Pickled pineapple with jalapeños and radishes - Sydney Royal Easter Show winning pickle recipe!

After several attempts since 2014, I finally reach the pinnacle of pickling - I got the Blue Ribbon at the Sydney Royal Easter Show pickling competition (Vinegar pickles - class 413)! 

The vinegar pickles category requires competitors to submit two different pickles.  My first pickle was a pickled pineapple.  The second was pickled fennel and beetroot.  It's been around 8 months since the Easter Show but I've finally got a bit of time to share the winning recipe!

I'd noticed in several previous Easter Shows, the winning entries had one pickled vegetable and one pickled fruit.  So if I was serious about getting the Blue Ribbon, and in the absence of a clear judging criteria, I decided to follow suit. 

I  came up with the idea to submit pickled pineapple after reading about Al Pastor tacos which has grilled pineapple on it.  I thought a pickled pineapple would go great on a pork taco, or with anything pork-related.  The spices and herbs included were Asian inspired to compliment the pineapple.  The red radishes transfer their colour into the pickle brine and give the pickle a nice orange/pink hue. 

I thought I'd also add a Filipino twist to the recipe by using coconut vinegar for the brine.  Coconut vinegar is available in most Asian grocery shops, particularly Filipino shops. 

Pickled Pineapple Recipe

Ingredients

• A ripe pineapple, skin and core removed, cut into bite sized pieces.
• A bunch of radishes (the red ones), sliced thinly with a mandolin.
• Jalapeños (as many as you want), sliced thinly with a mandolin. 
• A thumb sized pice of galangal, sliced thinly.
• A thumb sized piece of ginger, sliced thinly.
• Coconut vinegar, 1 cup.
• Rice Vinegar, 1 cup.
• Sake or rice wine, 1/2 cup.
• Water, 1.5 cups.
• 5 lime leaves (kaffir lime).    
• Sugar, 4 tablespoons (or more if you like a sweeter pickle).
• Salt.

Making the pickle

1. One you've cut the pineapple into small, bite sized pieces, place it into a bowl with the radishes and jalapenos, cover them in about 3 tablespoons of salt, and make sure each piece is salted.  The salt will draw out some moisture from the fruit and vegetables.  
2. Into a saucepan, add the coconut vinegar, rice vinegar, sake, water, lime leaves, ginger, galangal, sugar and 1 tablespoon of salt. Bring to the boil, ensuring all the sugar and salt are dissolved.
3. Once some additional moisture has been removed from the pineapple and vegetables (about 2 hours), discard the extracted salty juice. 
4. Place the pineapple, radishes and jalapeños into jars.  Add a lime leaf, some ginger and galangal slices into each jar.  
5. Once each jar is filled, cover the jarred ingredients with the brine.
6. The pineapple will last a month if you don't can the jars.
7. If you want to can the jars, then boil the jars, ensuring the jars are submerged in boiling water, for 10 minutes.

Pickled Cucumbers - Gherkins, Spears and Chips

Long time, no post! It's been a several months since I last posted something on Jarhead (work, uni and a butchery blog has been taking up all my time!) but rest assured the pickling has continued.  

With the start of summer comes the beginning of cucumber season.  Over the next few weeks I'll be posting about some different approaches I've taken to preserving cucumbers.

The last time I made cucumbers was in December 2013.  I had eaten or given away most of the jars, but I had one remaining.  I had stored the cucumbers in a mason jar and had processed it in a boiling water bath, so it should have been shelf stable. So I cracked it open and cautiously tasted the pickles - to my relief, they were still really juicy and delicious.  The canning had been a success! They had definitely fermented a bit and had changed colour into a deep khaki, but the cucumbers still had structural pickle integrity and hadn't softened or deteriorated.

Year old pickles

They were still delicious!

For this previous batch of cucumbers, I went to the Flemington markets in the middle of December, which is after the peak of the Kirby cucumber season so the supplies at the market were fairly sparse.  With this in mind, I decided to get in early this time, at the end of November, to scoop up the Kirbys at their best. 

