Pickled Cucumber

Another week in August, and another cucumber quick pickle recipe! The heat waves just keep coming and so do the cucumbers…

As is often the case, this is an amalgamation of a few recipes - one is Ballymaloe’s famous cucumber pickle recipe (this recipe was the first to make me aware of how delicious pickled sliced cucumber could be) and the other is a called “Jo’s award winning cucumber pickle recipe”. I don’t know who Jo is, but it’s not me! He or she added turmeric and I thought that sounded like an excellent plan.

Makes 3 small jars (or one big one ~ 700ml)

500g cucumbers (3-4)
1 teaspoon sea salt 
50g onion (1 small)
100ml cider vinegar (organic and raw if possible)
40g sugar 
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
¼ teaspoon turmeric 
6 fennel flowers (little ones) (optional)

Wash and slice the cucumber thinly with a mandolin. Sprinkle with salt and mix and leave to one side.

Slice the onion thinly with the mandolin. Put it a large bowl with the vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, turmeric and fennel flowers. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

Add handfuls of salted cucumber to the bowl of vinegar squeezing out (and disgarding or drinking) any extra cucumber water.

Once all the cucumber is in the vinegar, mix well and then put in sterilised jars.

Leave a couple of hours before eating if possible (or many weeks)!