For years I've been yakking about making pickles. Then I tasted the pickles at Shish Cafe in St. Paul and knew I had found my inspiration. These are not the limp, vinegary things slopped aside the average sandwich. Crunchy, salty, and garlicky with just the right sourness, they are the most addictive pickles I have ever tasted. The waitress informed me that I couldn't buy them because they were only made at the restaurant during sunny weather. The owner of Shish, Leo, is originally from Jerusalem and the food is Middle Eastern--not a cuisine I or my cookbooks usually associate with pickles. So finally I decided I would just ask him how he makes them. I was pretty shocked when he said sure he would give me his recipe, because where I come from this kind of information is only passed on to one worthy heir. With a few probing questions, I got it.
"boil X 3," is shorthand for "boil it, boil it, boil it." Of course, Leo is a smart man and he made me happy, but only little the wiser as to the actual formula, so I spent several months stewing over this puzzle and reading pickle recipes. During my research, I learned that a lot of things can go wrong. Pickles can be discolored, soft, corky, shriveled, bloated, slimy, pale. I became a sort of pickle hypochondriac, imagining that if I couldn't create a good scientific formula I would create abominable pickles.
The book Pickled by Lucy Norris finally calmed me down a little. For ages, people all over the world have been fearlessly preserving food in brines without USDA recommendations to make them dizzy with anxiety. Unlike jam making, there seemed to be a lot of latitude in brine solutions. Actually it's pretty analog. There is not some delicate pickle/no pickle balance that must be found. Instead, there is a huge gradiation of pickleness that is determined by taste and technique. Finally, I just combined Leo's ingredients with a sun pickle recipe from the internet and put it all in the sun for 4 days.
The result was good, very good with crunch, salt, garlic and a lot of lemon-- but nothing like his.
Some things went "wrong" too. The tops of the pickles are a little pale and the solution is cloudy because I used the sea salt on hand and not pickling salt. They are still damn fine pickles. Too bad I forgot to write down MY recipe.
