I know, I know, all I ever talk about any more is cherries, but isn’t it comforting to know that despite all the changes life can throw at you, some things remain constant? One such thing being cherry season which always comes around this time of year without fail.

I specifically get excited about sour cherry season not just because sour cherries are the most useful for doing anything with, but because it means I can once again make my yearly pilgrimage up to Cherry Tyme in Leona Valley for a day of cherry picking. For the past three years I have followed this tradition, and I don’t plan to change anything this year.

I served up this recipe for homemade maraschino cherries in a cocktail called the “The Corpse Reviver #2″ at my sisters wedding last year and it was a big hit. Since then, people haven’t quit bugging me for more info on how I make the cherries, so here’s everything I know:

Pre-Temperance Maraschino Cherries

Ingredients:

• Sour cherries with seeds and stems
• Luxardo or Maraska Brand Maraschino Liqueur
• Glass canning jars like this, or you can use the half pint sized ones which make nice gifts

Method:

1. Pick out the largest, most beautiful, firm, and intact cherries you have and rinse them thoroughly without bruising them.
2. Pack them into your jars as efficiently as possible.
3. Pour your Maraschino liqueur over the cherries until they are covered by 1/4 inch.
4. Seal the lids tightly.
5. Put them away in a cool dark place.
6. Inspect once a week for the first month or two, flipping the jars over each time you put them away.
7. If lids are bulging with pressure, loosen, and let gas escape, then re-seal (this is normal).
8. Cherries should be ready in about three months.

Notes:

• Through extensive testing I have found that the Balaton variety of sour cherries is the most suitable for this recipe. Morello would be my second choice, and Montmorency would be a distant third. I found that the Balatons were the only cherry that still looked good after a year of pickling, while the others ended up somewhat shriveled and ugly.
• I like to keep the pits and stems intact because the pits give a nice almond flavor and the stems look nice. If you don’t want them for a specific application you can remove them at that time.
• If you can’t wait three months, an expedited method is explained here.
• These cherries are delicious for eating straight, garnishing cocktails and ice cream, and even as an ice cream ingredient along with chunks of chocolate truffles. Yum!
• For more info on the history of Maraschino cherries don’t forget to read my other post “Sour Cherry Pickin’” (same link as above).

Sometimes life is like a bowl of sour cherries… but I’m not complaining!

Yes you heard me right, sour (tart) cherries are now ripe and ready for picking in the Leona Valley (just North of Los Angeles, CA near Palmdale).  SOUR cherries?? you’re probably thinking, why would I want those?  Because, let me tell you my friend, they are the way to true cherry pie bliss.

And cherry jam bliss…

and real Maraschino (pronounced “maraskino”) cherry bliss.

No, you don’t need any red #40 to make these, but you do need real Maraschino Liqueur.

I have to admit that two years ago I had never tried a sour cherry.  To be fair to myself though, most Californians haven’t.  It’s more of an East coast/European/Persian thing.  Why that is, I’m not really sure.  Maybe because sweet cherries grow so well here.

This all started when I discovered the Manhattan cocktail a few years back.  I loved this cocktail, but hated the garish garnish.  For some reason those noxious things people call “maraschino” cherries just freak me out.  I knew there must be something more.  What was the origin or inspiration for these cherries?.  A little googling around and I was on to something.

The first Maraschino cherries were cooked up somewhere on the Dalmatian coast near Croatia and Italy.  They were made from small, black, sour cherries that grow wild on the hillsides around those parts.  Their name was the Marasca cherry.  A sweet liqueur known as Maraschino had long since been distilled from the fruit, stones (pits), and leaves of these wild cherry trees, but until the 1800′s no one had ever tried to pickle the Marascas in their own liqueur.

Some years later American tourists discovered Maraschino cherries and brought jars home to share with their friends.  They were a big hit and news spread quickly.  Before long, they were all the rage in America’s finest saloons acting as garnish for delicious pre-prohibition cocktails like the Manhattan.  But, sad as it is, the salad days of the real Maraschino cherry in America were numbered.  Things changed when a guy from Oregon, with too many cherries (and chemicals) on his hands, developed a way to preserve them in a less than appetizing way.

How on Earth did these offensively colored new substitutes catch on?  I can only guess.  I’m sure the Temperance Movement didn’t help.  God forbid children should be tempted to sneak one of these liquor soaked cherries!