That morning, Flemington markets was insanely busy with lots of families stocking up on produce for the holiday season.  Compared to last time when there was only one vendor selling Kirby cucumbers, there were actually several vendors offering them – the hard part was working out which ones had the prize cucumbers!

After circling the markets and spotting the cucumber vendors, I snapped up two crates of larger Kirby cucumbers from one vendor (I was lucky because they were his last crates!) These larger Kirby cucumbers looked like they had just been pulled out of the ground and had a bit of dirt on them, but nothing that couldn't be washed off.  They came in different shapes and certainly weren't aesthetically perfect, but I really don't mind having some weirdly shaped cucumbers - they add character to the batch and, in any event, they can be cut up into spears and chips to fill the gaps between the whole cucumbers.  

You need to look for a good size (smaller cucumbers are preferable as they tend to retain their shape and integrity once pickled), good colour (a nice shade of green with not too much yellow), not too much damage (but don't be turned off by a few imperfections), and firm feel – you don’t want a limp pickle! You can work around most of this, but just make sure the price you pay reflects the quality of the product.  

I lugged these crates back to the car, and was about to leave but had last minute cucumber remorse and decided I needed a few more.  One vendor, who was particularly popular that morning, was selling bags of smaller, almost perfect looking cucumbers.  So after buying an additional bag from that vendor, I ended up with around 10kg of cucumbers in total.  This came at a cost of $35, which was an absolute bargain.  

Driving back home, I was slightly worried that I had gone overboard on the quantity - how was I going to be able to process all of these cucumbers in one weekend? When stacked up together, the pile of cucumbers was monolithic! 

I wanted to give the pickled cucumbers to my family, friends and work colleagues as Christmas presents (I mean, who doesn't love pickles?) But as I started to rise and scrub the cucumbers, I realised that I would have enough cucumbers to give out as presents and still have a year's supply for myself!  

So I decided that I would process most of the cucumbers using the same recipe I used last time, but with slight tweaks to perfect it! Then, I would experiment and make a few different types of pickles, which I will post up on the blog in the coming weeks: 

• Dill and Cucumber Relish;
• Turkish style cucumbers pickled in lemon juice;
• Fermented kosher pickles; and
• Spicy Korean cucumber pickles.

Jarhead's Perfect Pickled Cucumber (Gherkin) Recipe

I decided to use the same recipe as last year to process most of the cucumbers.  While I thought that the 2013 batch was excellent, some sugar added to the brine would balance the flavour out.  

Processing the cucumbers is time consuming.  The first step of the process is letting the cucumbers sit in a salt brine overnight.  I had containers of cucumbers sitting all over my small apartment, which ended up smelling like vinegar for a few days - I might need to invest in one enormous container for next time.  

This part of the process really requires an extra pair of hands - or as many people as you can bribe to assist.  Between heating the pickling brine, sterilising and packing jars, and then canning the jars in a large pot, there's just too much happening simultaneously for one person to manage.  

But in the end I had more than 20 jars to give out as gifts.  For a simple way of making an old jar look presentable, or at least somewhat 'rustic' and folksy, we tied some Xmas pudding calico over the lids using standard brown twine.  They looked great! 

Another tip for those starting out  - labelling. I’ve found out the hard way how important it is to label your jars, at least with a manufacture date, but preferably also the contents - once you get a few batches going with different recipes it becomes very difficult to work out which is which. So invest in a label maker, or just a permanent marker!

Recipe


What you need:

• 1.5 kg of Kirby pickling cucumbers;

• 2 cups of apple cider vinegar;

• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced (I like them to be really garlicky);

• 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds;

• 2 tablespoons of coriander seeds;

• 1/4 cup of sea salt;

• 1 bunch of dill;

• 1 tablespoon of peppercorns;

• 3 tablespoons of sugar;

• 6 cups of water.  

