I knew they were the world’s best pickles the moment I tasted one. That first taste took place around 1950, and I’ve tasted a lot of pickles since, am a pickle hound in fact, but I’ve never come across anything else as good.

They came to us by way of my Uncle Ronald Smith, who was an electrician in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana where I grew up. One day he was doing electrical work for a Bulgarian family, and they rewarded him with a sample pickle. He liked it so much he got the recipe and gave it to his wife Gladys, who gave it to Grandma Glidewell, who made it and gave some to me, and I thought I’d died and gone to pickle heaven.

And thus, although they became an old Glidewell family recipe, they are really an old Bulgarian family recipe. The Bulgarian family, whose name I do not know, told Uncle Ronald that in Bulgaria, when the first heavy frost kills the tomato vines, they put all their end-of-garden vegetables –- including those green tomatoes — into a barrel, fill the barrel with pickling brine, and eat the best pickles in the world all winter.

It turns out, though, that the pickles’ travel from Bulgaria to the U.S. was only one leg of a more ancient journey. Because I mentioned them to an Iranian woman, and she said, “My family has always made pickles like that! Exactly like that, except we add tarragon.”

Iran being the new name for the ancient kingdom of Persia, who knows how many centuries these pickles go back?

There’s more: I later lost the recipe’s brine proportions. Gave some thought to its travels between Persia and Bulgaria, looked in an Armenian-American cookbook (Treasured Armenian Recipes, published in 1949 by the Armenian General Benevolent Union) and there they were, under “Mixed Pickles No. 2.” Turns out the world’s best Armenian pickles are just like the world’s best Bulgarian and Persian and American pickles, except they include dill, and sometimes green beans and coriander seed.

So this is an old, old recipe belonging to the whole human family.

END-OF-GARDEN PICKLES

Vegetables:

Green tomatoes*, cut in half or quartered if large
Carrots, peeled and cut into strips
Cauliflower, separated into small florets
Baby onions, peeled, or larger onions halved or quartered
Green peppers, cut into broad lengthwise slices
Garlic, two peeled cloves per quart jar
Medium-hot peppers, two small whole peppers per quart

You can also add unpeeled and unwaxed small cucumbers, zucchini, or lightly cooked green beans, though we never did. The hot peppers add adventure and zest, but if you prefer to save your tears for really sad occasions, why not?

Amounts and proportions depend on what vegetables you have and how many quarts you plan to make. You don’t have to have the green tomatoes, and the other things can be bought in a grocery store. But you do need a variety of vegetables, and you have to have the onions and garlic, or you won’t have the world’s best pickles. You will have the world’s so-so pickles, and that would be a shame.

Armenian-Persian-Bulgarian Brine

To one quart of water add 1/4 cup pickling salt (salt that isn’t iodized), and one cup of white distilled vinegar. Bring the mixture to a boil. This is enough brine to cover two quarts of mixed pickles, with a little left over.

Processing

Follow the canning instructions in a good, standard cookbook. Or, if you plan to eat them right away, pack the vegetables into clean quart jars, pour over them the hot brine, and keep the pickles covered in the refrigerator. Some of the more impressionable vegetables, like zucchini, will be ready to eat in only two or three days.

About the author:
Go STEAMIN’ DOWN THE TRACKS WITH VIOLA HOCKENBERRY, a storytelling cookbook — and find Montana country cooking, nostalgic stories, and gift ideas — at Janette Blackwell’s Food and Fiction, http://foodandfiction.com/Entrance.htmlOr visit her Delightful Food Directory, http://delightfulfood.com/main.html

Dried or Fresh? That is the (first) question.  Herbs like basil, sage, cilantro and peppermint tend to lose their flavor undergoing the drying process, therefore, needed to be bought and used in fresh condition.  Others such as dill, oregano, rosemary and thyme are able to retain their flavor, albeit in higher concentration.  So remember to use half the amount of dried herbs you would normally use for fresh ones.

Some herbs go really well when placed with certain meat or vegetables.  Rosemary, for instance, flavors lamb and beef rather beautifully.  As for fish and seafood, dill should be chosen.  Dill also goes very well with cucumber salad as enhancement to the dressing.

Here’s a quick cucumber salad recipe:

In a bowl, place sliced cucumber and freshly chopped dill.  Add on honey, cider vinegar, ground black pepper and a pinch of salt.  Mix together. Voila! Instant cucumber salad.

