Pickle & Preserve

In the autumn, as schools of swordfish swam south into the Bay of Policastro, the fishermen of the Cilento were often their conquerors, luring the great fish with oil-soaked bread and hauling them up from the sea—porting them like vanquished kings, high atop their heads up the steep paths from the water—to their camps to roast them or smoke them over smoldering fires of pine and olive and citrus woods. Sometimes, the Cilentini cured the fish under salt and foraged grasses and spiceberries, dousing the flesh with their own rough-made spirits. Served a dish such as this, one could think it the offering of some cultivated chef, yet, then and there, it was nothing more than the improvised handiwork of hungry men.

Brian Wolff is the chef de cuisine and resident pickler at Lucques. Every time I turn around, he’s got something in the vinegar, like shell beans, cherries, or tiny onions. His pickled raisins are delicious and make a great last-minute condiment. Keep a jar in the refrigerator; if you have a terrine or leftover roast chicken or pork, these raisins make a wonderful sweet-and-sour topping.

Try this with Chocolate-Raspberry Delight Pie (page 107).

These are dead easy to make and have endless applications in the kitchen. Use them to baste or brown ingredients and they will add pizzazz and excitement to stews and roasts. Likewise, they will jazz up a panful of onions or other vegetables for a soup or sauce and impart character to fish dishes. Herb oils come into their own when drizzled over summer or winter salads; they are also excellent used in mayonnaises and dressings. The basic principle is to choose robust flavorings and leave them for long enough to impart their mighty characters to the oil. Always use a good-quality oil as your base (see pp. 30–31). In all cases, to prevent the oil from becoming rancid, store in a cool place and use within 6 months.

Season: May to June: Spotting the first tips of asparagus pushing their way above ground in late spring is one of the greatest moments of the growing year. Use a good but not really expensive olive oil (see p. 30). When the asparagus has been eaten, the flavored oil can be used to make a lovely salad dressing. You will need one jam jar that is about 8 inches high, with a capacity of about 16 ounces, and a second jar with a capacity of about 8 ounces.

Season: September to October. The raw flesh of the lumpy yellow quince is dry and disagreeably sour. However, once cooked, it becomes pink and highly perfumed. Lightly sweetened and combined with good fluffy cooking apples, such as Granny Smiths, it makes a delightful accompaniment for roast pork or duck. I also love this aromatic fruity sauce on a home-baked rice pudding.

Season: July to September. I love the gutsy flavor of these tomatoes and like to serve them as part of a crisp smoked bacon and beet salad or a hearty couscous salad with plenty of fresh cilantro. There are times, though, when I can’t resist eating them from the jar! Ideally, the fruit would be sun-dried, but slowly drying them in a very low oven achieves similar and very pleasing results.

Season: July to late October. This recipe comes from Liz Neville, a virtuoso preserves maker with whom I run the River Cottage Preserved courses. You can make it with any raspberry, but we particularly like to use the big autumn berries. Bottle a few and you can extend your raspberry eating well into the dark winter months. In an ideal world, the fruit for this preserve would be packed into the jars as you pick it from the canes. That may not be possible–but do make sure the fruit is in tip-top condition and handled as little as possible.

Season: winter. It may seem somewhat unnecessary to preserve dried fruit, but I love having a few jars of this compote on the shelf. The once-shriveled fruits become plump and luscious and are quite delicious served alone for breakfast or with yogurt or crème fraîche as a dessert. I like to make this in early November, when newly dried prunes, figs, and apricots are available. Keep on the lookout for small, dried wild figs, which will plump up perfectly to their original shapely selves. The glistening black prunes from the Agen area in southern France are also key players–I prefer to use these un pitted because they infuse the compote with an almondlike essence. A simplified version of the oven method is used–everything is cooked and hot to start with, so the jars don’t need to be heated for an extended time in the oven.

Season: August to early October. The Brogdale Trust in Kent is home to the National Fruit Collection–a bit like a Noah’s Ark for the fruits of the earth. Among their many living specimens, they grow over 300 different cultivars of Prunus domestica, the European plum–also known as dessert plums. These fruits crop from high summer right through into October, giving us plenty to eat fresh, and loads to preserve for later in the year. In the United States, European plums can be found at farmers’ markets, growing in backyards, or at some supermarkets. Or you can preserve peach, nectarine, or apricot halves in the same way.

