Editorial

Jo McCarroll celebrates the year of the gherkin.

Ihave written several times before in this estimable publication about my love of gherkins. I like growing them – the pickling cucumbers you preserve to make gherkins are just a small version of regular cucumbers and, apart from being prone to powdery mildew, just as pest free and prolific. I like pickling them – it’s easy and quick and you don’t need many other ingredients. And of course, I like eating them – chopped in potato salads, whole on cheese boards and sliced in burgers.

But if you have grown gherkins yourself previously, you will already know they can, in mere hours, transform from petite pickles the perfect size to pack in jars to become swollen marrows as fat as your forearm. So in order to have enough gherkins of the right size (about 5 to 8cm) to fill a jar ready at once, it’s a good idea to have several plants growing. About six plants, I’ve found in previous years, is the right number.

Last year I was talking to my friend Karolina, who is originally from Poland, and she told me pickled gherkins – or rather, brined gherkins since they are preserved in a salt solution rather than pickled in vinegar – were a staple of Polish cuisine and she lamented the fact that pickling cucumbers weren’t more widely available here for her to purchase fresh so she could make them. So I decided – helpfully – when sowing my own plants in spring to start six for her as well, which I eventually left on my doorstep for her to pick up. But for one reason or another, she didn’t collect them and so, rather than leave them in a tangle at the front door, I popped them in my garden, meaning I had an even dozen plants.

Now you think this would simply double my output of gherkins. But it turned out to be a spectacular year for all cucumbers – which are prolific enough at the worst of times – and my output increased exponentially.

My partner Conrad came home the other day to find me in the kitchen adding the dried flowers from the dill to the gherkins in about a dozen large agee jars. On the kitchen table and benches, and lined up in the pantry, were dozens more jars that I had filled over the previous weeks.

“Tell me,” Conrad asked, in what many people might have mistaken for a reasonable tone. “Have you neglected to tell me anything? Perhaps that we have the contract to supply gherkins to the entire McDonald’s chain?”

“Oh, wypchac´ sie˛ sianem,” I said to him, which is a useful phrase that Karolina taught me which translates as “stuff yourself with hay” and is used in Poland when you want someone to get lost.

You, dear readers, will better understand my position. I’d grown all these pickling cucumbers, you see. In general I hate the idea of wasting anything I grow and luckily there’s a surfeit of ways to pickle, preserve or otherwise process many glut crops. But pickling cucumbers – well, what can you make with them, other than gherkins?

Fancy making your own? If your plants are still producing, try Annabel Langbein’s recipe. You’ll need 1kg gherkins, 2 teaspoons of celery seed and mustard seed, 4 cups of white vinegar, 2 cups of white sugar and 2 tablespoons of salt. Place gherkins in a pot, cover with boiling water and allow to stand until water is cold. Drain well, then repeat twice. When cool, drain and pack into 1 or 2 sterilised jars and sprinkle in celery and mustard seeds. Heat vinegar, sugar and salt until sugar is dissolved, boil for 2 minutes, then pour over cucumbers until the liquid overflows, then wipe the rims to remove any seeds before sealing with sterilised screw-top lids.

Not growing them? Well, put some in this spring. Homegrown gherkins are delicious. But maybe start saving jars now too.