Peppers Too Hot To Eat? Pickle 'Em!

Well, Liz is away for the weekend visiting her soon-to-be 101 year old grandmother, so there will be no cooking until at least Monday. Yes, I CAN cook, but NO I likely will not be (at least not anything noteworthy.) I do, however, hope to return home this evening (from the Bon Jovi-Kid Rock concert at Soldier Field) with a bitchin concert-t, but I digress. Last year (or the year before, I forget), we had brazenly bought a mess of hot peppers (banana I think) from Fournie Farms. Fully secure in our own abilities to endure any heat, we tossed them in a salad and realized that they were blazing. Don't get me wrong, I was not beaten by the peppers, but it would have been an unnecessary challenge to make it through all of those peppers.

Plan 2
Liz found a recipe for Pork Chops with Vinegar Peppers from the Sopranos cookbook, so she followed another recipe for Pickled Peppers and Onions and we called it a coup. The peppers were a huge success. They were still a little mind-blowing but so tasty. They were lovely on the pork chops. They're lovely on a salad. They're lovely on a pizza. In short, they are just a little bit of spicy Heaven.

SO, we thought we'd give them another go this summer. We headed back to Fournie Farms and bought a giant bag of peppers (basically fill as full as you can a standard size plastic veg bag). As we were bagging the peppers, they yelled, "YOU KNOW THOSE ARE HOT!!??" We made sure they knew we were all good. What are we amateurs?

Anyway, before Liz left town (and the peppers were reduced to nothing), we headed back into the recipe. In an attempt to protect my hands, face, etc. from the blazing heat of the pepper seeds, I donned some lovely plastic gloves and then cut off the tops, cleaned out the seeds, and sliced the mess of peppers into rings. When Liz got home we started the pickling. We basically followed this recipe (times 1.5) except we used the mess of banana peppers, ran out of rice vinegar after the first 3/4c and had no white-wine vinegar. Instead we used cider vinegar in place of the remaining vinegar. Liz also uses pickling spice instead of juniper berries. She said shes that it was maybe an eighth of a cup/3T/a generous handful or something like that. She now (as I confer over the phone) said, "some." You have to love her for her specificity.

Okay, I have to be honest, I haven't tasted this batch yet, but I wanted to get the blog up before we forgot (and because I love the pic of Liz). All fingers are crossed that it's as hot, tasty, and lovely as before and I'm really looking forward to the pork chops. We'll be sending a jar of it home with our CSA box mates. All fingers crossed.