When I first posted about pickling gherkins I never expected it to be the biggest draw of the website.  I get more visits from people googling “pickled gherkins” than pretty much anything else on the site.  People have even been so kind as to post regional recipes for making gherkins and pickles, and I’d be a fool not to highlight them with their own entry.

If you’d like to share your version of pickled gherkins, feel free to post it in the comments and I’ll gladly add it with proper credit.

In New Zealand we just use white vinegar, always have. I don’t know where she got that recipe from, but it isn’t here. I’ve never even seen that acid stuff you mentioned as being part of a Kiwi recipe.
The recipe I’ve had for the past 20 years and use is:

750mls white vinegar
small tbsp pickling spice (in mesh bag)
4 cups sugar
2 tsp salt

Boil all together with pickling spice in a bag.

Cover the gherkins (I use sliced and chopped cucumbers too) with boiling water, leave to cool and drain x 4.

Pack the gherkins into jars, cover with boiled vinegar solution, cap and store in the dark.

Mixture can be reboiled after 4 days if desired but it’s optional.

Thank you very much Tish!

And while George Freuden’s recipe isn’t for a pickled gherkin, it’s too wonderful not to share.

I realize this is old hat, but there are so many strange versions of this classic sauce served that I feel it is justified for me to add my recipe to the fray.

Okay, I never hand out recipes from the book because I don’t want to take money away from Mr. Henderson and the time an effort he put into authoring such an amazing cookbook.  But for you smart folks out there, it shouldn’t be hard to figure this one out if you were so inclined.  As a matter of fact, I challenge you to try making this amazing tarter sauce at home.  That way maybe a few of you out there will then realize that living without such an amazing book in your home library is a damn shame.

First, you need some homemade mayo…

… a few capers…

… a bit of chopped gherkin…

… some chopped tarragon…

… chopped curly parsley…

… hard boiled eggs that–all together now–you roughly chop…

… and then you mix it all together. Easy, right?

And here is is served with a lovely piece of fried cod.

After finishing making this tarter sauce, I realized that I didn’t have anything to serve it with. I figured I’d just give it a taste and add it into the mayonnaise post as a simple extra bit of information. BZZZT. The first spoonful made me realize that despite its simplicity, this chunky, flavorful version of tarter sauce demanded its own post. The next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How could something so simple be so good? That’s because it’s unlike any other pedestrian version out there. Let’s be honest: when I say tarter sauce to you, the first thing that comes to mind is the stuff you can find at Micky D’s, right? Anemic bits of pickle and onion mixed together in a boring mayo. Not with this stuff. It’s chunky, rich and delicious beyond belief. I ended up stopping on the way home to pick up three pounds of cod and some good brown ale to make the beer battered fish you see above.

You know how you can order biscuits and gravy? Well, if you got this tarter sauce with fish and chips, they’d be forced to change the name to fish with tarter sauce and chips. Yeah, I’m not kidding. It’s really that good.

One down, forty five to go.

You can use a food processor, or a mortar and pestle, or a bowl and a wooden spoon.  Some use vegetable oil rather than olive oil for a gentler result.  I do not.  Your mayonnaise should have that bitter olive taste.  Some thin with water; I feel this should be avoided.

Confession time: I’ve had terrible, terrible luck making mayo at home. I could never seem to get the proper emulsion going, with the end result always being a broken mess. But this time I was determined. Mr. Henderson has guided me gently through his book. He’d see me through this recipe as well.

Into my food processor went three egg yolks (one is hidden by the blade), a little dijon mustard and a pinch of salt.

The yolks were whizzed for a little bit to get things started.

And here’s the needed olive oil. Slowly, and I mean really slowly, I drizzled the oil into the running processor.

Look! I’ve got the beginnings of a mayonnaise! Flush with confidence, I started adding the olive oil in greater amounts…

… which promptly broke the mayonnaise.

I’m not going to lie, I said some things that no one should probably ever hear. Gordon Ramsey would have blushed. Sailors started signing up for lessons.

But I refused to be beaten. Mostly because I’d really planned on posting this week. That and we were out of olive oil.  To quote Tim Gunn, I needed to “make it work”.  Grabbing three more egg yolks, another emulsion was started via my arm, a whisk and a metal bowl.  Over the next ten minutes, about half of the broken mayo was added to the bowl, which resulted in a slightly-and I mean slightly-thick sauce.

The leftover broken mayo was evacuated from the food processor, and the new cohesive mayo went in. Scared to screw up yet again, I slowly  combined the two until finally…

… I HAD MAYO!

