Grandma's Virginia Chunk Pickles

I'm not much into pickles. Not because I don't like them, but rather because I have been spoiled by them. My grandmother and great grandmother both spent their adult lives making a special kind of cucumber pickle called a Virginia Chunk. A Virginia Chunk is a sweet pickle, with a spicy-sour kick at the end that will knock your socks off! There's nothing quite like a home grilled cheeseburger with that sweet/spicy zest of a Virginia Chunk.

Now that my grandmother has retired from pickle making, the duty of preserving this particular family tradition has been passed on to me, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Ingredients

3-4 lbs of pickling cucumbers
2 c. salt (regular iodized salt is fine)
4 gallons water (divided)
3 tbl alum (divided)
6 c. vinegar
8 c. sugar (divided)
1/3 c. (one jar) pickling spice
1 tbl celery seed

Make a brine of 2 c. salt and one gallon of water. Boil and pour over cucumbers that have been washed, and chunked (see note below) and placed in a large heatproof, non-reactive container (see below). Place a loose fitting lid on top of the container that will keep pickles submerged in the brine, but allow the aerobic processes of pickling to reach the open air (more notes below!). Let stand one week. In hot weather, skim daily. Otherwise skim as needed.

Drain cucumbers. For each of the next three mornings, make a boiling hot solution of one gallon water and one tablespoon powdered alum. Pour over cucumbers. On the fourth morning, drain cukes from alum solution and rinse well. Make a solution of 6 c. vinegar, 5 c. sugar, 1/3 c. pickling spice, and 1 tbl celery seed. Heat to boiling and pour over cucumbers.

On the fifth morning, drain liquid off of cukes into a large pan and add 2 c. sugar. Heat to boiling and pour over pickles.

On the sixth morning, drain pickles into a saucepan and add 1 c. sugar. Heat to boiling. Pack pickles into hot canning jars. Pour hot pickle juice over pickles. Process jars.

A Few Notes About Making Virginia Chunk Pickles

Pickling Cucumbers

A pickling cucumber is much smaller than a slicing or English cucumber. It is usually 3-4 inches in length and, at least around here, doesn't appear in regular supermarkets very often. Maybe for a week or so at the very height of the season. To get pickling cukes, I have resorted to growing my own. When I need more, I can usually find them at my local Asian megamarket, believe it or not. Sometimes I have seen them at farmers markets. In any case, using a pickling cucumber will give you a much better quality product than a slicing or English cuke.

Timing

Removing stems before pickling is essential.

This pickle takes just under two weeks (one week and six days) to make from start to end. However most days require less than ten minutes of work. The major efforts occur, predictably, on the first and last days of the process. On the first day, cucumbers must be thoroughly washed and chunked, including the removal of any remaining stems, which contain an enzyme that can soften pickles. If the pickles were purchased, any sealing wax must also be scrubbed from the skin.

The last day of pickling is the most intensive, including canning. When starting your pickles, make sure that you will have time to can two weeks later. Although there is some leeway in the timing of each step, you don't want to delay any step for more than a day.

Chunking

What is a chunked pickle? There are several different forms for cucumber pickles, whole dills, spears, hamburger slices, etc. A chunk is one of the least well known forms. A chunk is a cucumber cut horizontally into 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch, well... chunks! I have often been tempted to try to slice these into hamburger slices or even spears, but haven't had the guts to try it yet. Mostly because if it didn't work, I wouldn't have any of these pickles, and that, my friends, would be a tragedy! So I stick with the chunk form and slice them a bit thinner when I am ready to put them on my hamburger. But if any of you is brave enough to try another form, do let me know how it turns out!

Pickle Crocks and Pickling Containers

One of the great lamentations of my life is that I do not own a true, honest to goodness pickle crock. I sometimes lay awake at night dreaming of that perfect pickle crock - a ceramic vessel, roughly 1-2 gallons of capacity, with a wide mouth. And on those nights when I'm *really* dreaming, I dream of an accompanying pickle crock lid - one that doesn't appear to fit the crock at all, unless it's full of pickles and pickle brine, and then it sits, casually, on top of the pickles, submerging the cucumbers in the brine, but allowing air to get at them and facilitate the pickling process.

