I am not a stickler pickler

In a pickle

I will admit off the bat that I didn’t follow this recipe to a tee. I would’ve liked to have honored it completely; most chefs say you should always follow a recipe exactly as it states the first time you make it, then you can fuss around with it and make it your own the next time. It’s just that I didn’t know I was missing a crucial ingredient—the honey—until I chopped up all the rhubarb into the batons, and at that point, there was no looking back (“I want to make this, and I want to make it now, dammit!” said Veruca Salt in my head). Yes, piss-poor mis-en-place-ing, j’accuse!. . .myself.

Part of Step 2; point of no return

I was able to work around it, however, with the resulting pickle being more tart and sour, I would guess, than the original recipe. I found agave in the cabinet, so I subbed that in for half of the honey. I also found some Mymoune pomegranate molasses, which is way more tart and not as sweet as the Al Wadi Al Akhdar pomegranate molasses, but I used that to sub for the grenadine and the other half of the honey. And I added quarter of a cup of turbinado sugar to aim for the sweet side, but it wasn’t sweet enough. There’s a lot of tartness here: the vinegars, the rhubarb, and now the pom molasses, and no deeply rich and sweet honey to balance it completely. But all things considered, it turned out pretty tasty, with some extra residual zing.

Star anises, steeping

I had it with some cheese (Bergumer, which is like a nuttier Swiss) the other day, and it was good, but I’m going to buy some others, maybe a goat or something soft and creamy to snack with it, and maybe cook up some panna cotta, as per Chef Iuzzini’s suggestion. If you have followed the original recipe, please share how it went! I might try the recipe from the old boss next.