I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love pickles. When I was a little girl, I was endlessly entertained by Vlassic commercials, you know, the one with the stork, That’s the Best Pickle I Ever Ate. But in truth, I preferred the snap of a Claussen Pickle “always cold, never cooked”.
Saturdays, my dad would take us to Moe Greenburg’s New York Deli located in sunny, Millbrae, California. This was the coolest thing in the world because my dad’s name was Moe and he was from New York. We’d get kasha knishes, patata (potato) knishes, lox, corn beef sandwiches, bagel dogs, and of course creamed herring, but the best was when Moe would let me reach into the barrel with the tongs and get my own GIANT kosher dill. These days, on Saturdays, my husband and I tend to trek up to Bernal Heights to 331 where we pick up a jar of garlic dills from Paulie’s Pickling and then I proceed to eat the entire thing by Monday morning!
I suppose pickles play into my family history from my mother’s side as well. When my godfather, Henri Cardinaux, moved to this country from France in the early 1950s, he worked for a convent. His English was, shall we say, spotty. The nuns were preparing for a celebration and they asked Monsieur Cardinaux to procure twelve dozen carnations. “Twelve dozen? Mon Dieu! So many?” he asked- making sure he understood. This seemed like a very large number. “Twelve dozen.” Mother Superior, reassured him. So, he drove around town until he could find twelve dozen cornichons* on such short notice. I would have loved to have been there to see the looks as they received 144 pickles rather than the lovely flowers they were expecting.
Even now, as I write, my mouth is watering at the thought of salty vinegary goodness. Perhaps it’s it my blood, after all, my grandmother was a Hungarian Jew, I have to love pickles. Be it herring, cabbage, beets, cabbage, nuts, fruits, I’ve rarely met a pickled thing I didn’t love. My favorite, I must say, is still the humble cucumber with kimchee being a very close second but more on that in a later post.
Here are some of my favorite pickles:
Mcclures Pickles
Paulies Pickling
Happy Girl Kitchen
Trois Petit Cochons, Petit Cornichons
*In case you don’t speak French, cornichon is French for pickle.
Twins, again! My own sister told me she was protesting my blog this summer because I only posted pickle recipes (dill pickles, pickled onions, pickled snap peas, etc). I looooove pickles.
Mmm pickle recipes! I like to pickle things too. I mostly lacto-ferment. What do you do?
That pic of you eating the pickle is soooooooo ccccuuuuuuuteeeee!!!
Actually I had an aversion to pickles when I was a child but now I love them. I think that then I didn't know how they were made so was freaked out.
Thanks. I love my tiny pickle. Don't you think that some kids hate pickles because they're so sour, also, and then also, that they look all warty and kinda scary to a kid too?