The new and improved “Maraschino Americano” was also incredibly cheap compared to the imported varieties, and you know how we Americans are when it comes to the cost of food.  The cheaper the better.

Yum…

Thus began my personal quest to re-create the original Maraschino cherry as closely as I could.  A google search for “sour cherries Los Angeles” yielded few results, but I finally found what I was looking for.  It was a place called Cherry Tyme Sour Cherries in the Leona Valley about an hour and a half North of Los Angeles.  Bingo, I thought!

But wait, it was August and all the sour cherries were long gone according to the pleasant lady on the phone.  I had just missed the season!  As you can imagine I was devastated, but the lady offered me one bit of consolation.  I could leave her my e-mail address and the next year they would let me know when the season opens.

Sure enough, the next July I received an e-mail stating it was “Cherry Tyme!”  I recruited my dad to go up there with me and help pick.  We came away with 13 pounds of fresh, sour cherries of three different varieties: Montmorency, Balaton, and Morello.  The Montmorency were large, pale, very sour, and extremely delicate.  I used them for my pies, and they left me with memories I won’t soon forget.  The Balatons were small, firm, dark skinned, and not quite as sour as the Montmorency.  I thought these seemed most like the wild Marasca cherries of the old country, and used them for my Maraschino cherries with great results.  It’s been a year since I put them up and they’re still firm and delicious!  The Morello cherries were medium sized, dark fleshed, sour, and very flavorful.  For some reason they were the most attractive to me.  They embody a perfect balance between the other two varieties, and I used them to make my preserves.

Pitting was a bit of a challenge without a proper cherry pitting tool, but we got pretty good with bamboo skewers after the first hundred or so.

The cherry massacre!

The fun starts tomorrow morning June 27th at Cherry Tyme in Leona Valley.  Their hours are from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm; open daily until all the cherries are gone.  Bring your own boxes!

Cherry Tyme Sour Cherries:

39913 107^th St West

Leona Valley, Ca 93551

(661) 270-0649

cherrytyme@email.com

Hope to see you there!  Recipes coming soon.

It is finally, fully, fall in San Francisco. The days crisp and mostly clear, the wind sharper. This year, as usual, fall has been chaotic and crowded. We’re overwhelmed with projects and visitors and holiday plans. We can’t seem to get enough sleep or find time to nurture the writer selves that are an important part of us. Even our bird has learned a piercing new screech that is sending me to my wit’s end. And for once, I haven’t welcomed the switch to standard time. For days straight now, I’ve been knocked out cold before midnight, but I can’t seem to drag myself up in the morning, despite the “hour gained.”

We’re lucky here, to have dry farmed early girl tomatoes still in the farmers markets, but I have to admit, I’m pleased to see the new autumn bounty nudging out the abundance of summer crops. Two weeks ago, I bought some of the last fresh green olives at the farmers market, then last weekend harvested a heavy bag of ripe black olives from trees we discovered on a drive through Lake County. I pickled both in a salt brine and hid them at the back of the pantry to be leeched free of their bitterness.

Fresh olives carry a compound called oleuropein, which is responsible for their extreme, lingering, bitter flavor when uncured. The bitterness fades as they ripen, but black olives retain enough bitterness to need several months of curing. Oddly, these were some of the first foods humans cultivated, though they need long treatment to be edible. Olive cultivation began in both Crete and Syria independently as far back as 2,500 B.C.

Home Cured Black Olives

There’s very little to curing black olives. They can be soaked in a salt water brine until ready to eat, then rinsed and seasoned as desired. Many olive growers will not start selling ripe black olives until December, but in much of California, trees are abundant and laden with unused fruit. Make sure to pick olives that are still firm to the touch.

3-5 lbs ripe black olives
sea salt
water
1 egg, washed well

1. To prepare the brine, add salt to water until the egg floats to the surface. Depending on the salt you use, this could take anywhere from 1 tablespoon per quart of water, to 2 tablespoons per cup. I used a natural sea salt and found that it took a little over a tablespoon per cup of water before the egg really floated.

2. Rinse olives gently and remove any soft or bruised fruit. Place them in a clean crock or large mason jar and cover with the brine. Use a small plate or other weight to make sure all of the olives are submerged. One trick is to fill a plastic bag with a little bit of water, tie it up, and use that as a weight.

