Jake came home from the store last Monday with this grand idea, we'd make pickled vegetables to go with dinner! I'd done some pickled peppers in the past, so I already had a quick go to recipe. He cut up the vegetables and together we made it happen. The vegetables were green beans, leeks, a red bell pepper, two thai peppers, and some other cute little peppers that shall go unnamed, but I think they looked like cubanelles.
My recipe involves boiling equal parts vinegar (I used cider vinegar in this instance) and water with salt, a smidge of sugar,* whole peppercorns, whole coriander seeds, whole cumin seeds, about 4 smashed cloves of garlic, and um, that's about it for this time. After it came to a boil** I poured it over the chopped vegetables, placed a plate on them to ensure they were submersed, and let them sit for at least twenty minutes.*** Then you drain off the liquid and voila! Pickled vegetables!
As tasty as they were unfortunately they were not perfect. Jake and I have differing views on how to put together a vegetable dish. He likes his vegetables chopped up into tiny pieces so they're all blended together, in this case he wanted a relish. I like my vegetables independent of one another, long and pretty. My spice blend clung to his tiny vegetables and it was impossible to separate the seeds from the real food and it made each bite a little unpleasant. I managed to suffer through it for the deliciousness. Jake not so much. Next time we'll communicate better and make sure there is more harmony. In this case, the dish was Jake's vision, so I should have thought about the end result and placed the seeds in one of my sachets that I have just for that purpose.**** However if the dish had been my vision and Jake was merely my sous chef, he'd have had to either done it my way or at least talked about it. Anyway, here's the picture. It's not super awesome. You can see the residue left on the vegetables.
*I managed to put the perfect amount of sugar in it, 1/4 cup for 4 cups of liquid. Most pickling recipes, especially the quick ones, call for a lot more sugar but we didn't feel the flavors would work together if it was too sweet.
**We happen to have the perfect "pot" for this boil. I knew it would require stirring and close monitoring but I wanted to minimize evaporation.
***It was probably closer to 40 but I meant to do 20!
****I have reusuable cheesecloth sachets, paper sachets, a metal tea thingy, and actual cheesecloth! Lots of ways that I could have solved it had I just thought about it.
