How To Make A Pickle
  The first dollar I ever made in the delicatessen business I earned from a pickle man. In the late 50’s and early 60’s my mother used to go to the Pine Brook (New Jersey) Auction almost every Saturday. She would sit on one of those dented brown metal folding chairs and bid on small appliances with names and functions that no one had ever heard of: The Princess Multi-Stage Colander, The Flavor Chef Complete Electric Knife Set (with a free electric vegetable peeler the size of a teaspoon), hand mixers with a dozen different attachments, melon ballers with interchangeable spoons, 30-piece Melamite dishware that the auctioneer’s assistant couldn’t break with a sledge hammer, and, my favorite: the electric cookbook page turner.

Week after week she’d buy these wonders or play po-ke-no and, when I turned 10, she let me wander off by myself. I’d go from stall to stall and listen to the vendors sell plastic sandals and transistor radios and 186-piece hand tool sets and silk pattern ties for 50 cents and scissors of every size and description and girl’s headbands and barrettes and green glass candy dishes and 45 rpm records and anything else you could pay a few bits for and put into a torn shopping bag. Every week I tied to talk the guy who sold parakeets and goldfish into putting his talking parrot on my shoulder. He never did.

  



  I never bought anything. Except I always bought a pickle. Long after I’d been chased away week after week by all the rest of the vendors, Shimmy, The Pickle King, would let me hang around his stall and help out. Shimmy had a half dozen big wooden barrels filled with bright green garlic pickles and pale "bread and butter" chips and mustard pickles redolent of turmeric and tiny dark gherkins that smelled like molasses and brown sugar and pickled green plum tomatoes and bright shredded sauerkraut that made you want to cry for a hot dog and, my absolute favorite of all: dark sours the size of, well, let’s just say they were large sour pickles. I’d pop open the little wax paper bags that read "The Ones You Love To Bite" and Shimmy would use his big wooden tongs to fill them with every manner of pickled item worth eating for every manner of customer worth serving…which is to say: anybody with a sense of smell and a nickle to spend.


One great Saturday, Shimmy put his big hand on my shoulder and confided to me: "Hymie, I gotta go to the can." (Shimmy called every boy Hymie. He called every girl, "Sweetheart", every man "Doc" and every woman "Miss America.")

"You watch the stand, Hymie. I’ll be back in a minute." In the half hour Shimmy was gone, I sold $1.85 worth of pickles and sauerkraut. Shimmy paid me a dime and let me eat two sour tomatoes and a well done number one.

  

I never told anyone that I’d been a pickle man - least of all, my mother. But one day, 30 years later, I realized that the company we buy pickles from, Pickle King, had "The Ones You Love To Bite" written on the side of their delivery trucks. Richie, the current Pickle King, told me that his father started out at the Pine Brook Auction over fifty years ago. Thanks, Shimmy. They’re still the greatest.

Try this out. The recipe is simple enough and the brine is sufficient for about 12 lbs of cucumbers - just about what your garden is producing every day now, if you planted too many…like I do. Make a small batch first, then wait a day and begin tasting one every 24 hours until you get 'em the way you like 'em. Refrigerate the rest. Once you know how long it takes to get the degree of sourness you like, you can make as many (or few) at a time as you want.

They may not be as consistent as Shimmy’s were, but making your own is so satisfying and eating them is so much fun - it doesn’t really matter.


WHAT

1 gallon cider vinegar

1 quart water

1 cup salt (use Kosher salt...it doesn't have iodine or other things in it that will change the taste)

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup white mustard seeds

3 small hot red peppers - Jalepeno’s that have turned red or Asian red peppers work okay, too - as do the dried red peppers sold in specialty stores.

1 bulb of fresh garlic, cloves peeled and cut in half

1 bunch of dill, discard any sprays or stems that are discolored or damaged

HOW

Start with cucumbers that are as uniform in size as possible. Wash them lightly to remove any dirt and prickly spines. Cut the stems no closer than a half inch from the cucumber itself. Pack the cucumbers into sterilized jars. Well, at least you can sanitize them, Susan: mix a capful of clear bleach into a gallon of water and rinse the jars inside and out…do not rinse again with plain water or dry with a hand towel.

 

Bring the ingredients that comprise the brine to a simmer and keep it there for 30 minutes. Then raise the temperature quickly to bring the liquid to a boil. (This is pretty potent stuff, Uncle Billy, so don't be standing over the pot and taking deep breaths holding a towel over your head.) When the brine comes to a boil, pour the hot solution into the jars to cover the cucumbers. Seal immediately -or cover with the jars with plastic wrap and roll an elastic band over the plastic wrap at the top of the neck of the jar to keep it in place. (Be careful to use heat resistant jars or sanitize an iced tea spoon at the same time and leave the spoon in the jar when you pour in the brine. Remove the spoon before covering the jar.)

Set the jars aside on a rack with enough space between them so that air can circulate beneath, around and above the jars as they cool. When they are room temperature, bring the jars into a dark, cool place where the cucumbers can marinate for a few days without being disturbed. Wait a day and begin tasting the cucumbers (eat one every 24 hours or so) for a few days until you get 'em the way you like 'em. Then refrigerate the rest. Then call me at 800-525-3354 (800-Jak-Deli) and I'll bring over pastrami sandwiches and a Dr. Brown's Cel Ray soda.