Pots of Pickled Peppadews

I’ve been doing a fair bit of pickling, of late. Lemons, limes, turnips, beets, peppers–all of which have been coming my way in strange abundance this year.

Or is it that I was primed to pickle, and therefore saw different possibility in the usual abundances? Perhaps both.

I had to come to pickling one day or another, of course. It’s an inevitable point in my fate line, seeing as I am of post-colonial Indian stock, and pickles are a part of my cultural and literary heritage. In fact, pickles are by now such cliched tropes of all conditions Indian, I may as well just burp out key references and move on. Ready? Here goes.

Perhaps our most esteemed pickler with famously exaggerated olfactory capacities, Saleem Sinai, tells the story of our becoming a post-colony via so many pickle metaphors:

“Every pickle jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! Tonight, by screwing the lid firmly on to a jar bearing the legend Special Formula No. 30: “Abracadabra,” I reach the end of my long-winded auto-biography: in words and pickles, I have immortalised my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods. We must live, I’m afraid, with the shadows of imperfection..”
[Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children]

Rushdie got the Booker and then the Booker of Bookers for that idea. So maybe it’s no surprise that a factory knowingly called “Paradise pickles and preserves” centers some of another famous Booker book, as its laborers court rebellion against a now-firmly-postcolonial state in a Marxist idiom:

“They used to make pickles, squashes, jams, curry powders and canned pineapples. And banana jam (illegally) after the FPO (Food Products Organization) banned it because according to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency, they said… Looking back now, to Rahel it seemed as though this difficulty that their family had with classification ran much deeper than the jam-jelly question… They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly.“
[Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things]

So, as I say, it’s inevitable I should come to pickling — though I’ll insist this is not a post about chutnification (chutneys are not pickles, pickles are not chutneys; I’ve blogged enough already about this whole conundrum), not really even about Indian ways of pickling. I’m not even going to get into the histories of pickling. This post is born of a taste and an ingredient that I, descendant but no child of Gandhi, brought home from South Africa with nary a thought of insurgency–non-violent or Marxist.

This is my story, damnit. Pickle that, if you please.

Pickling carries little symbolic weight for me. It’s a method and a practice with a long Indian history (hence its rich symbolic value)–also which others have written plentifully about. For me, pickling is just the sometimes-useful solution to the fact that life hardly ever flows in even streams, but comes at you in gushes and then trickles. Pickling is a way of managing that variation.

I’ve always been a bit of a packrat, ready to hoarde and save; my pantry bears overstuffed testimony to that habit. Trust me when I say I’ve had my share of Marie Kondo moments, but what does one do when just about all ingredients spark equal measures of joy? I don’t think I need displays to value what’s in my kitchen. I’d plum run out of room! (I do, however, need to slow down, travel less, work-for-pay less, and cook more). My “clutter” is a thousand-and-one nights of adventure, possibility, and “a-ha!” moments waiting, mostly patiently, to happen.

Pickling fits well with the habits of a packrat. It’s a sort of hoarding, after all. It lets me live with seasons, and to let the good things from one percolate into others. By the same token, it is its own method of organization, anticipation, and an active practice of non-wastefulness. Couple that with the fact that salt-spice-sour-sweet are almost always necessary to the pickling process, and my heart is locked on it. Pickling is my happiest medium: a way of living in the present, ready for the future, and armed with all the tastes that count.

So, then, the peppadew. Peppadews are these delicious South African things I’d encounter in sandwiches and the like, only to find it a trademarked name for these pickled wee red peppers called “Juanita,” which are essentially a sweet red cherry pepper. At first, I’d bring jars home for us to hoard and eventually devour. But then when the fine folks at AuroOrchard next door to us in Auroville offered us “sweet orange chilli peppers”–on the eve of another trip to Johannesburg–a bell dinged in my dull head.

My pot of pickles were born from haste: a whole pile of peppers that would not wait patiently for my return, but spoil from longing (ha!) during my absence. Life gushes, sometimes at the worst possible moments. I had an evening to get myself out of this pickle, and I did that by–you guessed it–getting myself into a pickle.

