Brine-less vacuum pickles

After all these pickle experiments, I’ve noticed that there’s only so many pickles I can eat. When I started this summer, I only had a few jars, so in order to try a new recipe I had to hurry up and finish one of the jars I already had. Now, after I’ve collected jars for months, I’ve found a way to get around the jars completely.

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Half Sour Dill Cucumber Pickles

Half sour pickles, sometimes called “new pickles”, weren’t my favorite growing up. They were overlooked in the quest for the most lip-puckering sour garlic pickles. As my taste buds matured, however, I came to appreciate the more delicate saltiness of a good half sour pickle. From what I’ve noticed, half sours are made from very similar recipes to full sours, but are not left to ferment for as long.

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Raclette, a lesser-known melted cheese meal

While grocery shopping last week, I noticed a wheel of raclette cheese at the cheese counter. The sight of that cheese brought back warm memories of the first time I tasted it, during my time in France, with my host family gathered around the table on a cold winter’s night. The memory of raclette, the meal and the cheese, struck me as a great way to spend the holiday with family.

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Bread and Butter Pickles

Of the three kinds of cucumber pickles I experimented with since the summer, the most successful were the “bread and butter” pickles. Because of their sweetness, these usually aren’t on my crave list. When I think of bread and butter pickles, I think of almost-neon manufactured, sickly sweet, acidic spears that seem to last indefinitely on supermarket shelves not because of their pickled state, but because of a long, unpronounceable list of artificial preservatives and colors. I’ll eat them every once in a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a hankering for one.

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Lemon Pickles

This post has been a long time coming. I really wanted to make sure I liked these little guys before posting them. Last night, we finished the jar of lemon pickles we made around the time we had Iron Chef Lemons at work. That’s how many lemons there were – it took over three months for the two of us to eat the whole batch.

When faced with an abundance of lemons, I remembered my mother pickling pretty round lemon slices as a child. I didn’t enjoy the acidic taste then. But then, there are many things I didn’t enjoy as a child that I enjoy now. I decided that I had to make them myself before completely ruling them out.

Before calling my mother, as I tend to do in these situations, I decided to pull out my copy of Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck. This book has saved me many a how-to phone call when it comes to family recipes. My mother heard of its existence a few years ago and went out and got one for every household in our family. The recipes are very close to the way my grandmother used to cook, and the pictures might as well be of my own family gatherings (right down to the dishes the author uses for olives!). I will say,  however, that since these recipes have been passed down so many generations without being written down, the instructions can often be confusing or include editing errors. I’ve learned to use this book as a guideline but not an exact set of instructions.

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