In Season: Pickled & Preserved

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January February March April May June July August September October November December

Think back, or ahead, to January. What’s missing: the sun-kissed stone fruits and snappy green, red and yellow vegetables of summer. Root vegetables are reliable partners for the long haul. You’ll manage. But why just get by? In the stark cold, why not uncap a jar of sprightly giardiniera or pickled peppers from the garden that recall the sweet heat of backyard barbecues? A slather of homemade strawberry jam on warm toast, in a snowstorm–it’s seasonal confusion at its most delicious.

IN SEASON

by JANET RAUSA FULLER

Pickled & Preserved

summer peach jam

View Cece Campise’s recipe on page 58 »

Canning stretches the seasons, and now is the time to get started. The produce at the market in August that begs to be bought by the armful can be enjoyed, well preserved, in April–atop a burger, stirred into sauce, eaten straight from the jar.

Putting up food isn’t strictly a warmweather pursuit. As Chicago chef and pickling savant Paul Virant writes in his book Preservation Kitchen, winter citrus is fair game for preserving as well. It takes effort. But there are plenty of resources in print, online, and very likely within your social network to guide and inspire you.

Starting on the following pages with a jam recipe from CeCe Campise, then essays and recipes by Virant and James Beard Award-winning chef Hugh Acheson, whose book, A New Turn in the South, should also be on your short list. As the seasons shift, you’ll be glad you did.

Putting Up

Essay by HUGH ACHESON

Hugh Acheson is the chef/partner of Five & Ten and the National restaurants in Athens, Ga. and Empire State South in Atlanta. He wrote the James Beard Award-winning cookbook, A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen and has appeared on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters” and “Top Chef.”

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August September

Pickling and preserving has been a nourishing facet of the Southern table for centuries. This “putting up” practice has long demarcated the seasons, reminding us that to have tomatoes in December, we had better get working in August.

Filling the pantry with chow chow, okra, dilly beans and cukes is hard work, but the redemption comes in February when you are able to eat a little bit of summer with your wintery supper. Even with a boom in the popularity of preserving and pickling, we are losing ground to the grocery store. This is the malaise of convenience. The aisles provide a homogenized landscape to our palates, where everything is always available.

I love reminding people about that moment in early fall when the apples of northeast Georgia burst onto the scene. It’s then that I get antsy for Arkansas Blacks, my favorite varietal of apple from a local farm in Elberton, Ga.

The process is so basic, so tried and true. I pick up the phone and talk to Bill. Bill goes and gets the apples and brings them to Athens. I buy said apples. It’s a glorious relationship that happens every year and results in canned treasures of conserves, apple butters and chutneys.

I can remember making my first batches of bread-and-butter pickles and pickled okra, leaning on old tomes of American food like The Joy of Cooking, Fannie Farmer, and the Time Life Good Cook Series. I remember going through the whole process, tweaking to keep things current, and then trying to wait patiently for the pickles to mature.

That last step rarely worked out because of my love of snacking. The bread-andbutter pickles were sweet and savory at the same time, with the mustard seed pulling through, the bright notes of celery leaves, the pungency of turmeric, and the acid kiss of cider vinegar. Increasing production to a level that even I could not snack through let us enjoy the pickles months later. Now the January sandwich, the February burger and the March egg salad get August’s pickles.

We have to get back to the canning pot to fully embrace the beauty of living in a wonderful world of seasonal foods.

View Hugh Acheson’s recipe on page 59 »

View Paul Virant’s recipe on page 60 »

Can-do Aigre-Doux

Essay by PAUL VIRANT

as told to KATE LEAHY

Paul Virant is the chef and owner of the Chicago area restaurants Vie and Perennial Virant, and author with Kate Leahy of Preservation Kitchen: The Craft of Making and Cooking with Pickles, Preserves and Aigre-Doux.

August

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From the arrival of ramps in spring to the last cranberry harvest in fall, my cooks and I turn into canning machines, preserving as many vegetables and fruits as our pantry shelves can handle.

Ever since I opened Vie, my restaurant in Western Springs, Ill., in 2004, I have made a habit of preserving seasonal produce. Back then I did it so I could feature produce from local farms on our menu year round. But it’s the depth of flavor I can achieve while cooking with preserves that keeps me excited about it all these years later.

In those early days, I was only just figuring out how to cook with pickles and jams. I began finishing meat sauces with spoonfuls of brine, using butter and stock to glaze pickled vegetables, and garnishing a few cocktails with preserved berries or pickled ramps. Each splash of acidity or sweetness added complexity to the final product, so I kept at it while adding more and more types of preserves to the pantry.

It wasn’t long before I came across aigredoux, a sweet-sour condiment from France. I took a class with Christine Ferber, a French preserving expert whose jams are famous in Paris.

One of Ferber’s demonstrations showcased pears soaked in wine, vinegar, honey, and vanilla bean. It was a revelation: the sharpness of the wine and vinegar was offset by the pears’ mellow sweetness. I was hooked on this bittersweet combination, and I incorporated aigre-doux into my canning program.

Aigre-doux is most often composed of fruit in a wine-based brine, but it also can be made with sweet vegetables such as onions, beets and carrots. While it tastes complex, aigre-doux is very easy to make.

Take grapes, for instance. All you do is put stemmed grapes (I like goldenrod or canadice varieties) in a jar, pour hot brine over the grapes, cap the jar with a lid and boil the jar in a water bath. During the processing time, some of the sweetness of the fruit leaches out into the brine. The result is a sweet-sour grape juice.

To use it, I take the brine and simmer it in a pot until reduced by half. I mix in olive oil, shallots, and aigre-doux grapes to make vinaigrette. It’s also good tossed with roasted cauliflower, capers and parsley. No matter the application, the tang of grapes and wine is the main draw.

waldorf salad

with apples, candied walnuts, and grape aigre-doux dressing

View Paul Virant’s recipe on page 61 »