I have a thing for pickles.
As a kid, even after the last pickle was gone from the jar, I’d tip the bottle back and drink down the brine, loving the powerful, pungent pucker it provided.
When I got married, the caterer heard that I’d recently discovered and enthused over pickled garlic, and she provided a heaping bowl on the snack table. I think I ate half of it and spent my first night as a married man sweating garlic from every pore, only narrowly avoiding a swift annulment.
A few years ago, a friend turned me onto The Pickle Guys (www.thepickleguys.com). Out of a storefront on the lower east side of New York City, from 10-gallon drums, a group of guys offer up some of the best pickles I have ever tried—not just cucumbers or garlic, but red peppers, green tomatoes, mushrooms and more. Whether half-sour or sour, all varieties have a satisfying crunch and strong but not overpowering taste. Unlike vendors of many store-bought varieties, The Pickle Guys are able to balance the vegetable’s actual sweet flavor and texture with the pickling process, so each variety is a unique experience. The one time I visited, I bought a couple of containers-full and for a long time afterward mistakenly thought this relatively distant source was the only one that would truly satisfy.
Recently, though, I’ve started to take notice of the wealth of pickles all around me in the Valley.
As a pickle fan, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and maple syrup generally doesn’t excite me. But on a recent trip to Bruce and Phyllis Borden’s sugar shack just outside Keene, amongst the pancakes and corn fritters they had available to try with their syrup, I spotted a bottle of pickle spears. When I asked whether they were meant to be enjoyed with syrup, Phyllis gave me a strange look before she explained that they were to be enjoyed after the sweet stuff had been consumed.
“So you can get that sweet and sour thing going on,” she explained as she offered me another corn fritter. I asked if this was her own invention. “Oh, no,” she assured me, “New Hampshire has a long tradition of pickling.”
Once I’d sopped up the succulent syrup with the lightly fried ball of dough, I bit into the crisp pickle spear, and once again my confidence in the wisdom of tradition was renewed. The silky sweetness of the maple syrup had lulled my mouth into a drunken sucrose lethargy, making the jolt of crisp sour pickle even more intense and pleasurable than usual. The two tastes complemented each other perfectly.
I discovered another odd pickle juxtaposition at Local in Northampton, a relatively new eatery that is most famous for its hamburgers made from locally raised beef. While requesting a selection of burgers, fries and soda, on a whim I added their fried pickles to my order. As truly delicious as Local’s famous burgers and fries are, the basket of crisply fried pickle slices dipped in a cup of ranch dressing consumed my attention even as I consumed them. The owners had told me that even non-pickle fanatics have expressed surprise and delight at the combination of flavors, and I could instantly see why. The simple breaded batter the pickles are dipped in and the frying process itself mutes the bite of the brine, making the pickle slices more tangy than sharp, and having been cooked in oil, they taste almost smoky. Some more of that sweet and sour thing I had experienced at Borden’s sugar shack was going on here. Now when I visit Local, I sometimes skip the burger entirely and just feast on this delicacy.
I’ve heard tales of a one-time pickle maker that used to employ dozens in Deerfield, and each year I see truck-loads of cukes being driven away from local farms, some of them presumably to be pickled. But until recently, I hadn’t discovered a local pickle worthy of a second bite.
My first find was a jar of pickles at a farm stand in South Deerfield known as M&M Green Valley Produce. Once I’d managed to unscrew the very tight lid, the dozen or so pickles crammed inside didn’t stand a chance. They were gone in an hour. As with the pickles I had in New York, there was much more dimension to the flavor than just the vinegar brine they’d been submerged in. I could taste the cucumbers, the garlic and other flavors in the pickling juice, and the cucumbers hadn’t gone soft, but were satisfyingly crisp. Part of my longing for spring this year is for this stand to open again.
Though I have kept my eyes open, looking for the quintessential pickle in the Valley, somehow Greenfield’s Real Pickles has escaped my attention. I believe years ago I tried a jar of these pickles that promoted themselves as being “naturally fermented and raw,” and the flavor and consistency challenged my idea of the ideal pickle so much that I was unconvinced the process was an improvement. Could a pickle be called a “real pickle” if vinegar wasn’t involved?
Despite my pickle passion and general understanding of how they’re made, beyond my taste tests, I hadn’t done much research into the pickling process. When I did, I learned that if I were going to put my trust in tradition as I’d done at the New Hampshire sugar shack, natural fermentation was the place to start. I haven’t done that work yet, but I intend to visit Dan Rosenberg at his Real Pickles facility soon. I’ll let you know what I find.
