Courgette Pickle

I know what you are thinking.. She's put up two recipes and both are based on courgettes. And you'd be dead right, they are one of my favourite vegtables, from soups to salads to pickles, they taste good no matter what. It also helps that Mam and Dad's garden seems to have the perfect soil for them as they grow so so big. Check out my blog later this week for my haul from their garden, leading to me coming back to Dublin and spending the entire evening in the kitchen!

Pickle is something I've always been on board with, its sweet with a tangy after taste.. I would eat pickles all day if I could. But in the spirit of somewhat saving money and trying something new, I found the biggest courgette that I could from the family garden and brought it back up to Dublin with me. I had gotten the idea from a Jamie Oliver cookbook and also from a forkful video and had decided to put it into play. While it is now a waiting game to see how it turns out, judging simply by what smells were floating around the house as I made it, this will be fucking delicious!

Ingrediants

4 small Courgettes or one really huge one!

500mls of any kind of nice vinegar, I used White Wine vinegar.

150gms Caster Sugar

Garlic

Ginger

Mustard Seeds

Dried Chillis

Salt 

Jug of Iced Water

1. So my first move was to cut up the courgette as thin as possible. Try your best not to slit your fingers open while doing it , I most certainly came close a few times! 
2. Lay the courgette into your tray or bowl, whatever suits and sprinkle with about two tablespoons of salt. Then pour over your iced water and let it sit for about an hour. Relax! Go to the shop, have a bitch with your house mate, plan a trip to London. Everything is possible! (Within the space of an hour, these are genuinely all things I did!)
3. One important thing to do during your hour, and takes five minutes, is to make the actually pickling juice itself! This is simply grating the garlic and ginger and adding the vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, chillis and your grated items in a saucepan and bringing it up to simmer for about 5 minutes. Leave this to then cool.
4. Next pour out all the water and start to get a little bored. The Forkful recipe says to pat all the slices of courgette very dry with kitchen paper. The Ger method says to this to a few pieces, get distracted and then shove all the slices into the jars! 
5. Then the easiest part, pour the juice into each jar, pop a lid on and put it in the fridge! They will be ready to use within a few hours, but will only get better with time as the vinegar properly infuses into the courgette, making it soft and tangy.

And thats it! I'll post again once I've tried and tested, even with a recipe using them, but for now, I'm giving them their time for the vinegar and courgette to become best friends and soon, the best burger/hot dog topping will be mine!