As it is, however, pickling crocks, due in large part to their extreme priciness, remain a dream and I am forced to use other containers for my pickle making enterprises. In years past, I have used a new plastic wastebasket for a container, as they are usually roughly the correct size. The trick with these is using one that you trust to be able to handle the heat of the boiling brines, without disintegrating the plastic. A container made of food grade plastic should suffice. Glass (Pyrex) or ceramic containers are preferred, simply because they can handle the heat and will not react with the acids involved in pickling. Whatever the container, it must have some kind of loose fitting lid that will submerge the pickles and keep them in the brine, but still allow oxygen to get to the fluid, as this kind of pickling is an aerobic process. I usually use a plate to submerge the pickles, but any lid used must of course be non-reactive.

Pickling Spice and Alum

The first time my grandmother told me about these ingredients, I silently mused, "Where on earth am I going to get those?" I'm glad I resisted asking her because I would have felt stupid when she told me. They are, oddly enough, at the grocery store. In with the spices. Really. Right there. Salt. Pepper. Cinnamon. Paprika. Pickling Spices. Labeled just like that. And alum isn't too far away. And, conveniently, the McCormick bottle of pickling spices is roughly 1/3 c.

Who knew? Evidently, my grandmother.

 

Canning

I'm not going to say too much about canning, because there are several great canning tutorials out there. I will say, however that I usually get about 6-8 pints of pickles from this recipe. Also, if there is any liquid leftover after packing pickles - can the liquid and keep it, just in case you need it in future years. Likewise, I keep a jar of liquid leftover from the year's consumed pickles in the refrigerator and add it to the boiling pickling juice on the last day, right before packing the pickles, just to ensure I have enough fluid in which to pack my pickles. If however, you end up with too little fluid, just keep the leftover pickles in the refrigerator and use them first. Heck -  they taste so good, sometimes I just put them on a plate and have them for dinner!

Happy Pickling!

The Weirdest Thing In My Pantry - Fish Sauce

My current brand of fish sauce. Notice the nearly empty bottle?
Time  to go to the Asian Market!

Okay - maybe it's not the weirdest. The bonito shavings (shavings of dried bonito fish that look more like kindling than food) are definitely weirder. But of the condiments and spices I use on a weekly basis, fish sauce is definitely the strangest. And to boot, my current brand of fish sauce is Squid Brand Fish Sauce. Believe me, when I pull that out in front of guests who don't know any better, the look on their faces lets me know I may need to do some explaining.

Fish sauce is perhaps the major condiment/sauce in Thai food. It is in practically *everything* Thai. Find a good Pad Thai recipe? It has fish sauce. Curries? Fish sauce. Even the recipe for Hot and Sour Soup in my go-to Thai Cookbook has fish sauce at it's core. It's a salty, almost smokey flavor, kin to soy sauce, but not as strong. If ever you find a recipe claiming to be Thai, but without fish sauce, be very skeptical. And if it's Pad Thai, RUN - do not walk - the other way!

The hard part about fish sauce is buying it, especially buying it for the first time. I have some good supermarkets around, but I have yet to find a decent fish sauce in a local mega-mart. And yes, you can buy it online, but I like to buy a lot of my Asian ingredients at the same time, and who wants to pay shipping on that? To get my fish sauce, I have to make a trek into the center of town (I live *way* out in the 'burbs) to the Asian mega-mart.

Let's face it - for some of us, walking into an Asian market can be a bit intimidating, and, if you believe my five year old son, it can also be a little, shall we say, odorous? (It doesn't help that my Asian market keeps durian by the front door!) But if you have small children, I strongly suggest taking them to the Asian market (and a carniceria and any other specialty market you can find) from time to time if you don't already. For one thing, it broadens their minds (people really eat that?), and for another, it will help them to be less intimidated buying fish sauce, curries, foreign spices, or pickled duck eggs as adults. Once in the Asian market, you may need to go on a great trek to find the fish sauce. After ten years of patronage I still haven't figured out the organizational schema of my market when it comes to canned and bottled goods. But I can usually find a helpful, if slightly amused, clerk to help me find what I need. Or I just wander, picking up random cans and bottles until I'm 90% sure I have what I need, because, of course, where is the adventure in being 100% sure?

 Once you find the fish sauce area, there are bound to be dozens of different brands, some in English, some not. The good news is, over the years I've tried different brands, and so long as they are all basic fish sauce, they're all relatively decent. If you're new to fish sauce, you may want to find a brand with ingredients in English. The ingredients list should be relatively simple: anchovies (or anchovy extract), salt and perhaps some sugar. That's it. If there are any coloring or additives, find a different brand. There are a lot of brands to choose from, so finding one you're comfortable with shouldn't be too hard.

