Wasabi Green Beans

First, mad props go to Rick's Picks for this recipe. My sisters brought me back some of his Smokra recently and it was awesome! I visited his site and saw his Windy City Wasabeans and fell in love immediately! Then joy of joys, I found that he had shared his recipe on the Whole Foods Website! So there was no question what this week's pickle would be.

Bright and early this morning I headed over to the West End Farmer's Market to see if one of my favorite farmers, Gene of Riparian Farms had any green beans. He did, and he hooked me up! Also,  Agriberry (of the Asparagus fame) had their first peaches of the season, and blackberries bigger than my thumb, so I had to get some of their fabulous fruit, too. Anne (the owner of Agriberry) was being interviewed by Channel 12, so I totally snuck into the background and made a show of admiring the peaches and buying some while they were filming her. I'm such a dork. Yay!

So then I gathered the rest of my ingredients. I had most everything I needed except for the wasabi powder. Here's a fabulous tip. Don't buy it in the Asian section of ANY of the regular grocery stores. It's a RIP OFF. Go to Tan-A (if you're a Richmonder, you know where it is, even if you've never been inside) it costs a fraction of the supermarket price there. Plus you can get shrimp chips!! YUM!

So yeah, got home, started my prep:

Measured out my wasabi powder to make sure I had enough, peeled a zillion cloves of garlic. Made my brine (no pic of that... too boring, but it sure smelled good!) Also, check out my awesome new paring knife! On clearance at Sur La Table (online only) but get a couple friends together to save on shipping. You get an adorable set of three. With sheathes so you can take them camping and stuff. LOVE! (They totally should pay me for that endorsement.)

Then washed and trimmed my green beans. Tedious! And I only did 4 pounds so far. I'm going to do another 4 pounds later today or tomorrow. (Probably tomorrow.)

So fresh and so clean! Delicious too! Something about veggies that were in the field just 24 hours ago that taste so yummy.

Then with my jars all sterilized, I put in the garlic and the wasabi powder:

Packed in my green beans (I'm really trying to pack my jars tighter, but I don't know if I'm getting them tight enough. I ran out of brine HALF WAY THROUGH and had to quick whip up a whole second batch! Can that be right? This learning process is harder than I thought it would be.)

But check out the final product!

6 pints of fabulous smelling soy ginger garlic wasabi pickled green beans. And I'll do 6 more pints tomorrow! These are going to knock you socks off! I'm thinking these are for my most special friends.... So who are the lucky ones? We can taste these July 23 or later.... so you have plenty of time to come up with bribes. GO!

A Peck of Pickled.... Peaches?

So to be completely upfront, these peaches are not from my foodshed. I bought them on sale at Whole Foods. They're from South Carolina. But it was such a great price, and I've been wanting to do a fruit, I couldn't pass them up. They were a little greener than I wanted to use, so I ripened them in a paper bag for a couple of days. And I really should have kept a closer eye on them. I probably should have processed them on Sunday, because today they were luscious and juicy and delicious. But Sunday I was tired and feeling lazy. And the power went out for several hours, yeah, so I had to lay around and do nothing, yeah, and so I let my peaches get a little too ripe for pickling. So if they turn out a little mushy, I will have learned a lesson. But we learn more from our failures, right? And this whole thing is about experimenting and learning and blah blah blah. Don't worry, though, I'm not messing with my pH or my acidity. Nobody's getting botulism on my watch.

So it started out simple enough. Boil some sugar and some vinegar with some spices (I added some extras to the "Traditional Southern Spiced Pickled Peaches" recipe I had. Cardamom, allspice, more ginger....) let that steep for an hour while I peeled my 6 pounds of peaches. No biggie. You all know how to peel a peach (just like you do tomatoes): drop it in boiling water for 30 seconds or so, then ice bath!

The skins slip right off. It's actually super fun. Then cut 'em in half, pop out the pit (thank goodness for freestone peaches!) and into acidulated water so they don't brown. Really basic stuff here. While I was peeling the peaches, I had my canner going, getting my pint jars nice and sterile. The basic routine. Peaches done, jars sterile, add peaches to pickling liquid to get everything nice and hot. Then the fun part. Packing the peaches curved side down to avoid the cavities filling with air. Much harder than it sounds. I'm sure it'll get easier with practice, but my goodness those things are slippery and geez was everything hotter than hell! But I did succeed in packing six pints:

Then filling them with the pickling liquid, getting what I thought were all the air bubbles out, putting on the lids, and processing. But somehow when all the jars were full, I still had over a quart of delicious sweet peach vinegar left!!

I processed a pint of it to keep, but this jar is going in the fridge... not sure what to do with it. Mix with greek yogurt as a topping for fruit salad? I'm open to suggestions. Or if anyone wants some I'll gladly give out half pint jars... just hit me up!

So, the end result:

Six super yummy looking pints of spiced pickled peaches (that's a big chunk of ginger in the bottom of the jar on the left. YUM!) I hear they go great with cheesecake.... who out there's a baker?

One last question. All of my recipes suggest a specific waiting time before you taste them. But this one doesn't. Who thinks I should take these to the potluck at Polyface Farm next weekend as part of my pickle platter? Vote in the comments or on my Facebook!