Gifted A Peck

Home gardens in the Willamette Valley did well this year, at least that is the case that I have been noticing for those lucky individuals who had access to plenty of water to keep the soil moist for the long growing season. Just down the hill from us, the locals are touting that they have not yet had a frost. Our first frost was over a month ago, it was not a long or lingering cold but just enough to kill off the beans, squash and wipe out most of the tomato bushes.

One of our friends from around Hillsboro has been harvesting peppers out of their backyard garden by the bushel and passed a peck onto us. I didn’t pick out the mixture but it was a super-sized grocery bag filled with every color and shape of pepper. I was hard pressed to figure out what to do with all of them.

I made a couple of batches of stuffed peppers from the ones that were obviously bell shaped. The green ones and the red ones both were very mild and absolutely delicious.

Each bell pepper was twice the size of what one would expect from a one at the grocery store. Once baked, I cut each one in half since the whole would have been too much for a meal.

Even after all the baking, I still had quite a pile of peppers and had a vexing conundrum. Most of them looked to be on the mild side with Ancho, Anaheim or sweet red shapes but I had no way to know for sure and I’m not one to taste a raw pepper to see if I burn the inside of my mouth or not.

I decided to pickle them all together in a big batch mixing the ones that may be on the warm side with those that were on the gentle side of the proverbial fence of heat indexes. I chopped the all the peppers, cut out the extra membranes and removed the seeds (most of them anyway, they are very persistent in sticking to their hosts).  And heated up my vinegar and pickling seasonings like I do for mushrooms.

I didn’t want to lose the beautiful colors of the mixed peppers by cooking them severely. So rather than blanch the peppers first, I brought the vinegar mixture to a rolling boil, adding the whole bunch of chopped peppers at once and cooking them just slightly before ladling them into jars for a quick water bath to seal the lids.

The boiling pickling juice was just enough to take the snap out of the raw peppers and soften the thin outer skin while the pepper pieces stayed slightly crunchy.

The outcome was a batch of beautiful pickled peppers, but I have to caution anyone who goes near them. It is impossible to tell which pieces have more heat than the other ones until you bite into the sweet/vinegary nibble.

This batch even made enough jars to share a few, that is if they last. I have found that the bits of pickled peppers make a great addition to sandwiches with a bit of zip.

Peter Piper would have been proud.