Once you have your sauce, have fun with it! Try one of the dozens of Thai recipes out there! If you're new to Thai food altogether, I suggest Pad Thai or Yellow Curry. Both are mild, and just a little sweet, and with a little practice, I guarantee they will become a part of your menu rotation!

An Open Letter Re: My Favorite Pork Product

Dear Mr. Owens and Mr. Jimmy Dean,

I wish to inform you that I will not be purchasing your products for the foreseeable future. This is not a boycott, protest or complaint, but merely a natural consequence of discovering that Oklahoma's own Blue and Gold Sausage is available, six days a week, 52 weeks a year, at the Jones Drug Store in downtown Jones, Oklahoma. This sausage, priced comparably to your own, is leaner, vastly superior in flavor, promotes local charities (in this case, the Jones Kiwanis), and when I cook it the perfume of its aroma fills my home with a scent that says, "Welcome home!" And now that I have discovered that I can get it year round, I see no need to reduce my sausage expectations as I have in the past simply because your products were all I could get my hands on.

Thanks to Blue and Gold and the Jones Drug Store, my family will no longer be teased with the superiority of great sausage once a year then be forced to return to the gulag of greasy meat-bits you call sausage. No. Instead, we will enjoy the superiority of Oklahoma sausage year round, and we couldn't be more delighted.

Sincerely,
A Blue and Gold fan for life

*All opinions expressed are those of the sausage-obsessed, euphoric author. :D*

DH's Ultimate Comfort Food, aka Tuna Noodle Casserole

At some point when my mother was pregnant with either my sister or myself, she went to a church function and had a small bite of Tuna Noodle Casserole. One rushed trip to the bathroom later, we NEVER had tuna casserole in our house. EVER.

Thus when I married my DH (dear husband), I was completely at a loss for how to make his favorite comfort food. But then, one of the reasons I married the man was because, he knows how to cook. Apart from having a mother who is an excellent cook, he also worked as a line cook in high school and college, and frankly, no one can beat his steaks, or his spaghetti sauce, or his tortilla soup, or any of a dozen of his specialties. This works out well in our family because while I am a good cook, I am a better baker. DH can't bake for squat (owing in great part to growing up with an egg allergy), but he can, when he puts his mind to it, cook up a storm (and leave a storm path through the kitchen to boot!).

So over the last decade+ of wedded bliss, we have actually been able to teach each other a few things in the kitchen and TNC is one of the ones I have learned from him, which he in turn, learned from his mother. This includes the *super secret* (shhhhhhhhhhh!) ingredient. For the longest time, DH wouldn't tell me what this secret ingredient was. He would wait until I had my back turned or I had left the room to tend to a child and he would slide it in. Then one day, when he had had a tough week and he was really wanting some comfort food, but he had no time to make it, I knew I had him cornered. "If you want TNC," I teased, "you'll have to tell me how you make it!" Then, I discovered why he hadn't told me.

You see, I hate ham.

Well, hate may be too strong. I will eat it to be polite. I will eat it when it's 95 cents a pound and the budget's so tight it's leaving red marks on my wallet. But of all the pork products out there, it's my least favorite. And that's the secret ingredient - a 4.5 oz can of deviled ham. In the can, it looks terrible - like fatty pink sludge. But in the casserole, it adds a subtle depth to the taste of the tuna, taking some of the fishy edge off and adding a subtle smoky sweetness.

It makes a great fall comfort casserole, and isn't too hard to whip up before work and have hot and ready when you get home. Heat up some veggies, and you have a great, wholesome meal without too much fuss.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

16 oz cooked short pasta (egg noodles, farfalle, or macaroni all work well)
2 5 oz cans tuna packed in water and drained
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/2 large white or yellow onion, diced
2 Tbl margarine
1 can sliced mushrooms
1 c milk
1 4.5 oz can deviled ham
2 c shredded cheese
1/2 can Pringles chips, crushed

In a skillet, melt butter and saute mushrooms and onions until onions are translucent. Add tuna and ham and stir. Next, add cream of mushroom soup and milk. Stir until combined and heated through. If the mixture seems too dry, add more milk until there is enough liquid to coat the pasta. Spray a large casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray and add 2/3 of the cooked pasta. Pour the tuna mixture on top and mix with the pasta, coating the noodles thoroughly. Add the remainder of the pasta, being sure to leave room for the topping. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top to cover. Crush half a can of Pringles potato chips in a sandwich bags and sprinkle over the cheese. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before digging in!

TNC - before baking. The whole casserole never lasts long enough for pics after baking!