3. Store olives in a cool place out of the sun, and stir once a week. After about 30 days, remove and taste an olive, but be aware that the curing process may take up to 90 days. Olives will continue to cure as long as they are in the brine. If they become too salty, drain and rinse them, then cover with a less salty solution. At that point, they should be stored in the refrigerator.

I would like to remind everyone that Fall is officially here in California and the quince fruit is now in season and available at your local farmer’s markets. Early in July I wrote about my first attempt at making jam. It was quince jam, and it turned out to be delicious! You can view that previous post here if you’re interested. There’s no more jam left now and everyone I gave it away to loved it and wants more. It’s time to make another batch, and what better time than right now when fresh local quinces are in season. The quinces I found back in July at a local Asian market had been imported all the way from Chile, and though not bad, were nothing like the beautiful ones pictured here at top and bottom.

I have a beautiful, unexpected day off today, and am spending it in the kitchen, drying, preserving, mixing dough, thinking. Invariably it happens – someone close or far, a friend, a relative, a colleague, visits this blog and asks the same question. Why make bitters, or butter, or vermouth, or ketchup from scratch? Usually, the answer seems so clear to me, I needn’t even consider before answering. But last night I wondered aloud if it wasn’t just a little petty maybe, or a little silly, a grown up way, maybe, to play with my food.

No, Andy (my beloved, my better, more humane and just self) said, it’s a search for authenticity, for the authentic experience. Indeed. We are so far divorced from the way our food is made or grown, we often have trouble recognizing the real thing.

What, for instance, would real grenadine taste like? We have the “false” version on our bar (ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, water, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, red 40, blue 1.), but I’ve been thinking of making some from scratch, out of real pomegranates. How about mayonnaise, granola?

I’m reading And Then, You Act, a collection of essays about making art, and more specifically, theater, in an unpredictable world. In her introduction, Anne Bogart suggest that as Americans in the 21st century we are the objects of “constant flattery and manufactured desire.” “I believe,” she says, “that the only possible resistance to a culture of banality is quality.” I believe that to be true of art, but I feel the same way about food. In many ways, quality and authenticity are synonymous. Eat, Michael Pollan suggests, food that your great, great grandmother would recognize as food. So today I peeled and sliced pears, cut apples into rounds.

Dried fruit is so easy, it hardly deserves a recipe. If you don’t have a food dehydrator, you can dry fruit successfully in the oven, but it will take a bit longer.

Dried Pears or Apples

• 4-5 lbs ripe apples or pears, peeled if desired
• 1-2 cups lemon juice (optional) or
• 1 cup honey (optional)

1. Cut fruit into uniform slices or rounds, about 1/8 – 1/4 inch.

2. If desired, treat with lemon juice (to help preservation), or honey (to sweeten). Place fruit on drying rack or cookie sheet with room enough between slices to allow for air circulation.

• To treat with lemon juice, mix 1 part lemon juice to 1 part water in a large bowl and place fruit into it. Allow to soak 10 minutes, drain well and place on drying rack or cookie sheet.
• To treat with honey, mix 1 cup honey with 1 1/2 cups warm water and stir to dissolve. Add fruit and soak 3-5 minutes. Drain well and place on drying rack or cookie sheet.

3. Set dehydrator to 135 degrees or oven to the lowest possible setting (or 140 degrees) and set racks inside. If using an oven, leave the door open slightly and, if possible, point a fan in to increase air circulation.

4. Dry for 6-12 hours depending on temperature and humidity, checking frequently when fruit is close to being ready. To test for doneness, cut several piece in half. There should be no visible moisture and fruit should not stick to itself when pressed together. The dried fruit should have about 20% moisture content.

5. Allow to cool and pack tightly into clean, dry, well sealed containers. Store in a cool dry place. Fruit will keep for up to one year.

~
Apple-Pear Sauce

Making apple or apple-pear sauce is just as easy as drying fruit. The sweetness of ripe pears works perfectly with tart, ripe apples. I used a variety of both – McIntosh, Granny Smith, and Cox’s Orange Pippin apples, and Bosc and Comice pears.

• About 20 medium apples, or a combination of apples and pears, cored, quartered, and peeled if desired
• 2-3 cups water
• 1 tbs honey
• 1 tsp almond extract

1. Place fruit in a large, heavy pot with about an inch of water and simmer, stirring regularly, until soft. Crush any remaining chunks against the side of the pot.

