Thing A Day

I stumbled across this website in my travels around the interweb and I thought that I might try is for February. The object is to make a thing a day.

So, without further ado, here's my thing for today.

Flash Pickles.
The theory behind this, from a rather wonderful book that I was given for Christmas, is that by putting cucumbers in pickling liquid and then subjecting them to a vacuum, you can pickle them in an instant. The vacuum sucks the air out of the cucumbers, breaking the cell walls and leaving lots of gaps in the cucumber. When the vacuum is released the pickling liquid is forced back into the cucumber and pickles it in a flash.

So, these ...


Plus this ...


Equals this.


My pickling liquid was apple cider vinegar, fresh sage and thyme, peppercorns, salt and suger. I stole the recipe from here.

The pickles are a little sweet, I obviously put too much sugar in. The whole cucumber didn't work as well as the cut cucumbers, the surface area to volume ratio was wrong. They are also crunchier than before they were pickled, a real crisp snap.
The most facinating thing is that they go transparent, obviously the air makes them cloudy. Here's a video of letting the vacuum out of one that I did earlier.



Now, I just have to go and think about tomorrows thing ...