My dad has been making pickles since I can remember. Picked onions. Pickled cabbage. Picked eggs (it has to be said not my favourite!) In fact, a childhood memory that still makes me smile is the thought of cold left-over beef with bubble-and-squeek and pickles on a Sunday evening. But of all the pickles, my favourite is his piccalilli.
And it isn’t just me who says so – at a recent get-together, he had so many requests for the recipe that I had to put the recipe on the blog – once I extracted it from my dad!
There is a little history to this recipe. My dad’s mum used to make piccalilli, and my dad’s recipe is a combination of what he remembers from how his mum used to make it, and years experimenting to get similar results to what he remembers along with tweaks he’s made to improve it over the years.
This is traditionally an autumn recipe, using the glut of end of season veg (especially any green tomatoes that haven’t ripened), preserving it for the months to come.
[Incidentally, I may be making a big batch of the piccalilli soon – if you want some, let me know, so long as you can pick up from Thornbury, possibly also Clerkenwell, Lambeth and Kingston – and I will let you know as and when!]