The process was quite simple, really. I didn’t have time to de-seed my sweet orange chilli peppers, so I used them whole, stalks and all. I had a few yellow chillies from the garden which promised not to be too spicy, so I threw those in, too. I didn’t have time to let anything soak overnight in brine, so I flash boiled it all and left it to soak a few hours while I packed instead.

Then dunked the peppers in a vinegar-sugar-spice brew, and threw them fairly unceremoniously into hastily prepped hot jars (I dared not call them “sterilized,” though that was the intent).

And I left for South Africa.

I returned a week later, confidently without any jars of purchased peppadew, because I knew mine would be ready and waiting.

And they were.

Note, if you haven’t already from the images, that this is a brine-and-vinegar-based pickling process, not the typical Indian pickling with salt and (usually fiery) spices. I’ve done my share of the latter this year, but stories of those experiences will have to follow in a subsequent post.

I like the sound of peppadew, so I’m keeping it–TM and R-marks be damned. You could use this pickling process for just about any small sweetish peppers (Piquillos, cherry red peppers, or sweet orange), or even spicier chillies (cayenne, long yellow, perhaps even jalapenos). You may need to adjust the levels of salt and sugar, depending on the spiciness of your chosen pepper–basically, the spicier the pepper, the more intense the salt-sour elements need to be.

Peppadews are great in sandwiches, wraps and rolls (they pair wonderfully with cream cheese), minced into salads (they pair well with feta, too!) or served alongside Mediterranean mezze platter offerings (hummus, mutabbal, tabouli etc.). A little peppadew zing doesn’t hurt a nice crispy flatbread topped with all your other favorite things, either!

You can thank me later!

With thanks to friends at AuroOrchard, whose efforts gave me the essential ingredients for this journey!

Peppadew Pickled Peppers

Pickling cherry or other small sweet peppers produces this zingy little condiment, just the perfect balance of hot-sour-sweet. We love these in sandwiches and wraps, on salads, with mezze platters, or on flatbreads!

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Ingredients

  

For the brining

• 3-4 cups cherry red or other small-sized sweet peppers
• 5-6 cayenne or other long peppers
• 4 tablespoons sea salt or rock salt about 60g
• 2 cups water about 600ml

For the pickling

• 1-1 1/2 cups malt or grape vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• a few fresh whole garlic cloves peeled
• 2 tablespoons mixed peppercorns
• a few bay leaves
• a few fresh lemon leaves
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

Equipment

• 1/2 litre pickling jar or equivalent in smaller jars

Instructions

 

Prepare the peppers

• Prepare the peppers by cutting off the stems and using a small spoon to de-seed them. Use gloves if you are working with spicy peppers!
• You could skip this step if you are sure the peppers you have are not too spicy, or if the peppers are too small to be easily deseeded.
• Leave the long peppers, if you are using, intact.

Brining

• Bring 2 cups of water and 4 tablespoons sea salt or rock salt to a boil, stirring to dissolve.
• Now drop all your peppers in and boil hard for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
• Leave the peppers in this brine for a minimum of 2 hours or overnight.
• Place a plate or other object on top to keep the peppers submerged as much as possible.

Pickling

• When you’re ready to complete the pickling, drain the peppers from the brine, rinse, and leave to dry as well as possible. You can pat try or leave them under a fan for a while. Just try to remove as much moisture as possible.
• Get your pickling jars ready: follow these instructions to sterilize.
• Combine the syrup ingredients in a non-reactive large pot.
• Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then bring to a rolling boil. Watch out, as the mixture foams and vinegar fumes are caustic!
• Add the brined peppers the boiling syrup. Boil for a minute or two.
• Then remove from heat, and add in the garlic, peppercorns, and bay/lemon leaves.
• Use a slotted spoon now to transfer the peppers first to the prepped jars. Push them in as you go; you want the bottles to be filled well so that the peppers stay submerged (and look prettier!).
• Then pour over the hot vinegar mixture. Fill the jars, leaving about 1/2-inch at the top.
• Wipe the rims of the jars, cap them, and leave for about 2-3 weeks before use.

Notes

Recipe adapted in part from blackkitty’s version on this discussion forum.

Keyword cherry pepper, peppadew, pickle