The pickling:

1. Place the water in a pot and on a low heat, dissolve the salt, peppercorns; coriander seeds, and fennel seeds.  Set this brine aside and allow to cool to room temperature.
2. Wash and scrub the cucumbers well, making sure there's no spines or dirt.  
3. Slice off a thin round near the blossom end of the cucumbers.   The blossom end contains an enzyme that can lead to the softening of the pickles.  For any oddly shaped cucumbers that won't be easily packed into a jar, slice them into circular rounds (chips), or cut them lengthways into spears (quarters or halves).  These chips and spears will be good for filing the gaps in a jar between the whole gherkins.  
4. Place the prepared cucumbers in a large plastic container and then cover in the cooled salt brine. Also add in a handful of dill. You can weigh down the cucumbers with a plate to ensure they're submerged.  Leave them in the brine for 24 hours in the fridge or at room temperature.  
5. 24 hours later, measure out 2 cups of brine and put it aside.  Sieve the rest of the brine and save the peppercorns and other aromatics.
6. Then, pack the cucumbers into your clean, sterilised jars.  As you pack them in, add in a sprig or two of dill in each jar along with some slices of garlic.    
7. Mix the vinegar and the reserved brine in a pot and bring to the boil.  Add in the sliced garlic.
8. Pour the boiling hot pickling brine over the pickles.  
9. For long term shelf storage you can process the jars in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.  See the recipe in my post about Caramel Apple Jam for more information about processing jars in a water bath.

Olives - The Curing and Preserving Process - Stage 1

Back in April I was lucky enough to get my hands on about a kilo and a half of fresh olives.  It's olive season right now, and my girlfriend's dad (for convenience, let's call him the 'Jarhead in-law') was being overrun with olives.

Olive trees are very hardy and seem to be able to grow anywhere - Canberra has a very harsh climate yet the Jarhead-in-law's trees were abundant.  The actual variety of olives that we picked is still a bit of a mystery, but we think that maybe they're a variety from Liguria in Italy, or Spanish Manzanilla olives.  Their shape doesn't seem to be pointy enough to be Kalamata olives.  So if anyone out there can name the variety of an olive just by looking at it, please feel free to identify my olives! 

The whole concept of using olives for human consumption is pretty interesting.  They're not very easy to eat.  By that I mean, getting the olives to a stage where you can consume them without adverse effects is quite difficult.  Fresh olives are hard and really bitter (just don't even think about eating them straight off the tree - it's surprising how many people aren't aware of this).  Birds don't even eat olives off the trees until they're black or overripe (and then you should see what comes out the other end!).

The bitterness comes from a chemical compound called oleuropein which is found in all olives.  You need to process the olives by brining and/or pickling them in order to remove the oleuropein and, in turn, the bitterness.  Obviously, you can also make the olives into oil by cooking and pressing them.  But it's strange to think that over five thousand years ago, ancient Syrians found a way to make olives palatable and delicious - you can only imagine that it was out of necessity.  

There are actually several ways of processing olives to make them edible.   A quick internet search yields dozens of methods, all with slight variations, and without trying each method it's hard to know which is the best.  That said, all methods have one thing in common - they're all very time consuming and require a lot of patience and dedication.  The recipe I decided on was one of the ways that the Jarhead-in-law was processing his olives. This method also appears to be one of the more lengthy methods, taking around 4 months in total.

The first step of the process is fairly simple - you place the freshly harvested olives in a container (I used a 2 litre jar) and cover them with fresh water so they're fully submerged  It's important to take note of the start date so you can time the process precisely.  The picture at the start of this post was what the olives looked like on day one.

Then you need to change the water each day for the next 21 days.  Yeah, that's right... THREE WEEKS of daily water changing.  

The olives, 11 days into the first soaking

In comparing this method to other methods, I've noticed that some recipes don't call for the olives to be soaked in fresh water to begin with.  As previously mentioned, the reason for doing this is to leech out the oleuropein.  It also means the olives may start fermenting and softening slightly.

I'm still currently on this soaking stage with my olives.  They are slowly changing colour - changing from a light green to a brown.  I was worried that some bad bacteria might have got into the jar and that the olives were rotting, but they are still quite firm so I don't think this is the case.  A lot of the recipes online mention a scum that forms while the olives are submerged.  So maybe some of the darker brown colour is this scum building up on some of the olives. 

I also noticed that my olives aren't floating.  The Jarhead-in-law's olives have become more and more buoyant throughout the process, so he has to use a weight to submerge them in their containers.  But mine are sitting nicely on the bottom of my jar.  Hopefully this isn't a bad sign!

