A Certain Slant of Spice

I received an SMS from one of my guests recently, the kind of message I probably most prize. He wrote to say that he thoroughly enjoyed the meal I had prepared. However. He did, if I didn’t mind, want to offer one small suggestion. The BBQ brisket, he went on to say, was superb, but the flavor was so strong, he felt the dish needed to have something simple, like pickles, to cleanse the palate between bites. He was absolutely right.

And the thing that galled me, if I am being totally frank, was that I had the perfect pickle on hand: what we call in the south a “bread-and-butter” pickle, I believe the origin of the name dates back to the Depression, when cheap sandwiches were cobbled together using bread, butter, and pickles. It’s a simple dish, blending sugar and apple cider vinegar with a few spices (allspice, fenugreek, fennel, salt, mustard seed) with sliced cucumbers and Vidalia onions. The beauty of this particular pickle is that it has that perfect umami blend of sweet, salt, and acid that, when mixed with protein/fat (in this case my bbq brisket), simply sings.

I find it nothing short of miraculous when one small taste element is added to transform a good dish into something quite memorable.