Season: Late August to October. It always amazes me just how much fruit a gnarled old pear tree can bear in a good season. However, it’s still a little tricky to catch pears at their point of perfect ripeness–somewhere between bullet hard and soft and woolly. Never mind, should you find yourself with a boxful of underripe specimens, this recipe turns them into a preserve “pear excellence.” These pears are particularly delicious served with thick vanilla custard or used as a base for a winter fruit salad. Alternatively, try serving them with terrines and pâtés, or mix them with chicory leaves drizzled with a honey mustard dressing and crumbled blue cheese.

Season: late July to September. This recipe, applying the oven method, can be used for preserving the many members of the Vaccinium family, which include the cultivated blueberry as well as the wild huckleberry. The delicate, lemony nutmeg note of fresh bay complements their gentle flavor beautifully. Serve these fragrant berries for a breakfast treat with thick vanilla yogurt.

Season: June to October. This is also known as officer’s jam, but it’s really not a jam at all. The German name, Rumtopf, seems far more appropriate for what is actually a cocktail of rum-soaked fruit. The idea is that the mixture of fruit, alcohol, and sugar is added to gradually, as different fruits ripen throughout the growing season. This preserve is usually prepared with Christmas in mind, when the potent fruity alcohol is drunk and the highly spirited fruit can be served on its own or with ice cream and desserts. You will need a large glazed stoneware or earthenware pot with a closely fitting lid and a small plate, saucer, or other flat object that will fit inside the pot and keep the fruit submerged.

Season: Late September to October. The shapely rosehip is the fleshy fruit of the rose. The orange-red berries that appear in the autumn contain a crowd of creamy-white seeds protected by tiny irritant hairs, which is why they should never be eaten raw. Rosehips are rich in vitamins A and C and have long been used for making jams, jellies, wine, tea, and, of course, syrup. This recipe is based on one issued by the British Ministry of Defence during the Second World War when rosehips were gathered by volunteers. The syrup made from the fruit was fed to the nation’s children. Use this rosehip syrup mixed with hot water as a warming winter drink. I also love it drizzled neat over rice pudding or pancakes. Or try this recipe of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s for a refreshing summer cocktail: pour 2 tablespoons of rosehip syrup into a tall glass. Add 1/4 cup of white rum and mix well. Add a few ice cubes and pour in about 2/3 cup of tart apple juice. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve with a straw.

Season: July to August. Historically, sweetened vinegars were valued for their medicinal qualities and were typically used to relieve coughs and treat fevers and colds. During the nineteenth century, raspberry vinegar in particular was recommended as a refreshing tonic to overcome weariness. But fruit vinegars have a multitude of culinary uses too, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be without a bottle or two in the kitchen. Use raspberry vinegar on salads–either neat or blended with olive oil. I also love it trickled over goat’s cheese, crepes, and even ice cream. You’ll also find that a spoonful adds a lovely piquancy to savory sauces. For a revitalizing summer drink, mix a couple of tablespoonfuls of raspberry vinegar with soda or tonic water and add ice. The fruit for a vinegar needs to be gathered on a dry day. If the fruit is wet, it will dilute the vinegar and adversely affect its keeping quality.

Season: Late April to early May. The name for this unusual alcoholic cordial is actually the French word for fruit pit. Traditionally, it was made from bitter almonds or peach pits mixed with gin and left to steep in a warm place for several days before being cooked up with sugar, and then filtered through blotting paper. This recipe is from Richard Mabey’s excellent Food for Free. It uses the young, silken leaves of the European beech tree (Fagus sylvatica), to make an exquisite hedgerow version of the liqueur; the leaves first appear toward the end of April.

Season: winter. Onions are one of the most versatile ingredients in the culinary world, but they are not often given the chance to be the star of their own show. A recipe like this puts that right. Long, slow cooking turns a panful of red, white, or yellow onions into a fantastic rich sauce-cum-jam that’s brilliant served with sausages and mashed potatoes, and a heap of other dishes too. Try it with cheese on toast or with cold meat in sandwiches, or stir a spoonful into a creamy pumpkin soup.

Season: November to March. Preserved lemons have a strong association with Middle Eastern and North African cuisines, and their unique zesty, salty yet mellow flavor permeates many of the traditional meat and couscous dishes of those regions. Strips of preserved lemon can also be added to salads, soups, and dressings, or mixed with olives and other appetizers. They are exceptionally easy to prepare, and I like to make them around the turn of the year when the new season’s lemons from Spain and Italy are in the shops.