It was perfectly thick–extra rich with a great mouth feel. The bite of olive oil was a little jarring at first and yet, it grew on me quickly.

The best part? I’ve overcome my mayonnaise gremlins. What a grand feeling that is to say the least.

One down, forty six to go.

An incredibly useful thing to have up your sleeve.  After many failures in the restaurant at pickling gherkins, I was shown the way by Anna Rottman, a friend of my wife’s from New Zealand.

Finally!  It feels like forever since I last updated, but tonight it is going to happen.  The best part is that this recipe requires the most dangerous ingredient I’ve ever used in the kitchen.  Forget knives, forget fire.

First though, we needed some tiny cucumbers.  My wife and I hit the farmer’s market along with our trusty Corgi to wrangle up a few.  Victorious, we returned home and I got busy right after walking in the door.

A quick scrubbing and the cucumbers were ready to be salted.  I combined all of the little gourds with a hefty amount of coarse sea salt and left them to sit for three hours, every so often tossing them to redistribute the salt.

Once the proper amount of time had elapsed I shook all of the salt off and covered the cucumbers with boiling water for about five minutes and then drained.

While the cucumbers sat in their bath, my wife was boiling more water to sterilize the jars needed for the pickling process.

Meanwhile I was running around the kitchen grabbing the rest of the needed ingredients, including this blend of pickling spices…

… and this bottle of pure Acetic acid.  I’m sure that you took notice of the various warnings on the front of the bottle, but let me show you just a sample of what terrifying cautions lie on the other side.

Inhalation of concentrated vapors may cause serious damage to the lining of the nose, throat, and lungs.

Swallowing can cause severe injury leading to death.

Ingestion of as little as 1.0 ml has resulted in a perforation of the esophagus.

I hit the high points, but I’m sure you get the gist of the rest of the warnings.  As intimated above, this recipe is hands down the most dangerous one in the book.  I think it’s the most dangerous recipe in any of my cook books, not including the one that talks about fugu preparation.

The small amount of acid I needed was diluted with A LOT of water in a stainless steel pot, along with A LOT of sugar.  The whole thing was brought up to a boil until the sugar had completely melted away.

The cucumbers were stuffed into the sterilized jars along with some hefty pinches of pickling spices.  Make special note of exactly how full the jars are.

With a care that I didn’t know was possible, I filled each jar to the brim with the acid and sugar mixture, and then sealing them.  We set the jars in a cool, dark place for a month, hoping that the acid had lost enough potency to not eat through the glass.

I know it’s a little tough to see, but after one month, the gherkins had shrunk down significantly.  I’m talking a 75% reduction in size, which I assume is all due to the effects of the acetic acid.  It’s a bit frustrating actually, I keep wishing that I could stuff the jars with more cucumbers to take up that empty space.

And here they are in all their pickled, gherkin glory.  As I took them out of the jar, they smelled sweet and not dangerous at all.  A small bite and a few minutes of waiting confirmed that no holes were punched through my esophagus and imminent death was not right around the corner.  The gherkins were perfectly sweet and sour with a crunchy texture.  It reminded me of, well, a gherkin.  Which is exactly what I was aiming for.

One down, sixty eight to go.

A food processor or a mortar and pestle is important for the recipe.

This is another recipe I prepared for my friends Brent and Harmony as a thank you for their kindness.  Brent recently went from being a strict vegetarian to adding fish to his diet, so that seemed to me like a perfect opportunity to sneak as much protein into the meal as possible.  Hopefully we’ll lead him back to bacon, eh?

The recipe starts off with a handful of garlic cloves and a pinch of black pepper.  The cloves were chopped until they were at a fine purée.

Next I added a whole tin of anchovies, oil included.  Ever since the first time these powerfully fishy little fillets were served to me with a Caesars salad, I find myself craving them.  They’re my favorite pizza topping!

When I had a nice slurry going, a little over a cup of EVOO was added (Did your jaw drop open?) and a splash of red wine vinegar for brightness.

And there it is.  When I first tried it, little Adam West Batman onomatopoeia signs popped up in front of my eyes.  ZING! POW! BANG!

The combination of garlic and anchovies is flavor TNT.  The only thing I’ve made from “The Cookbook” that’s even close to this amount of punch was the aïoli from last year.

Mr. Henderson mentions that this dressing can be used in a variety of ways depending on the amount of oil and vinegar added.  It can be used as a spread for toast, as a dressing for boiled greens and broccoli, or on raw bitter salad leaves.

One down, seventy three to go.