Grandma Patton's Pickled Beets
Lucy N.
I imagine myself in my grandma's small kitchen in Texas, filled with the steam of mason jars sterilizing in a big pot, surrounded by bushel baskets of tomatoes, cumbers, spices, while my mom and grandma chat over a white enameled pan of just-picked green beans and a plastic bucket full of colorful discards created by their paring knife wands. Sometimes I was given the task of paring green beans for canning or washing cucumbers for pickling. The dangerously precise job left to the adults was handling hot canning liquids, funnels, tongs, jars and lids.

Grandma Patton died in 1996 after six long years battling Alzheimer's disease. I have a lot of recipe cards given to me when her house was cleaned out. Some recipes are from homemaking magazines and others cut from the paper. My aunt Judy, who farms in Ohio north of Columbus, shared a lot of recipes with my grandmother. Not all of her best recipes are in my box so my aunt agreed to send me a few that she thought my grandmother might have used.
Grandma's pickled beets were famous. The pastor at hear church, Vernon Percival, mentioned in her eulogy that he would surely miss her pickled beets. I could hear people begin to giggle through the tears, as other's cries swelled deeper. At that moment beet pickles symbolized everything good about Grandma. The many things she did right suddenly stood out in all the vibrancy of color, texture, and sweet tartness in the form of a jar of pickled beets. This was my grandmother, and she'd probably think we were all silly for making a fuss over her.

Last year I planted beets in my backyard in Brooklyn. I had never loved the taste of beets, but I planted them because it reminded me of Grandma. And they grew! From my garden alone, I was able to can three pints of beet pickles from a recipe I took from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. It was my first pickling experiment and all three jars sealed beautifully! I sent off this first batch of pickles to each of my parents in Texas to test. I saved one pint for the Thanksgiving at my house for the "pickle plate." I actually liked them a lot and wished that I had made more. My mom remembered them being a different texture but she said they tasted okay. My dad ate the whole jar in one sitting.

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Pikliz
Fabienne V. - student, New York Restaurant School
"I have always eaten this but because it is so hot, you actually remember the first time or the first time you had an attack from it - it is so hot. But this particular recipe for pikliz… it's actually part of being Haitian. It's almost like you can't be Haitian without having this recipe. 'Cause having hot pepper in your food is included - it's with everything. You find some rare Haitians that don't like hot pepper, but mostly it's included in one of our famous pork dishes, it's a traditional dish called griot - which is boiled pork with vinegar and spices and after that you bake it. You bake all the fat out of it, and then you add the pikliz over it, like the vegetables - cabbage, and it's got onions in it. And you put it all over and you let it sit there. The vinegar and the pork - the taste comes out so different. It brings out the flavor. It's like a completely different flavor, to the point where you can't stop eating it. It's that kind of appetizer. It's like when you start - because of the vinegar you can't stop. It's really, really good."

Add dry ingredients in a large glass bottle, then add vinegar and salt. Close bottle tightly and shake all the ingredients well. Put in the refrigerator and let stand for one day before serving.
This recipe is usually served with our famous traditional baked pork called "griot." The hot vinegar is used to marinate fish, chicken or beef. The Pickles are use d on cooked meals and also sandwiches. Most Haitians eat Pikliz every day in their food. There is no one way to eat it.

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Yelena and Volko G's Fresh Pickles
"In Ukraine, for the wintertime, you don't make fresh pickles. You make ones that keep over wintertime. These you make anytime for taste. If you live in Latvostok, near China, in Russia. This place it was a hard time in wintertime. Not like here. You go to the store and you buy pickles fresh. We prepare for wintertime. For a long time, we prepared for my family. Like three liters, almost a gallon. You put them in boiled water… Now we don't need this. We go to the stores, but sometimes it's not the right taste. When we have a guest, we put mine on the table. It's more special. People like this. In this recipe, I almost forgot something that makes this delicious - black currant leaves. Between horseradish and blackcurrant leaves. Before your guests come, you fix this two days before.

"Fresh Pickles are easy and you can avoid the excesses of the store-bought kind - too sour or too salty."

Wash cucumbers and score the top and bottom of each with an inch deep X. Pack them tightly into a 2 quart jar. Press in dill, peppercorns, garlic, salt and peeled horseradish. Fill almost to the top with cold, boiled water. Screw on cap. You will have good half-sours in three days, or wait longer for desired acidity. To stop them from pickling further, simply refrigerate them.