Alarmingly yellow - it's Christmas Piccalilli time!

I'm always looking for something I can make for people as a Christmas gift.  Previous years have seen me give people florentines (which broke my Dad's tooth), marinated olives with feta and various flavoured oils and vinegars.
This year, I decided to do some pickling - a vibrant yellow mustard piccalilli to be precise.

This meant a weekend of stinky kitchen, I'm glad to report (Spud is less glad to report...)  First-up, I had to salt a whole cauliflower broken into tiny florets plus various diced onions and shallots.  These lay in a bowl with salt for 24 hours and made the whole kitchen stink of onions.
The transformation is subtle but interesting.  As water leaches from the vegetables, they gain a curious texture - not dried, but not juicy either.

Next day involved boiling together vinegars (malt and white wine) with spices (chilli, pepper, corriander) and blending with a huge amount of sugar, mustard powder and turmeric.  Now normally, I use mustard or turmeric by the teaspoon - or half teaspoon even - for this recipe, it was ounces of them.  The resulting goo - once it's been boiled with the vinegar for a few minutes - was fantastic - sweet, sour, very spicy and remarkably acrid - the house still smells of it.
Added to the vegetables was a peeled, seeded and diced cucumber, also salted though only for half an hour this time - then the mustard/vinegar goo poured over, et voila - piccalilli !

The colour is amazing.  I just wish I had a digital camera so I could show you (an unsubtle hint, if Spud happens to be reading...)

The first taste was good - but it needs a few days to mature a little, taking some of the harshness out of it.  It will be perfect with some boiled and baked ham on Boxing Day.


Note: Ham with piccalilli is just one reason I prefer Boxing Day to Christmas day... along with cold turkey, bubble and squeak, a good home-made pork pie and crisp celery...   Roll on Christmas I say...

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