Eli Cooks

I think it’s rather obvious at this point that I’m a big fan of pickles. It’s possible that I like making pickles even more than I like eating them. Possible, but it’s a close call. One of my favorite parts of making pickles is the waiting. You do all the work up front, but you can’t tell how they’ll turn out for weeks. Maybe someone with a bit more experience in pickle-making could taste a pickle that hasn’t been aged and tell immediately what it will be like in a week or a month, but not me. I’m not in a hurry to learn though; that anticipation is great. There’s always some chance that when you crack open the jar, it will turn out to be horrible…and that’s happened to me a few times. But it makes the times it does work that much better.

These pickles were one of the good surprises. They definitely exceeded my expectations. I based them (very loosely) on the bread and butter zucchini from The Joy of Pickling (an excellent resource for pickles of all kinds.) I’d made those previously (by the book the first time) and they turned out wonderfully, but my favorite part was the onions. This time I wanted to focus even more on the onions. I wasn’t quite ready to go for full-on pickled onions with nothing else, so I tossed in a few bell peppers. Honestly, the peppers are good, but completely superfluous.

I also wanted to play up the spices a bit, and thought I might as well mix them up while I was at it. A few months back I was at the Spice House and saw cassia buds. I’d never seen them before and was curious. They let me take one to taste and it was lovely…like cinnamon, but decidedly sweeter and more mellow, with floral top notes. I had no idea what I would do with them, but I had to get some. Well, right on the label it says they’re commonly used in some Asian pickles. Perfect! I thought they would pair well with some bright coriander. And now, a few weeks later, these onions confirm that choice.