The Strength of These Pickles Is 22%.
I consider myself to be something of a fast food innovator. In the end, I brought you The Big Pickle , a very good marinade that is also very large. This time I really surpassed myself. I made pickles and they are delicious.
It’s important for every artist to have a muse, and Virginia (our editor-in-chief) is mine, especially when it comes to cheese, cheese boards, and any pickled or salty things you might find next to cheese on a cheese board. … We had a short chat recently about cheese when she mentioned that a can of gherkins and gin ended up in her refrigerator (and in her heart). Obviously I needed to know more.
These tiny “gin flavored” cucumbers are pickled in a 2% gin solution, which provides “delicious notes of juniper and fresh citrus” and a “fruity-sharp finish”. This seemed good to me, so I decided to make my own. I (as expected) increased my gin percentage because after ten years of martini consumption, my Tanqueray-saturated tongue could not notice such a small aliquot of gin.
I started with about 11%, mixing half a glass of gin with half a glass of water and a whole glass of white wine vinegar. I also added some sugar, some salt and some juniper berries. I poured a few tiny onions with a boiling mixture, allowed them to cool to room temperature and put them in the refrigerator overnight. They were good, but they didn’t read like the drunken decadent cucumbers I imagined in my mouth. I also found myself looking for more herbs, but (unfortunately) I ran out of them and didn’t want to go shopping in the rain. The solution to the first problem was to increase alcohol and decrease the amount of water, and the solution to the second was to completely eliminate gin and instead use aquavit, also known as ” angry gin .”
Is it hard to be a genius? It can be lonely sometimes, but the reward is worth it. Trust me when I tell you that water is over, and aquavit – which means ” water of life ” – is the pickling liquid of the present, the pickling liquid of the decade, the pickling liquid of eternity. This new pickle of mine is half vinegar, half aquavit and absolutely wonderful. I poured them a little onion and chopped the beets, and now I have to go back to the store (probably in the rain) to buy more onions and beets.
Aquavit brings many gifts to the salty party. The herbs are large. Aquavit is flavored with dill and caraway seeds that go well with pickles and these flavors are already in solution . Ethanol also induces a bit of heat, but this results in a pleasant instant sensation rather than an alcohol burn. For those of you who love math, you can probably guess that these pickles are around 22% ABV, but I hope that by now I’ve earned your trust in both pickles and booze. (If not, what was it all for?)
What do you do with pickles? You do the same with any marinade – put it in sandwiches, in snack bars, and in martinis (or gibsons). I’m sure some of you are going to complain about “wasting” alcohol, but hey cowboy. First, have you heard of luxury? Don’t you think your vegetables deserve to be bathed in more sophisticated items? The booze hasn’t gone missing; it just gets stronger. Like a bush , this sweet and sour herbal pickle is the perfect companion for a dirty martini , Bloody Mary, and even a large glass of soda water. This is especially true of aquabeet brine, my new favorite brine. To prepare pickles from aquavit, you will need:
- Vegetables such as a couple of small beets, a very large onion, about 40 cocktail onions, or a very large cucumber.
- 1 cup vinegar
- 1 glass of aquavit
- 1 tablespoon fine sea salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon juniper berries (totally optional)
Peel, slice, or prepare vegetables. Place them in a heatproof jar or other airtight container. Add the rest of the ingredients to the saucepan and bring everything to a boil, stirring briefly to make sure the sugar and salt are dissolved. Pour the hot brine over the vegetables and cover the top of the container loosely. Let everything cool to room temperature, then close the jar or container and refrigerate overnight. If you want to taste a small amount of brine before pouring a full cup of aquavit on the beets, just split everything in half. This recipe scales very well.