved*

Giardiniera (Italian-style Pickled Vegetables)
— adapted from Sunset Canning, Freezing, and Drying

1/2 pound carrots*
1/2 pound celery*
2 red bell peppers
1 large cauliflower or romanesco
1 pound small white pearl onions
1 cup pickling salt
2 quarts white vinegar
1/4 cup mustard seed
2T celery seed
1 small dried hot pepper
1-1/2 cups sugar

Peel carrots, then cut into 1-1/2-inch by 1/4-inch sticks; you should have about 4 cups*. Remove strings from the celery, then cut into into 1-1/2-inch by 1/2-inch planks; you should have about 3 cups*. Stem and seed the peppers peppers, then cut into wide strips. Break the cauliflower into florets; trim the stems. Carefully peel the onions, leaving the root intact. Try not to swear.

In a very large bowl, dissolve the pickling salt in 4 quarts cold water. Add the vegetables to the brine, and refrigerate for 12 to 18 hours. Drain the vegetables, rinse in cold water, and drain again.

Prepare canner, lids, and 6 pint jars according to the usual method.

canjam01Combine the vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, chili pepper, and sugar in a 6-quart stainless or enamel pan. Bring to a boil and continue to cook for 3 minutes. Add the vegetables, reduce heat to low, and cook for a few minutes until the vegetables just begin to soften. Remove from heat and discard the chili.

Using a funnel, pack vegetables into hot jars up to just shy of 1/2 inch of the rim. Ladle hot pickling liquid to cover vegetables, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.

Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace; wipe rims and apply lids and rings.

Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely submerged. Bring to a boil and process covered for 5 minutes. Remove canner lid; wait 5 minutes, then remove jars. Cool, check for seals, and store in a cool, dark place for up to a year.

* Note: After reading comments from a friend and long-time reader, I suspect that my weight-to-volume measurements are incorrect here. Please see this comment and this follow-up.

CanJam, Italian, locavore, preserving & infusing
10 Comments »

 

10 Comments

Comment by Burke

Hello from Walnut Creek! It’s so funny. I picked up a huge jar of this at savemart today while shopping for carnitas..just for some strange reason sounded good. Yours looks WAY better. nice pics

Posted on 03.21.10 at 10:19PM

Comment by meg

Looks fantastic! I’ve wanted to make this at some point. Perhaps when my cauliflower or carrots come in. Yum!

Posted on 03.22.10 at 11:11PM

Comment by Mimi

Yum! In the Pacific Northwest, I’ve done one basically out of my CSA box, so sometimes it all comes together at once.

Enjoy!

Posted on 03.24.10 at 11:42AM

Comment by Lesley

I *love* giardiniera. (Although I have no idea how to say the word — I just call it “the hot pickled vegetable stuff.”) I’ve made pickled carrots and radishes before, but haven’t thought to add in the pearl onions and cauliflower. Must do this next time.

Posted on 03.24.10 at 2:11PM

Comment by Anita

Lesley: I believe it’s “zjar-di-NYAIR-uh” in Italian, and more like “jar-din-AIR-ah” in American English. The latter more often refers to the chopped condiment you find on Italian Beef sandwiches in Chicago, which is related but different to this recipe.

Here’s an Italian saying it: http://www.forvo.com/word/giardiniera/

Posted on 03.24.10 at 2:56PM

Comment by ap269

This looks so lovely and colorful! Good job on the challenge!

Posted on 03.25.10 at 4:10AM

Pingback by Cool and Composed — Last Night's Dinner

[…] the end I went with something that was a little bit like an antipasto salad, with shades of giardiniera and panzanella thrown in for good measure, a crisp-crunchy-tart-tender-tangy melange of shaved […]

Posted on 05.27.10 at 11:09AM

Comment by Jennifer Hess

Making my second attempt at this, and I’m running into the same problem I had last week on my first go-round. I weighed my carrots and celery, and when I cut them to spec (even measured them with a ruler today), I get nowhere near the volume indicated in the recipe – for instance, my 1/2 lb of carrots yields only about 1.5 cups worth. Because this is something we want to process, I ended up not going forward last weekend because I was worried that it would screw something up if I didn’t have the proportions right. I’m in the same boat again, and since I actually peeled the onions already (getting that rage-inducing task out of the way first – ugh), I don’t want to scrap it all again. Any thoughts? Is volume more important than weight here? I have plenty of carrots and celery that I can use to make the final volume called for in the recipe, if that’s what I should really be paying attention to. Thanks so much!

Posted on 10.03.10 at 12:38PM

Comment by Anita / Married ...with Dinner

Ugh, Jen, sorry about that — I wonder why my measurements are so off?? I feel terrible that you scrapped everything from last week, especially knowing what a pain in the ass those onions are. {sob}

The good news is, since they’re all low-acid vegetables, the proportions don’t really matter for safe processing — and they’re in so much acid that even if they were a mix of low and high acid, it would be fine. If you’re sick of prepping, you can go with what you have; if you want more of the carrots and celery (the latter is strangely addictive), keep going. Because the brine is pretty much pure vinegar, you’ve got a very wide margin of safety.

Posted on 10.03.10 at 12:41PM

Pingback by October Can Jam | Giardiniera «

[…] I Googled and found a recipe for giardiniera over at Married…with Dinner. I compared her list of vegetables with the vegetables listed on the Snarf’s jar, and […]

Posted on 10.21.10 at 11:06PM

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