Another way to take herbs is as a salad.  Mix fresh ones like peppermint, basil and cilantro into readily-packaged salad to add that extra taste and bite.  When taking herbs as salad, it is best to have fresh uncut leaves, or roughly chopped.

Talking about that extra bite of flavor, we could also throw in as much chopped dill, or any other desired dried herbs as we can take into our bread-baking ingredients.  And what about adding herbs into our favorite cheesecakes? That can be done too.

There are many ways of adding herbs into our dishes, we just need to start slowly and test with them as we go along.

In between making some good bites, he interlaced the show with some historical background on the huge city and the fact that having been conquered among others, by a Sultanate in 1500s, the British Empire (pre 1600s) and lastly the Dutch before gaining independence, you would and should expect a glorious assortment of food influenced especially by the Dutch.  (As the Dutch ruled the longest).  At the same time retaining some of the traditional ways of the Indons.

Among the recipes shown were Semur Daging which is beef cooked in soy sauce infused with various herbs and spices, and Gado Gado – the local blanched vegetable salad with spicy peanut sauce for dressing/dipping.

Semur Daging

Use 1lb/600g of beef – knuckle and slice thickly.  Get 2 large potatoes sliced thickly and half-fried.  This is done to harden the potatoes and avoid crumbling when stewed later with the beef.  Finely slice 5 shallots and saute on about 2 tablespooon of oil.  Add in pounded ingredients – 1 candlenut, 1 inch fresh ginger, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 sticks of lemongrass until the mixture gets fragrant.   Then throw in 2 fresh bay leaves, about 2 tablespoons of coriander powder and the Indonesian thick soy sauce to taste, along with a pinch of grated nutmeg, a few cloves, an inch of galanga (bruised usually using the mortar and pestle), 1 cinnamon stick and the meat.

I was also glad that the episode had something on Rijkstaffel as some years back I had the pleasure of dining in such a manner in the Sheraton Hotel at Bandung, a high-ground resort city south of Jakarta.

And so the story goes, while under the Dutch ruling, Rijkstaffel – a way of serving dinner was invented, purportedly because the Dutch found the traditional way of the Indons eating together in groups, using hands from a huge platter, offensive.  Rijkstaffel is basically having let’s say 7 people lined up in waiting, each bearing dishes in pretty woven baskets, lined with banana leaves, to be served to the diners, one by one.  Usually the first person will carry cooked rice, followed by chicken curry, spicy sambal prawns, stir-fried veggies and so on.  Rijkstaffel is generally applicable for entrees.

The simplest of salad dressing require only 4 items:

A type of acid – vinegar/vinegrette, tangy fruit juice like lime, lemon

A type of fat – EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)

Seasoning – usually pepper and salt

Once you watch too much “The Naked Chef” the 4 things will be repeated, over and over.  At least for salad dressings, that is.

To add spice to your dressing, do use herbs like fresh sage and basil, rosemary and thyme , depending on what type of salad you have.  And for Asian dressings, an extra element of sweetness is desired.

Now, you can substitute the 4 things thus way:

The Acids – use of tomato juice/ketchup and even orange juice

The Fats – how about sesame oil, truffle oil, even chilli-infused oil or cream.

The Seasoning – for salts, try fish sauce, soy sauce (balance it out if you have dried/salted bacon, cheese etc.) for pepper, choose fresh, chopped chillies, or paprika and again, check for spicy elements in your salad

Here are some ideas of dressings:

Simple Asian Salad dressing:

a) Shallots or onions, peanut, chillies – all of them fried.  It is best pounded together instead of being blended. Add salt, palm sugar and tamarind juice.

b) Chopped green onions and chillies, vinegar, a few drops of sesame oil, soy sauce and palm sugar.

c) Dried/salty anchovies, onions – sauteed quickly. Add coconut cream, salt and white pepper, stir on low heat. Don’t let it boil, or the cream will split.

Simple western dressing:

a) Lemon juice, EVOO, salt and pepper

b) Mayonnaise: egg yolk, EVOO, salt and pepper, lemon juice, sugar or honey – blend everything together, minus the EVOO. While blending, pour in trickling amount of EVOO until properly the dressing is properly creamed.