2. Stir in the honey and almond extract. The sauce will probably be sweet enough without the honey, but I like to add it for the flavor. Orange and vanilla extracts are also excellent, as is cinnamon.

3. Pour into sterile jars and process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner. Or transfer to a glass container and store 2-3 weeks in the refrigerator.

Yields about 5 pints.

We’re brimming with heirloom tomatoes from our farm CSA box, but somehow none of my usual uses for tomatoes have seemed appealing lately. The tomatoes this year have been so good that they mostly beg to be eaten straight – sliced with a bit of sea salt and good olive oil, or layered into a caprese salad with basil and fresh mozzarella. But there are only so many fresh tomatoes we can eat, and I came home tonight to find a couple handsome heirlooms on the verge of decline. It seemed a good night to try and put together a real ketchup.

Commercial ketchup, like commercial mayonnaise, bears little resemblance to the real thing. Raised like everyone else on the supermarket formula consisting mostly of high-fructose corn syrup, tomato paste and celery powder, it never occurred to me that ketchup could be anything more than a fast food side. But a little breakfast joint on our old neighborhood happened to have a fantastic homemade variety, and I’ve been meaning to make a batch ever since.

This recipe lends itself well to experimentation – all of the spices can be adjusted to taste, and many others would be worth playing with. For a spicier sauce, add a few (or many) dashes of hot sauce. It also turns out a delightful golden orange color if you use a mix of different colored tomatoes.

– Heirloom Tomato Ketchup

Ingredients
*2 tbs olive oil
*1 medium onion, finely diced
*1 red jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced
*4 cloves garlic
*3 lbs assorted heirloom tomatoes, peeled and seeded
*1/3 cup + 3 tbs apple cider vinegar
*2 tbs dark brown sugar
*1 cup water
*1 tsp cardamom
*1 star anise
*1 tsp celery seed
*1/2 tsp cloves
*1 tsp cinnamon
*2 tsp smoked paprika
*1 tsp chili powder
*2 tsp salt
*freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method
1. In a non-reactive sauce pan, sauté the onion and jalapeño in the olive oil until golden and very soft, about 20 minutes. When the pan starts to dry out, add 1/2 cup of the water. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, then stir in tomatoes, 1/3 cup vinegar, and the sugar.

2. Place the cardamom, star anise, celery seed, and cloves in a spice bag, or tie in a bit of cheesecloth, and add to the tomato mixture. Add the cinnamon, smoked paprika, chili powder and salt and stir well.

3. Cook the ketchup until thick but not completely dry, about 2-3 hours. Adjust seasoning to taste and transfer to a blender. Puree until very smooth. You may need to add the other 1/2 cup water if the ketchup is too thick. Pour in the additional 3 tbs vinegar (or to taste) and pulse to combine. Transfer to sterile jars and refrigerate, or process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner. Homemade ketchup should last about 2 months in the refrigerator.

Yields 2 small jars.

We ate well on our recent visit to south Florida (Key Lime Pie tasting notes and recipe coming soon!), but the trip still left us craving California food. It’s not that the food there is bad, but the food here really is fantastic. Even the burrito we shared in the airport terminal when we landed in Oakland tasted amazingly good.

I have been meaning to post this recipe for a while now but kept putting it off. I didn’t take pictures when I initially made it, and thereafter was more interested in eating the jam than in photographing it. Also, I wasn’t sure how it would go over, but it has turned out to be quite popular, even with my mom who claims to hate balsamic vinegar. The balsamic isn’t easy to identify, but it gives the jam a complex, earthy flavor that’s addictive.

One of my favorite early summer salads is simply fresh strawberries tossed with balsamic vinegar. Sometimes I use salad greens, but when I want to be really decadent, I go without. I was inspired to try a similar jam weeks ago when I spotted a crate of luscious looking organic strawberries at the farmers market and knew that 1) I had to have them, and 2) I would not be able to use them all right away.

Don’t cut down on the sugar, as that’s what preserves the fruit and thickens the jam. That said, the one change I might make next time would be to use pectin, as it was a bit sad seeing all those fresh strawberries get cooked away while I waited for the mixture to thicken. You can reduce thickening time by using a wide, shallow pan and cooking the jam in small batches to hasten evaporation.

– Strawberry Balsamic Jam

Ingredients
*2.2 lbs strawberries, washed, tops removed
*4 3/4 cups sugar
*3 tbsp lemon juice
*4 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Method
1. Place the strawberries and sugar in a non-reactive saucepan. Stir to combine, then cover and stand for a few hours.

