This particular Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge was called “Eat Your Veggies” and, as you can guess, the focus is on dishes full of vegetables! So, in keeping with the theme of “Preserves” this month, I chose one preserve in particular that is a celebration of summertime vegetables!
Piccalilli
“A peck green tomatoes, 8 large onions chopped fine with one cup salt stirred in. Let it stand all night, in the morning drain off all the liquor. Take 2 quarts water and one of vinegar. Boil all together 20 minutes. Drain through a sieve or colander, put back into kettle, and turn over it 2 quarts vinegar and 1 lb sugar. Add 8 green peppers and 3 red peppers, chopped fine, ½ lb white mustard seed, 2 tablespoonfuls pepper, 2 of cinnamon, 1 of cloves, 2 of ginger, 1 of all spice, ½ tablespoonful cayenne pepper.”
Contributed by Mrs. James Gosby Brown, Rosemond, PA
Smith, Jacqueline Harrison Famous Old Receipts… pg. 301
I have to admit that the use of green tomatoes intrigued me. I have never cooked with them before and was curious to see how they were when cooked. The hunt for them was quite an adventure as well, going to several farm stands and having many different conversations, before finding some at a very local establishment. The woman I talked to was very excited to hear about another way of using these green delights, other than making fried green tomatoes.
After I got home I weighed the tomatoes and found I had 5 lbs worth. I then researched how many pounds of green tomatoes are in a peck (around 12 1/2 lbs). Then, using my ever-growing math skills I figured out that every amount in the recipe will have to be divided by 2.5 so that the amounts equal out to the amount of green tomatoes I have. So below I have amounts, organized by major steps, of what I would need for each ingredient.
Stage 1 (night before): 5 lbs green tomatoes (cubed), 3 onions (diced), a little less than 1/2 a cup of salt.
Stage 2 (the next morning): 3 cups of water, 1 1/2 cups of vinegar (white is fine, I used apple cider).
Stage 3 (after the stewing): 3 cups of vinegar, a little less than a cup of sugar, 3 green peppers, 1 red pepper, a little less than a 1/4 of a cup of mustard seeds, 1 Tbl pepper, 1 Tbl Cinnamon, 1/2 Tbl of Cloves, 1 Tbl of Ginger, 1/2 Tbl of All Spice, less than a 1/4 Tbl of Cayenne.
So the night before I took the 5 lbs of green tomatoes (which by this point had started to turn red) and cut them up into large cubes. A good thing to know in the future, tomatoes will continue to ripen even after picked. So use those green tomatoes as soon as you get them!
Once they were all cubed I put them into a bowl and set it aside.
Next was the dicing of the onion. Or, at least cutting them into similarly-sized small pieces. I will be the first to admit I have yet to get down the even dice of an onion, even knowing the technique of how it is achieved. And yes, I was crying like a baby while I cut them. Gets me every time!
Once the onions were diced and put into the bowl (and I washed my hands and dried my tears), I measured out less than half a cup of salt to mix in with the tomatoes/onions. Then, once added, I mixed them all together so that everything was well incorporated.
Once mixed, I covered with a tea towel and let it sit on the counter overnight…
… well, for at least 2 hours. By then the whole apartment (our kitchen is open to the living room and hall to the bedrooms) smelled like pungent onions. This time EVERYONE’S eyes were watering.
So, realizing the tea towel was a poor barrier to this smell, I got out plastic wrap and tin foil and covered the bowl as tightly as possible. And, luckily, the smell started to dissipate almost immediately. And the open windows got rid of the last remnants so that we could all breathe a bit better.
Then I left the bowl to sit overnight on the kitchen counter till the morning.
THE NEXT DAY…
I lifted the foil/plastic and the pungent smell of onions returned. But I was ready! I had opened several windows and the screen door before hand. I knew I would need it when I started cooking today.
Once I drained off the liquid from the salted green tomatoes/onions, I added 1 1/2 cups of apple cider vinegar and 3 cups of water to the pot. (Make sure the pot is twice as big as the amount of the green tomatoes/onions. You’re going to need the space!)
Then put the pot on the stove to heat up and, once it starts to boil, put the timer on for 20 minutes.
And then, if you haven’t done it already, open all your windows and doors because your house is about to reek of vinegar! See, this is why I planned ahead of time. Finally learned my lesson! (Or maybe the lesson is not to boil vinegar…)
While the mixture was boiling I started prepping the third stage by dicing up the red pepper…
… and the green peppers.
I then combined them all into a bowl and put that aside for later.
I then measured out all the spices (grinding some that I had still whole, mainly the cloves and all spice). I highly recommend grinding whatever spices you can fresh, it really makes a HUGE difference. I would also recommend you invest in a spice grinder, which I have yet to do. But I do have an energetic and helpful four-year-old boy that was a very happy to pound something into a pulp!
After 20 minutes the tomatoes and onions had boiled down nicely and were ready to be strained again.
Once the tomatoes/onions were drained, I poured them back into the pot and began adding the rest of the ingredients… 3 cups of apple cider vinegar, less than a cup of granulated sugar, the diced red and green peppers, all the spices and the less than a 1/4 a cup of yellow mustard seed. I went looking for white mustard seed but I couldn’t find any. So yellow mustard seed it is!
By this point the pot was pretty full of piccalilli mixture. It also looked much more colorful and smelled very vibrant and spicy!
I ladled it into pint-sized canning jars (though I didn’t actually go through the canning process, but you could if you like) and stored them in the fridge for a few days so the flavors could mellow together. In all I filled 5 pint jars (about 10 cups).
A FEW DAYS LATER…
Taste Test Time!!!
I have to admit I was a bit skeptical on whether I would like this. I’m not a big fan of sweet and sour flavors together and I hoped that, even if I didn’t like it, that it would still be a good piccalilli.
I have to admit I was surprised of how fresh it tasted. The sweet/sour taste was very prominent, but the peppers added a fresh quality that was lacking with the cooked green tomatoes and onions. Though the tomatoes were firmer than I expected, probably because they were green to start with.
But the true star of this dish was the spices. It lent a very exotic air to the dish. And though I ate it on crackers I feel like it would be great for marinating pork.
I’ll have to research more into the history/cooking practices of piccalilli to get some ideas, especially since I have 5 jars sitting in my fridge…