The olives, almost 20 days into the first soaking

The next stage of the process, which will begin in a couple of days time is the brining/pickling process. I'll update you all on this second stage soon and will post a complete recipe too.  I may also have a post coming up on pressing olive oil! So stay tuned for more...

Lampries

My girlfriend's dad used to live next door to a Sri Lankan family.  He would often smell some really delicious and interesting fragrances coming from next door.  So he would go over and visit so he could taste whatever was being cooked.

One of his favourite Sri Lankan dishes is actually a combination of several dishes.  It's called Lampries.  So when we last visited him, he decided to use as kitchen hands to make a big batch of the dish.

The guru of Asian cuisine and writer of several quintessential books, Charmaine Solomon, describes Lampries as a 'festive meal' which is made for special occasions.  Essentially, it's like a Sri Lankan TV dinner, featuring a fragrant curry, rich ghee rice, sambals and pickles and some fried meatballs. Traditionally they are wrapped up in banana leaves but its easier and more practical to use foil.

With so many components in the Lampries we cooked them all over two days.   The recipes were very detailed.  Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook seems to be a bit of an institution in Australian kitchens.  For some reason, this cook book must have been given to all housewives in the 1970s as a standard issue book - but it keeps getting re-released in newer editions.  Here's a photo of my mum's version, which is at least four decades old (it smells like a school library book!)

The recipes in the Sri Lankan section of the book are, in my view, the best - probably because Charmaine Solomon is actually of Sri Lankan background.

I was really blown away by two of the pickles in particular so I've included some recipes below.  Each are adapted from The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon.  I've also included some descriptions and photos of the other components.

The Eggplant Pickle

A pickle featuring fried eggplant! You just can't go wrong!

This is the first of the three preserves/sambals that were included,  and is probably the most involved of the three.  The salting of the eggplant draws out all of the moisture and any bitterness from the flesh.

This pickle would go fantastically with all types of curries, and would add a good flavour hit to an ordinary sandwich.

Eggplant Pickle Recipe

(Inspired an adapted from The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon)

What you need:

• 2 teaspoons of sugar;
• 1 teaspoon of chilli powder;
• a stick of cinnamon;
• 3 green chillies, with seeds, sliced;
• 3/4 cup of hot water;
• 1/2 cup of tamarind pulp;
• 1 teaspoon of ground fennel;
• 2 teaspoons of ground cumin;
• 1 tablespoon of ground coriander;
• 1 tablespoon of grated ginger;
• 5 garlic cloves, sliced;
• 1 medium brown onion, finely chopped;
• 1/2 cup of malt vinegar;
• 1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds;
• 2 teaspoons of ground turmeric;
• Vegetable oil for frying;
• 2 teaspoons of salt;
• 2 large eggplants, sliced into discs.

The pickling process:

1. Salting the eggplant:  Sprinkle salt on all of the discs of eggplant along with some turmeric.  This will draw the moisture out of the eggplants.  Set aside in a colander for an hour.
2. Making the paste:  Put mustard seeds and vinegar into a food processor and blitz until the seeds are ground.  Then add in the onions, garlic and ginger and blitz the mixture again until you get a thick paste.  Set aside.  
3. Frying the eggplant:  Heat about an inch of oil in a pan and fry the eggplant discs in batches until they are brown on both sides.  Reserve half a cup of the cooking oil for later.  Place the cooked eggplant on some paper towel to drain excess oil. 
4. Toasting spices:  Place the coriander, cumin and fennel into a dry small pan and toast on a low heat until fragrant. 
5. Tamarind pulp:  Put the tamarind pulp into the 3/4 cup of hot water.  Strain and discard the seeds.  Reserve the liquid.  (You can also buy tamarind liquid from some Asian food stores.  This would eliminate this step).  
6. Frying the paste:  Place the reserved oil into a pan, and fry the blended paste for five minutes.  
7. Adding the rest into the mix:  Then add in the toasted spices, chillies, cinnamon, chilli powder and tamarind liquid.  Also add in the fried eggplant.  Mix everything up and allow to simmer (covered) for 15 minutes.
8. Sugar:  Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the sugar.  
9. Storage:  Place the eggplant pickle into sterilised jars.  This should keep for several weeks in the fridge.  

