For some reason, I had always had a bit of a “take it or leave it” attitude toward Piccalilli and held this until relatively recently.  When a friend imparted a jar of his homemade Piccalilli to me a while back, I surprisingly fell in love with this spicy, pungent,  sweet, tangy, and crunchy pickle and demolished the jar very quickly.

In need of fix, and being a great lover of pickling/preserving in general, I thought I would attempt a batch of my own and turned to my good friend, and preserving bible, “The River Cottage Handbook No.2…Preserves” by Pam Corbin,  for the recipe below.

This Piccalilli really packs a punch and is great enjoyed with oatcakes, a good mature cheddar and some cold meats. Yum Yum!!

This will make 3-5 jars worth (depending on the size of your jars).

Ingredients

• 1 kg of mixed, fresh, seasonal veg ( I used cauliflower, courgette, white onion, carrot, green pepper)
• 50g of fine salt
• 30g cornflour
• 10g tumeric
• 10g mustard powder
• 15g yellow mustard seeds
• 1tsp crushed cumin seeds
• 1ts crushed coriander seeds
• 600ml cider vinegar
• 150g granulated sugar
• 50g honey

Method

1. Peel, wash and cut your selected vegetables into even, bite-sized pieces. Pop in a large bowl and mix with the salt. Leave for 24 hours covered and in a cool place.  Rinse and drain thoroughly with cold water.
2. Blitz the cornflour, turmeric, mustard powder, mustard seeds, cumin, coriander and a little vinegar to make a smooth paste.
3. Add the remainder of the vinegar, sugar and honey to a pan and bring to the boil.  Add the spice mix to vinegar and boil for 3-4 minutes. This should now be quite thick and very fragrant. Fold the vegetables into the sauce.
4. Pack into warm and sterilised jars. If you have not done this kind of thing before it might be worth swatting up on the dos and don’ts of sterilising jars, but I tend to just give the jars a good scrub in hot soapy water.
5. Leave for 4-6 weeks before opening (this will allow the flavours to mellow).  Use within a year.

Enjoy!