This pie, cake really, was great. So delicious and moist . . . . The recipe came from Cooks Illustrated, which has to be the most enjoyable cooking magazine, whether for pleasant perusal or serious study. Bon Appetite has pretty, glossy pictures, but Cooks Illustrated has art, not to mention actual articles to accompany each recipe, sprinkled with good advice and culinary science. The cake itself is harder to find than cook, in the index it’s not called “Boston cream pie” but something like “wickedly delicous boston cream pie,” which can throw off even the best index skimmer. There are three parts to this delight: cake, cream, and glaze, and I cannot wait for an excuse to bake the cake all by itself. It’s that good.
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The cake was for Easter, which was delicious thank you, but even before that blessed day arrived I managed to check off one of my culinary goals: the watermelon rind pickle. I found this recipe in The Woman’s Home Companion Cookbook, which was published in the early forties, and also in The Foxfire Book. If you have never heard of The Foxfire Book (I believe it’s derived from an old magazine series, but I haven’t actually looked it up) than you are missing out. Such useful information lies within their covers. Everything from building a log cabin to slaughtering a hog. There are even pictures. My copy of Foxfire comes from my misspent childhood, when I went around reading The Black Stallion, My Side of the Mountain, and Stalking the Wild Asparagus*. Now I read Heyer. Oi vey.
Anyway, the idea of pickling rind, an hither to useless substance, tickled the remainders of my childhood fancy. Especially since the recipes called for cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. And yes, the two sources provided nearly identical recipes. So last Monday the Geekette came over and helped me boil them into existence. The Geekette has been a co-conspiritor of mine since before we really care to remember, and is responsible for such experiments as fried angel food cake. With her help we combined the ingredients and managed to make the sweetest pickles I’ve ever had. We used the rind of one watermelon, which yielded about one quart of thin, unevenly proportioned, white squares. We left out the slacked lime, because for some reason we were out (I’d also never heard of it before out side of historical fiction, which I make a habit of not learning from. Can you buy this at the grocery store?). The result was a slightly gummy confection with a bite only slightly reminiscent of bread and butter pickles. The squares were deep brown, mostly because we used ground spices instead of their whole counter parts. In fact, the ground spices were such a bother that we had to rinse off the pickles before eating them in order to avoid covering our tongues in cinnamon paste. Blech. Even though these pickles were peculiar I’m definitely going to make them again. Especially since I found a use for the left over juice.
See, the Geekette and I deemed actually pickling the pickles to be a waste of resources, since it wasn’t like we had a whole truckload of them. So there I was, with a whole bucket of christmas scented syrup in my fridge, wondering what to do with it. Mouse? Ice cream? Delicate lemon squares? The last was the clear winner. When I was a child it seems my mom made desserts all the time, every other memory is about us beating egg whites for meringues – innocently called kisses throughout my whole childhood – or sniffing at the lemon scented air as mom pulled a pan of yellow goodness out of the oven. I haven’t had lemon squares in ages now, so recreating them with pickle juice was a lot of fun. The best part was my family didn’t touch them. Score for the pickle bar.
In other news, I am now the proud owner of a Honda Fit, and Doctor Who has started up again. Oh, and I discovered how to make my dad’s camera zoom and focus. Like, at the same time.
Wow, it’s been quite a week.
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| Be blinded by the cake, ignore the absence of pickle pictures! |
Glee!
My brother made peskleciclis with pickle juice once for my son’s birthday party. He poured the juice into small Dixie cups, put a popsicle stick in each one, and put them into the freezer.They were a HUGE hit!But unless you have a 6 year old, that recipe isn’t likely to go over well at your next party!Other alternatives? You could use it as a part of a marinade
Not for pickles, hun. You can slice cmceuburs and put them in the jar and the cmceuburs would take on the flavor of the pickle juice, but would not become pickles. Pickles are made in a long process (weeks, even months) called brining. The liquid is changed often during the process and the spices and vinegar used to make pickles really should be fresh. Additionally, you must use the right kind of cucumber. Kirby cmceuburs are most commonly used for pickling. They are small and very crunchy. I like them raw, but most people don’t. They are better used for pickles.
Mix with mayonnaise and put in pottao salad.Use as a marinade for meats (especially fish) or vegetables (mix with some olive oil and fresh herbs).Make a sauce to serve over fish (mayonnaise, pickle juice, fresh dill, salt and pepper).Use in homemade barbecue sauce or add to your favorite brand of bbq sauce.
The juices form the new cbecmuurs would dilute the old brine/flavorings below the best level for flavor and pickling ability. You’ll also be introducing bacteria and fungi that a proper, fresh brine would be able to suppress for a good while. But a diluted brine would start to ferment and develop mold much sooner.Get some refrigerator pickle recipes and make your own. It costs pennies for the salt, vinegar, herbs, spices and cbecmuurs compared to store-bought. I pickle beets year round with no canning muss or fuss:buy canned plain (sliced or whole) beets, drain themmix up the sugar/vinegar/water/spices from Grandma’s recipeheat to boiling or until sugar dissolvespour over beets in a clean jar or tupperware, apply the lidrefrigerate for 2 to 3 days to allow the beets to absorb the pickling ingredients They’ll keep refrigerated for a few weeks, or maybe longer, but we eat them too quickly for them to go bad!