Vegetables | Zeb Bakes

Thought I’d better join in the pickle posts! Celia has been pickling lemons and limes here which look fantastic!

Here is the Waitrose magazine version of a simple danish cucumber pickle. Fast and easy to make, keeps for about five days in the fridge.

When I was little we used to visit my great Aunt Gerda in Denmark and she always had a white cucumber pickle that tasted just like this. I have never seen it in a delicatessen in England, but this taste brings back memories of mosquitos and long grass and a little wooden summer house in the wood. The cucumber becomes magically crunchy when you treat it this way. Good with any fish, particularly smoked fish like trout or eel.

Take a fresh cucumber, give it a good wash. Take a fork and run the tines down the outside of the cucumber. Slice the cucumber thinly. Layer with a tablespoon of Maldon salt. Leave for ten minutes in a colander. Then rinse it well under a cold tap. Mix up golden castor sugar and white wine vinegar and add chopped dill. Proportions depend on how sweet/sour you like your pickle. Start with 70 ml vinegar to 40g g sugar and see how that works for you. Layer the cucumber in a sterilised jar, add the vinegar and sugar mix and chopped dill, give it a good shake and leave for a few hours before you try it.

Sweet sour salty dill – lovely!

I know you expect bread – but I am also a big fan of vegetables and beans and pulses

Warm butterbean gremolata

I think everyone has their favourite beans. What are yours?

I never ate any of these dried wonders until I left home. They weren’t in my family’s food vocabulary. Like a lot of the foods I am interested in, they require work to transform them into something that you really want to eat.

I don’t think they are as popular as the baked bean in the heart and tummy of the English so I am putting a word in for them, as do these guys:
This is just delicious….and at the moment I could eat it every day….
You will need

a bay leaf or two
300 grams dried butter beans
An onion halved
Two garlic cloves
A good handful of parsley or coriander
a lemon grated zest and juice
Two tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Soak 300 grams of butterbeans overnight in water with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, this helps to stop the skins falling off and tenderise the skins.
Make sure there is enough water to more than cover the beans as they swell up as they soak.
The following day drain and rinse the beans.
Place in a large pan with plenty of fresh water.
Add an onion chopped in half and a couple of cloves of garlic and a bay leaf.
Bring to the boil and boil at a rolling boil for about 10 minutes, then simmer uncovered for an hour and a half, or until the beans are tender.
Do not add salt before this as it will harden the skins.
Add salt to taste and simmer for another ten minutes.
Drain and discard the onion and garlic and bay leaf.
Zest a lemon, and squeeze the fruit.
Add the zest and about half a lemon’s worth of juice, again to taste, finely chopped parsley, or coriander if that is your preference.
Stir in a little freshly chopped garlic, salt and pepper, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.
Mix well and serve with other salads, as a vegetable side dish, on its own with a hunk of crusty homemade sourdough baguette!

The original recipe for this in this month’s Waitrose magazine by the way which is a really good one and well worth getting hold of a copy. Their website doesn’t do the magazine justice.