Chilli Sambal

This is probably my favourite part of the Lampries.  On the face of it, the sambal seems a bit strange.  It uses an ingredient that, prior to making the Lampries, I had never used before - 'prawns in spices'.  Check out the can below.  But having now used it, I'm tempted to put it into everything to see if it makes everything taste amazing! It's essentially prawns that have been blended up with garlic and chilli and onions (and god knows what else).

This sambal is extremely versatile and I think it would be great with a lot of other asian foods - like on the side of a Hainanese chicken rice, or as a sauce for some roti or shallot pancakes.

Chilli Sambal Recipe

(Inspired an adapted from The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon)

What you need:

• 4 medium brown onions, finely chopped;
• 1/2 cup of peanut oil;
• 2 teaspoons of chilli powder;
• 200g of 'prawns in spices';
• 2 tablespoons of malt vinegar;
• a pinch of salt
• 2 teaspoons of sugar.  

Making the sambal:

1. Slowly fry the onions in the oil for about 10 minutes until soft and golden brown.  Ensure that hte onions don't burn.
2. Once the onions are brown, add in the chilli powder, the malt vinegar and the 'prawns in spices'.  Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  
3. Uncover the pan and then reduce the sambal until the liquid evaporates and the oil starts to separate from the other ingredients.  
4. Season to taste and then store in a jar. 

Lampries Curry

Four types of meat in one curry - this is my dream curry, it's almost as if I had written the recipe!  We made the curry a couple of nights before we ate the lampries.  The base flavour of the curry is a Sri Lankan curry powder which made the curry unbelievably fragrant.

The meats are boiled first - which I found a bit unusual, but then the stock that is left over after the boiling is used for the ghee rice, which makes the rice intensely rich and savoury.  The meats are then chopped up into small pieces and mixed together - in the end it's hard to determine what kind of meat you're eating, but after all of the cooking, all of the meats are really very tender.

Prawn Blanchan

This is the most unusual feature of the Lampries.  The prawn blanchan is made up of shrimp flakes (which was another ingredient unknown to me before I made Lampries), toasted dessicated coconut, chilli powder, tumeric and lime juice.  First you toast the flakes and the coconut to intensify their flavour.  These dry ingredients form a thick paste when blended together with the other ingredients and you put a teaspoon of it in each Lampries parcel.  It imparts a fishy fragrance throughout the parcel and is the saltiest condiement in the Lampries.  I thought it was really delicious, but I was told that a lot of other people find it overpowering.

Frikkadels

Crumbed, fried meatballs - spiced heavily with clove, and Worcestershire sauce.  These tasty morsels are a leftover from the Dutch rule of Sri Lanka.  They're described in Charmaine Solomon's book as "Dutch Forcemeat Balls".  I'm not entirely sure what 'forcemeat' is, but it's delicious!

Ghee Rice
The ghee rice is actually one of my favourite parts of the Lampries.  I've never had rice so flavourful, but I guess that's what happens when you cook rice in clarified butter and a stock made from four types of meat.  The cloves, cardamom and cinnamon make this rice pleasantly fragrant too, and then the spoon of coconut milk over the rice before you wrap the Lampries, makes the rice nice and creamy.

Serving the Lampries
To serve, you can reheat the Lampries parcels (which could have been in the fridge or freezer) in an oven at about 180 degrees Celsius for about 20-30 minutes, until heated right through.

In terms of side dishes, we had some mango chutney, some sliced tomato and cucumber, a cooling raita using homemade yoghurt (stay tuned for a recipe), some sliced banana with lemon juice and
coconut, (weird but actually works!) and a dish called Mallung, which is a vegetable dish consisting of wilted shredded green leaves with coconut and other spices.  We used beetroot leaves in the Mallung, which were delicious.

It really is a great meal, and luckily I've got a few parcels in the freezer, which we're saving up for the next time we get a Lampries craving...