Traditionally, piccalilli is a spirited yellow crunchy vegetable pickle.  This salad was created by my sous-chef, Dorothy Harrison.  Not too surprisingly, it goes very well with cold meats or oily fish, as well as being a fine dish eaten by itself.

I’m having a tough time calling this a “recipe”.  It’s just so darn simple to make, it feels like the printer forgot some of the steps.

Having never eaten, or for that matter, even heard of a piccalilli, I went out into the great wide Internet for more information. Wikipedia had exactly what I needed, per usual.

Piccalilli is a relish of chopped pickled vegetables and spices; regional recipes vary considerably.  British piccalilli contains various vegetables and seasonings of mustard and turmeric.  It is used as an accompaniment to foods such as sausages, bacon, eggs, toast, cheese, tomatoes and beer.

That’s a pretty impressive list of food stuffs one could eat the original piccalilli with.  I could see this being my “go-to” salad for near future for it’s sheer straightforwardness and compatibility.

A quick pic of all the needed ingredients.  No, really.  This is it.

The haricot verts-or green beans for us non-french speaking folk-needed to have their tops and tails removed before a quick blanching in heavily salted water.  It turned out that this step took longer than actually assembling the salad!

In less than five minutes, the necessary amount of green beans had properly blanched.  I tried to follow Thomas Keller’s Big-pot blanching technique. Big-pot blanching involves boiling vegetables in brine strength salted water until they are cooked through.  Supposedly the result will be vividly colored, perfectly seasoned vegetables.

The only problem is that I’m a creature of habit, and plunging recently blanched veggies in ice water is almost second nature by now.  I’ll have to try Mr. Keller’s technique again some time without the polar dip.

Next up I needed to peel and thinly slice a red onion. Luckily I had just sharpened my favorite knife…

… meaning razor thin onion slices were a snap to produce. Happiness is a stupidly sharp kitchen knife.

After finishing with the onion, I moved on to the cauliflower.  The biggest of the bunch at the supermarket, I ended up only needing half of it for the salad.  The rest was roasted and enjoyed with dinner the next day.

The part I did use was broken into “generous florets” and set aside.

The last vegetable that needed a little prep work was a single cucumber. Mr. Henderson asks that the pre-pickle be cut into three same sized sections, which are then sliced in half, and finally cut into wedges.

Not my cleanest knife-work, sadly. But I suppose it was close enough. My prep finished, it was time to make the salad dressing.

In my haste to assemble the dressing, I completely forgot to take pictures of the process.  That’s okay though: I’ll just tell you what I did.  First I got out my mini prep food processor.  Then I went hunting for the top for about 10 minutes.  I might have swore a little.  Then I found the top and did a little dance in celebration.  Into the mini prep went a little sugar, a splash of red wine vinegar, some English mustard (Colman’s is my favorite), two cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and almost one cup of extra-virgin olive oil.  One minute of holding down the chop button and the dressing was completed.

Ta-da!

With all of the prep work done, constructing the salad was trivial. To prove my point, I’ll explain how with a haiku.

Combine everything
Include the sweet bright dressing
Don’t forget capers

Ah, that’s right!  I forgot to mention that a handful of briny capers are also called for.  I portioned out the salad in a bowl, and the recipe was completed.

As you might have already figured out, this salad has a lot of crunchy textures to enjoy.  Flavor-wise, expect lightly bitter vegetables mixed with the fiery and sweet mustard dressing.  This is a perfect summer salad, and I recommend combining all of the ingredients and sticking them in your fridge for an hour or two.  Serving it ice cold makes for a refreshing retreat from the summer heat, and the dressing will thicken up slightly, thus providing an optimal coating for the salad.  As Mr. Henderson mentioned in the foreword, this salad begs to be served with oily fish, as the two play extremely well off each other.

One down, fifty three to go.