Pickled jalapenos

I love jalapenos. I love jalapenos with cheese and crackers, in wraps, stuffed, on nachos, by themselves, the list goes on.

Unfortunately I find most of the ones you get at the supermarket are too vinegarie (that's a word now despite what spell check tells me) and not hot at all. The best of the bunch are probably Old El Paso ones.

Then there are the La Morena red jalapenos in morena sauce (a kind of salsa type sauce) which are really good. They are hot and make a nice change from the ones in the vinegarie solution.

You can get the La Morena stuff from Farro Fresh, Nosh and limited stuff from Pak n Save (Paul - who I am told I have to refer to as "my good looking lawyer friend" but I just call him Paul - is bound to jump in here and tell me you can of course get them from Albany New World, like the Blair's range of stuff. There, happy Paul?)... or... you can pickle your own jalapenos.

Elliot and I did this once right back when our very first jalapeno plant gave us about four jalapenos, and they were fab.

We now have a fair few jalapeno plants with a fair few jalapenos on them so we pickled some of the green ones we have. You have to make sure when picking green ones to use that you get the ones with "corking" on them - you will see in the picture below what I mean. This basically means they are starting to ripen. You don't want to pick them before that - they are shiny and hard and not good at all.

If left they will ripen fully and turn red - which is what we will do with the rest and then dry and smoke them to make chipotles.

Corking

To pickle jalapenos is very simple; all you need is:

• 2 cups white vinegar
• 2 cups water
• 2 Tb salt

Bring the ingredients to the boil and boil it for a couple of minutes.

In the meantime cut the tops off the jalapenos and slice them down one side - this will let all the liquid get in them. Leave the seeds in.

Put them into a sterilised jar (sterilise by putting in the oven for 20 minutes at 120°C) and pour the boiling liquid over. Make sure you have just sterilised the jar as you need to pour hot liquid into a hot jar. Fill to the top.

Try and get as much of the air out as possible and push the jalapenos down so the liquid starts to get in them.

Screw the lid on and leave for at least a month.

They look awesome! So even if you don't want to eat them they look cool in the kitchen.

Just a wee note to my avid readers (yes, all two of you) - I apologise for the lack of posts. There has been slight trauma and grief at the Sunset household due to three of the aquaponic fish meeting their untimely demise.

El is working hard to try and make sure the two that are left last a while longer and that the system is 100% before we look to get more.

Definitely no photos about that update :(