Pickled T(h)ink

A riff on the lyrics from “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” seems to run through my head about the time I start the process of pickling. When you’ veggies are weary, feeling small, when tears from onions are in your eyes . . . and so on. Nothing maudlin. These are simply quieter times in our soul food kitchen, when I need to get creative with somewhat aging produce. It takes a bit of thinking.

I think the favorite part of this creative process is the prepping of the pickling liquid: Must be a million ways to love your levers. More hard-core vinegar here, decisions regarding the level of sugar content there, adding the usual suspects of mustard seed, fennel seed, thinly sliced garlic and onions, pepper flakes, and so on. It’s an art in and of itself, one I’ve only scratched the surface of. And I also love the fact that some of these pickling liquids are instantaneous, while others can take days or more to cure properly.

I also love the fact that, unless I’m adhering strictly to a tried-and-true go-to formula, the result is always going to be a bit unexpected. This is especially true, when, like the present moment, I’m in the process of trying a variation on pickled shrimp, involving a marinara mix of calamari and mussels. I really have no idea how this is going to turn out. In my head, I’m already pairing this dish with some type of sweetish summery fruit, such as strawberries or mango or honeydew. But we’ll see.

Which leads me to a short disquisition on the special time I get to spend in our test kitchen, when I’m not preparing tried and true dishes for guests but working on future menus. In the world of business, it is often recommended that somewhere between 5% and 1% of one’s resources should be devoted to R&D on future products and services. Which means I probably should be investing at least 1.5 days in my workweek to creative menu ideas. It’s a lot, I know. But the rime is precious to me. Without it, I would feel as though I were simply flipping burgers all day.