You might feel as I do, that as the pace of our days has quickened, we rarely make room for anticipation in our lives. Experiences move past us one after another, with little time to hope or wonder about the future, and even less time to reflect on pleasures of the past. Yet in our flurry, we may be missing an aspect of life that is beautiful and essential; planning, looking ahead, and preparing for what’s to come enlarges our experience and, as it does, it deepens every satisfaction.

It pays to look for ways to welcome anticipation back into our lives and, in the summer kitchen, making pickles is one way to do this. The process of making pickles slows us down because it unfolds over days or weeks and can’t be rushed. It is a process that has a beginning, middle, and end, and with each phase expectation builds.

There is, of course, a familiar and circular challenge. Making pickles takes time when we have none to spare. But pickle making is unique among kitchen endeavors in that it allows us to rely on an invisible team of helpmates, the bacterial cultures that make fermentation happen. These cultures move our labors along and toil for us as we tend to other tasks. Once we establish a home for them, we have the pleasure of observing their work—marveling at their bubbles, smelling, poking, and tasting from time to time.

What’s better is that if you are at home as much as I am, you will appreciate experiencing adventure without ever leaving your kitchen because pickle making is an endless source of mystery and wonder. The process is fascinating; it is also the cherished source of a quiet and particular kind of excitement.

What I find most memorable about a good batch of pickles is its telltale crunch: sour and salty, cool and refreshing, and especially welcome in the heat of summer. Each batch of pickles has subtle variations in taste, texture, and color, but with each you can bite into a pickle and hear and feel it give. This is what separates real pickles from all others. Behind the crunch is the fact that real pickles are fermented in a salty brine, not preserved in vinegar. Fermentation enhances their vitality and makes them a living food.

Homemade pickles are so easy to make. The recipe is as fool proof as a fermentation recipe can be, which is a confession of sorts. Once a summer, when it’s really hot and my kitchen is especially inviting to an army of microbes, I have a batch that fails. The reason why remains a mystery, but then how cucumbers become pickles is a mystery, too.

Here is a recipe for you to use and enjoy. It my adaptation of a recipe from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, and you can scale it up or down depending on how many cucumbers you have on hand.

Ingredients

3-4 pounds small pickling cucumbers
6 tablespoons coarse sea salt (I use gray Celtic Sea Salt)
3-4 heads fresh flowering dill, or 3-4 tablespoons dill in any form
2-3 heads fresh garlic, scrubbed with loose peels discarded and cloves separated (there is no need to fully peel the cloves)
1 handful fresh oak, horseradish, cherry or grape leaves
6-8 whole black peppercorns

Recipe

1. Rinse cucumbers and scrape off any remaining blossoms. If you are using cucumbers that were not just picked, soak them for a couple of hours in cold water to freshen them.

2. Place sea salt in 1/2 gallon of filtered water to create a brine solution. Stir until the sea salt is thoroughly dissolved. Some recipes ask you to boil the brine, but this isn’t necessary.

3. For 3-4 pounds of cucumbers, I use 3 half-gallon glass canning jars, but the recipe works with any ceramic crock or bowl (see Note below). Into the bottom of each jar place equal portions of the dill, garlic cloves, fresh leaves , and peppercorns.

4. Divide the cucumbers among the jars and gently cover them with either pickle weights or another object that will keep them submerged under the brine. Then add enough brine to cover the cucumbers by an inch or two. If you run out, mix more brine using the same ratio of just under 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt to 1 cup of water. Loosely cover the jars and leave them at room temperature out of direct sunlight.

5. Check the pickles every few days and skim any mold from the surface, but don’t worry if you can’t get it all.

6. Taste the pickles 7–10 days after starting the recipe. When you like the flavor, remove the pickles and place them in a clean storage container. Strain the brine you used for pickling and add it to the container, covering the pickles completely. If you like pickled garlic, you can also collect the whole garlic cloves, cover them with brine, and store them separately in the refrigerator.

Note: If you use a crock or bowl for making pickles, you will need 3 additional items: a plate that fits inside the crock or bowl, a sealed bag of water or other weight, and a dishcloth to cover. Gently place the plate over the cucumbers and use the weight to keep them submerged. Then cover the container with the dishcloth to keep out dust.

I love experimenting in the kitchen, which means I learn many lessons through trial and error. Based on my own experience, here are some hard-won pickle-making tips: Pickle-Making Wisdom

Not all salad dressings are equal, and the ways they differ can be important and altogether unexpected. While quality matters, I am referring to differences that run deeper and are perhaps more significant. There are dressings that empower us, and there are those that undermine our ability to think and do for ourselves. That’s a lot to claim about so small a dish. Let me explain.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed spending time in Italy, where salad is served daily in every sort of restaurant. Alongside bowls of undressed greens, four ingredients are placed on the table: extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. The last two are in mills so you can grind them yourself. The offering of these ingredients is based on two underlying assumptions. First, that anyone big enough to eat a salad is also big enough to dress it, without measuring spoons and without a recipe. Second, that our personal preferences vary.

The power to dress a salad—that is, the power to choose and do for oneself—is granted and taken daily. Implicit in the granting is a message so ennobling that it’s worth pausing to consider: You can do this; without a recipe, you can dress a salad using ingredients that are basic and real, and you can make it taste good. You have that ability.

How different salads are for most of us, having lost much of our self reliance in the kitchen, along with the conviction that we are capable of preparing simple and delicious fare. It is not too strong to say that this is emblematic of the larger ways in the realm of cooking that we have let our power go, giving it to an industry that generally has profit, rather than our well being, as its motive. It is an industry that has reduced personal choice to an array of inferior bottled dressings.

Making a good vinaigrette is a worthwhile step toward self reliance. It is so easy and takes so little time that I wonder how we’ve been persuaded to spend money on bottled dressings that cost more and are comprised of mostly poor-quality oils and artificial ingredients.

The concept of a vinaigrette is as simple as combining a fat with an acid, and the ways you can then embellish it are almost endless. You can vary your choice of oil from neutral to intense, or fruity to peppery. You can alternate the vinegar, choosing red wine, balsamic, sherry, or a different acid altogether like orange or lemon juice. And you can experiment with texture, making your vinaigrette thin or, if you prefer, creamy like mayonnaise. For everyday use, you might rely on a standard recipe of vinegar and oil combined with shallots, mustard, salt ,and pepper. You can also add fresh herbs for color and flavor.

As you begin making your own vinaigrette, keep in mind that quality and proportion matter most. You will want to use a fine fresh oil, delicious vinegar, and good sea salt. A standard ratio is three or four parts oil to one part acid. Also remember that vinaigrette can be prepared in the moment, or made a day ahead to give the flavors a chance to meld.

Vinaigrette is, most of all, a can-do creation that allows you to imprint your preferences and personality onto everyday dishes. It asks so little and gives so much, and I’ll illustrate this point by concluding with a story about my six-year-old daughter, Rebecca.

One day when Rebecca was about four years-old I asked her to help me finish making a vinaigrette, the one I toss with almost every salad I make. I needed someone else to taste it. It turns out that Rebecca has an impeccable palate, which I do not. She seasoned and finished it so beautifully that I would no longer dream of making this vinaigrette without her. It has become Rebecca’s signature dressing. She makes it for company. People ask her for the recipe and for advice on duplicating her results in their own kitchens. All this at the age of six, and from a child who doesn’t give a whit about cooking.

That’s the beauty of vinaigrette: it allows even a six-year-old to sparkle and shine. If you let it, it will work its magic for you, too.

Two Vinaigrettes

The Allure of Summer Pickles

Implicit in Vinaigrette

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