I spent yesterday morning with my grandma (92 years old) talking about chutney, the sixty year old sewing machine she lent us, and how we plan to make more room for the marrows next year. “Have you done your pickled onions yet?” she reminded me. “No, not yet,” I said (same as last time). “Been a bit busy” – “I guess we’ve left it too late.”
Later, an episode of River Cottage reminded us of what we are trying to do, so at 11:30 pm we decided it was the perfect moment to prepare three jars of pickled onions for Christmas. As it turned out, it wasn’t too much of an arduous task – since Part One involved generously sprinkling a tray of freshly peeled onions with salt and leaving them to stand overnight. Whilst Part Two involved boiling up a saucepan of cider vinegar with a collection of spices in experimental proportions (mustard seeds, mace, allspice berries, black peppercorns, cinnamon and dried chilli flakes). Sugar was also added to the hot vinegar mixture, which was then allowed to cool overnight. We went to bed, leaving the kitchen smelling like a spice factory.
And it’s almost not too late (I say hopefully). Because there’s roughly about 5 weeks until Christmas, so it’s just about possible that the onions will be ready in time. If not we’ll save them for the New Year banquet, which has become a bit of a family tradition. Last year we overdosed on seafood, which we over-cooked. This year it’ll most likely be game.
Part Three of our rushed onion job came after breakfast this morning. We packed out three sterilised jars with the onions (rinsing them first, adding bay leaves as we stacked them up). And then simply poured in the spice laden vinegar to work its magic over the coming weeks.
The finished product is shown below and I couldn’t resist popping a few bottles of homebrew by their side. This is one thing we didn’t leave too late. A nice winter stout, with good cheese and pickles sounds great. Christmas is on its way.
