Piccalilli

I find the more I make at home, the less I want to buy in the shops. I am appalled by the prices and dissatisfied with the quality. This can lead to the odd crisis, when I fancy something that we have run out of. I can't bear to purchase an over priced substandard substitute from the supermarket so I have to do without until I can find the time or the ingredients are ripe, to make it.
Piccalilli is a gardener's pickle really, as it infinitely flexible in what can go in it and in what quantities. My recipe book only calls for 6 lbs of mixed vegetables, suggesting beans (dwarf, broad or runner), red or white cabbage, cauliflowers, cucumbers, celery, gherkins, marrows, onions, shallots, peppers and green tomatoes. You get the picture, ideal if you have a glut of something or alternatively not enough of something else to make a meal out of.
This year my gardening has been deficient so I had no runner beans to put in and as I only have about four green tomatoes left, I decided I would rather leave them out and coax them into ripening instead. So I was left with an overgrown courgette and a bought cauliflower, cabbage, pepper and onions. They have to be chopped up small and left to soak in brine. The book says 'cut into uniform small pieces' but I prefer to judge it by what size vegetable I would like to meet in a cheese and piccalilli sandwich. As for the brine the book recommended a pound of salt to a gallon of water but I probably used half of this, and then left the vegetables soaking in a bowl with a plate on top to hold them down.
I actually did them on Monday, but was then occupied with garage doors and Oliver until today (yesterday's outing was only slightly more successful than last week's by the way, I got stung by a wasp, we only had time for half an hour on the beach and ended up lost in rush hour traffic in Hull).
So here are the vegetables ready in the pan with the brine washed off :

Now to make the sauce.
For a hot sharp piccalilli which is how I like it blend
 3 teaspoons turmeric
 8 teaspoons ginger
 8 teaspoons mustard powder
and 6 ounces sugar
with two pints of distilled vinegar and put it all in a large pan with the vegetables and bring to the boil and cook for twenty minutes. Then using a slotted spoon, scoop the vegetables out of the spicy vinegar and pack into jars.

The wide necked funnel is a left over from my chutney making days and is really useful for any preserving job.

After all the vegetables are out of the vinegar, mix two ounces of cornflour with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and add to the spicy vinegar in the pan and boil to thicken it. 

Looks a bit like custard in the photo but I can tell you it smells nothing like custard!

Then pour the sauce over the vegetables in the jars until covered . I jiggled about a bit with a spoon to make sure the sauce was distributed equally and that there were no air bubbles in the jar.

The book recommends that the piccalilli should be left four to six weeks to mature and I think this is reasonable because at the moment the sauce is very sharp and vinegary, it needs time to mellow.So there we are, 6 and a half jars to add to my store cupboard. That should see me through the rest of the year and possibly the year after.