H.F.F. 5.5: Save It For Later

Believe it or not, I actually have been keeping up on the cooking part of the HFF. It's the writing that's fallen so far behind...

 

The Challenge: Save it for Later. Try to preserve a food for later use, or make a dish with preserved ingredients.

The Recipe: 

Pickled Nasturtiums (a very good Substitute for Capers)

To each pint of vinegar, 1 oz of salt, 6 pepper corns, nasturtiums. 

Gather the nasturtium pods on a dry day, and wipe them clean with a cloth; put them in a dry glass bottle with vinegar, salt, and pepper in the above proportion. If you cannot find enough ripe to fill a bottle, cork up what you have got until you have some more fit: they may be added from day to day. Bung up the bottles and seal or rosin the tops. They will be fit for use in 10 or 12 months and the best way is to make them one season for the next.

Look for nasturtium-pods from the end of July to the end of August.

The Date/Year and Region: British, 1861

How Did You Make It: I picked about three dozen nasturtium seed-pods ( I grew the "dwarf jewel mix" from Baker Creek, and have been getting red, orange, yellow, and particolored blossoms since June, with seed pods from late July to October), rinsed them with water, and patted dry.

I put 1 oz white vinegar, 1/2 oz pickling salt, and three peppercorns in the smallest canning jar I had, then added the nasturtiums. Since there was still space, I threw in a few radish seed pods that I'd picked as well. Following modern safety standards, I processed the jar for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath, rather than corking it.

Time to Complete: I spent about 10 minutes picking all the nasturtium pods I could find, <5 minutes to assemble all the ingredients, and 10 minutes processing the jar. Bringing the water bath up to boiling took a bit longer, though I did not time it.

Total Cost: $0, everything was from my garden or out of the pantry.

How Successful Was It?: I haven't tried it yet, but the jar appears to have sealed successfully.

How Accurate Is It?: I really should do more research into period vinegar varieties, but other than the modern safety measures, there were no known inaccuracies.

Nasturtium pods (and a few radish seed pods).

Having extra produce, I mixed up some of Beeton's Universal Pickle at the same time, and used it on the radish pods out of my garden and some cucumbers that a coworker grew. I made it at 1/6 scale, using 1 qt vinegar, 3 oz salt, 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 tsp mace, 1.5 tsp tumeric, 2 tsp mustard seed, and a small amount of coarsely chopped fresh ginger and small onions. This filled two quart jars, with a bit of the pickle left-over. If I make this again, I would not actually boil the mixture together before canning, as the vinegar vapor quite overwhelmed the kitchen, even with windows opens and fans at top speed (whereupon I stopped boiling it after ~10 minutes rather than 20, and promptly fled outdoors.)