2. Add the lemon juice and balsamic vinegar and bring to the boil. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes until setting point is reached.

3. Allow to stand for 10 minutes and pour into sterilised jars. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner. For more detailed instructions on canning, download these step by step canning instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preparation.

This time of year in California, the farmers markets are overflowing with every imaginable kind of produce. It’s best to keep me away because my acquisitive nature takes over and I want to buy everything – everything. This also happens in art museums, but while I cannot afford to buy art, I can buy pretty much as much produce as I want. So yesterday afternoon I faced a pleasant quandary: what to do with three plus pounds of assorted red peppers?I’ve been fascinated by the idea of canning for a while now and the perfect inspiration came with a post about a fabulous looking Chipotle Chile Jam here: Becks & Posh: Served on a Pretty Nasty Plate…. This also meant I got to buy various canning supplies at Sur La Table and a giant 14″ stainless steel stock pot from the restaurant supply store.

The recipe linked to in the above post wasn’t quite what I had in mind, so I found a very basic version online and then modified it to suit my fancy, adding chipotle peppers, red pepper flakes, red bell peppers, and a little bit of brown sugar. I bet it would be excellent with garlic as well.

I’ve always been a bit skittish about canning, mostly because I’d never done it on my own (my mom used to can apricots, and I still remember the luscious, golden, tangy-sweet fruit we would open in winter; the satisfying pop as we snapped the lid away from the jar). But this was easy. On of my jars didn’t form a seal (I’m not sure if the top wasn’t clean, or I didn’t tighten the lid enough, or I filled the jar too full, or what) but I just put that one the the refrigerator to eat right away! The rest look lovely.

The recipe yields about 5 cups jam, enough to fill as many 1 cup jars, but I would probably make a double batch next time. It goes great with cheeses and smoked tofu, in salad dressings, and, I imagine, with meats. Because I didn’t use pectin, the jam won’t be as thick as some others. Mine is more like a thick relish.

– Spicy Red Pepper Jam
* 3 lbs various fresh red peppers (mix bell peppers and hot peppers to taste)
* 1/2 cup cider vinegar
* 2 small lemons, quartered
* 2-3 canned chipotle peppers
* 1-2 tsp red pepper flakes
* 3 cups sugar (I swapped out 1/2 cup of the white sugar for brown)

1. Dice the peppers (I used a food processor) and place them over medium heat with the lemons, chipotle peppers, vinegar, and red pepper flakes. Cook until the peppers are soft, about 30 minutes.

2. Remove the lemon pieces and stir in the sugar. Boil another 10 minutes or more. Jam is ready when a scoop poured onto a cold plate will congeal after a few minutes in the freezer (this is called a sheeting test).

3. Pour into sterile canning jars and process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

Note: The National Center for Home Food Preparation has an excellent PDF of step by step canning instructions.

Making jam at home used to be commonplace, but the practice is in quick decline. Most people have forgotten the skills of their grandparent’s generation, and have gotten used to buying everything rather than making it themselves. I think this is mainly due to the convenience factor. It used to be that people made things like jam, bread, and pickles themselves because it was a way to save money, but now I think the inspiration has shifted to the quality of the final product. This is true, at least for me.

I had never really given much thought to jam making myself until a recent visit to a friend’s house down in San Diego. My girlfriend and I sat out on her back patio for breakfast, and ate toast with the most delicious homemade jam we had ever encountered. It was made from the yellow guavas that hung on the tree not far from where we were sitting, and I found myself eating it out of the jar with a spoon. My friend’s mother, an Italian immigrant, had come to visit her daughter from Chicago and couldn’t stand to see the fruit lying on the ground going to waste. She gathered up the fruit, and with her daughter’s help, whipped up a large batch of the preserves in a single afternoon.

This was inspiring to me! I have always been a sucker for chemistry experiments, and I thought this one sounded doable. I looked around at various markets trying to locate some Mexican guavas, but my search yielded no fruit. What I did find though, were some fragrant yellow quinces almost (but not quite) too ripe for jam making, which begged to be rescued from a small bin at the Asian market down the street from where I live in Long Beach, CA. I took them home, and began my adventure into the world of jam making.

