Cucumber pickle

This pickle is exciting for a couple of reasons. When I was in England recently, I bought the National Trust's Good Old-Fashioned Jams, Preserves and Chutneys by Sara Paston-Williams, and it finally arrived off the boat this week. Naturally, I've been itching to get into it. The other reason is that it's made with cucumbers from our garden. Our very first home-grown pickle, although I did have to buy the onions and capsicum, since the birds pulled all my onions up almost before they'd bulbed, and the capsicums aren't quite ripe yet.

So, last night I sliced up two onions, a green capsicum, and just under a kilo of cucumbers using my new favourite device ever, my new V-slicer. Took me around three minutes to slice the lot of 'em!

The veges all went into my medium ceramic bowl, with a good handful of salt, to sit overnight and draw out any excess liquid. I covered the bowl with a tea towel and let it sit on the shelves in my dining room where it wasn't going to be disturbed.

Came back to it this morning and poured around half a litre of liquid out, gave the veg a good washing, and rolled it in a clean tea towel to wring the last of the water out. I left it in the tea towel while I prepared the vinegar.

Cider vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds and a little bit of ginger. That's it. Very simple.

I heated the vinegar, sugar and spices until the sugar dissolved, let it come to the boil, then emptied the veg out of the tea towel into the saucepan.

It's important not to simmer the veg for too long, or else you end up with a slimy heaving mass of greyish ooze, rather than lovely crisp green veg. Around five minutes should do it, and in my case, worked perfectly.

The tricky part was getting the pickle into jars. Because it is essentially vegetables in vinegar, it's important to get a good balance of veg and vinegar in each jar. Inevitably, the vinegar all rushes out leaving all the veg behind, leading to a scooping rather than pouring motion being required.

These will sit now for a couple of weeks to mature before being opened.