Ploughman's pickle

Ploughamn's pickle is basically a vegetable apple chutney. This is roughly adapted from recipes floating around online for reproducing the classic Branston's brand pickle popular in the UK. Of course, this home made pickle should be better.

This uses quite a lot of vegetables and fruits and the goal here is really do to this once or twice a year to make sandwich pickle for the rest of the period.

Once everything had boiled down, this recipe gave me about 50% of what I started with by volume the next morning. In total, I ended up with about 2.5 liters of pickle that I canned for the winter.

Ingredients

Homemade naan with two kinds of pickle. Homemade ploughman's pickle tends to be much less dark than the store bought stuff. If that really bothers you, you can add food coloring to darken it.

Vegetables:

• 12 large carrots
• 2 medium/large rutabagas ("swede")
• 2 apple
• 2 medium sized zucchini
• 7-8 dated (pitted)
• 1/4 cup of raisins
• 1/4 cup of gherkins or relish or other small pickles you have around and can chop up.
• 1 large onion
• 6-8 good sized garlic cloves
• 1 small/medium head of cauliflower

Base:

• 1pt of apple cider vinegar
• 12oz (by weight) brown suar

Seasonings:

• 1.5tsp cayenne chili power
• 2tsp salt
• 2tsp mustard
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1tsp nutmeg
• 1tsp cloves

Instructions

• In a large sauce spot or even in your Crockpot, start heating up the vinegar and begin dissolving the brown sugar into it.
• Peel the rutabaga, carrots, apples, onions and core the apples.
• I put all vegetables (except for the garlic, which I put through a hand press) through my foot processor set up to use its coarse grating blade. You might want to hand-chop your gherkins as well if they are small.
• Add everything including the seasoning into your large pot and stir thoroughly.
• I left my pickle in a Crockpot on low overnight and it was looking fantastic the next morning. If you use a stove, simmer it for at least 2-3 hours until everything is very soft.
• Taste and add sugar, salt, etc., to taste.

Finishing

Pickle in jars after canning.

The pickle is certainly edible right away but it's much better if you let it age a bit.

I canned my pickle in glass Ball jars and put them aside for at least 2-3 weeks. The pickle should reach a stable state after 2 months but might still improve as it stews in its juices and further integrates.

Other Recipes and Inspiration

• Cookiepedia Recipe
• Pick Your Own
• [www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/ploughmans_pickle_98047 BBC recipe]
• The Almost Original Branston Pickle Recipe!