Warning to men: you may not hear the end of it if you develop a reputation for making preserves. My girlfriend loves to tell people how I stayed up almost all night cooking up a big pot ‘o marmalade. I try to defend myself by explaining that I work on motorcycles during daylight hours.

I would venture to guess that the quince is the #1 under-appreciated fruit in the United States. It’s name is rarely mentioned, and when it does come up, it’s not always in a positive context. In an episode of The Simpsons, “Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part 1″, Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers end up eating an entire box of chocolates in one sitting, leaving behind and discarding only one piece: the sour quince log.

This negative bias against the quince is unfortunate because it is really a great fruit with a truly royal pedigree. Visit this site for a little history lesson on the life of the quince.

To me, it seems like alchemy the way these boring, tasteless fruit turn into the epitome of fruitiness after long and slow cooking. The word “marmalade”, which most people are familiar with, originally meant quince jam, and derives from the Portuguese word for this fruit: marmelo. Give the quince a chance, and you might not regret it.

The following recipe is my variation of Betty Goldensohn’s Quince Jam recipe found here.

– Quince Jam
1. Wash and cut up eight (8) unpeeled firm green quinces into pieces about half the size of dice (I used a cheese grater on some, and diced the rest). Avoid yellow quinces which are overripe for this jam (they will work in a pinch, but use a little less sugar). Throw away core with seeds (don’t eat the seeds as they are poisonous). Measure total amount of raw quince with a cook’s scale.

2. Into a sturdy saucepan, add 1 1/2 parts quince to 1/2 part sugar by weight. I used piloncillo, a raw Mexican sugar with a high molasses content that comes in the shape of a cone, and is much more flavorful than white sugar. It almost tastes like maple syrup to me. You can also add a Tablespoon of lemon juice for each 4 pounds of quince to make it a little more tart.

3. Add 1/3 cup (2.5 ounces by weight) of water to the pot for each cup (6 3/4 ounces by weight) of sugar. Stir. Bring to boil and quickly turn down to low heat. You want a continuous low bubbling boil. Stir occasionally to prevent burning. Add a few tablespoons of water along the way if liquid gets very thick before turning red.

4. Cook down until quince turns deep red. This can take up to 2 hours. Resulting hot red liquid will be thicker than water but thinner than honey at this point. Perfect. It’s done.

5. Ladle jam (still hot) into sterilized jars and follow standard canning procedures. I used Gulfwax to seal my jars after boiling them in water for about 10 minutes. Just read the instructions on the box of wax. Try this jam on toast, or as a condiment, like chutney with meats and poultry.

Note: Do not give away jars to people who do not love quince unless you have plenty, and would like to enlighten them.

Until next time,
Will

This is from Mark Bittman of the New York Times. Once the pickles have reached the desired sourness, they can be kept indefinitely in the refrigerator. After a day or two on the counter top, you’ll begin to see small bubbles seeping up, a sign that the cucumbers are fermenting properly. It will probably take 3-4 days for them to become pickles (rather than the 24-48 hours Bittman suggests).

– Kosher Pickles: The Right Way
* 1/2 cup kosher salt
* 1 cup boiling water
* 2 pounds small Kirby cucumbers, washed, and cut into halves or quarters
* 5 cloves or more garlic, peeled and smashed
* 1 large bunch dill, if desired, fresh and with flowers OR 2 tablespoons dried dill and 1 teaspoon dill seeds, OR a tablespoon of coriander seeds

1. In a large bowl, combine the salt and boiling water; stir to dissolve the salt. Add a handful of ice cubes to cool down the mixture, then add all remaining ingredients.

2. Add cold water to cover. Use a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and a small weight to hold the cucumbers under the water. Keep at room temperature.

3. Begin sampling the cucumbers after 2 hours if they are quartered, 4 hours if they are halved. In either case, it will probably take from 12 to 24 hours, or even 48 hours, for them to taste “pickly” enough to suit your taste. When they are, refrigerate them, still in the brine. The pickles will continue to ferment as they sit, more quickly at room temperature, more slowly in the refrigerator.

Yield: About 30 pickle quarters.

Note: 9/9/07

Kosher salt generally comes in flakes rather than granules. The flakes dissolve easily, and have a less pungent flavor than table salt. Due to the shape of the granules, there is also less salt in a pinch of kosher salt than in a pinch of table salt.  Both Will and our friend Lowell followed this recipe using other types of salt and and found the pickles a bit too salty, though the saltiness did lessen in the course of the fermentation process.