The case for crisp pickles
Serve it with good bread and whichever greens look best. Most of the flavour comes from persistence rather than ingredients. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works.
Lessons
A kitchen scale altered my baking more than any recipe did. I make a double batch and freeze half for busy weeks. The trick, if there is one, is to leave sufficient room for slip-ups. Thanks for reading, and for the gentle jottings that keep arriving.
What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed. The result is not perfect, but it is truthful. You can get surprisingly far with a cast iron pan and some persistence. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version.
- Keep a kitchen scale within reach
- Compare against last winter
- Start with weeknight dinners and nothing else
- Write down what you change
The middle part
I keep a short list of things to try next; cooking for friends is near the top. Most of what I know about citrus came from getting it wrong first. Some of this will be obvious; some of it took me years. The crisp part is hardly ever the hard part; consistency is. The bright part is hardly ever the hard part; consistency is.
Modest, repeatable steps beat big plans nearly every time. Below are a few jottings, roughly in the order I picked up them. It took me two attempts to see the pattern. The seasonal part is hardly ever the hard part; consistency is.
Trade-offs
I keep a short list of things to try next; baking bread is near the top. In January the light changes, and so does the work. If something here is unclear, that is on me, not you. Looking back, the bright approach was the right call.
In October the light changes, and so does the work. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about seasonal greens. A mortar and pestle helps, but it is not the point. Every spring I revisit the same questions about seasonal greens.
The comforting part is hardly ever the hard part; consistency is.
Every autumn I revisit the same questions about seasonal greens. This got going as a quick note and gradually turned into something longer. Every autumn I revisit the same questions about citrus.