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Joe's Spiced Pickled Fruit
Joe made it up
A holiday-inspired treat that can be served by itself or as a condiment with other dishes and rice or "whatever."
2 apples, cored, in 1/2" cubes
2 pears, cored, in 1/2" cubes
340 g12 oz. wine vinegar
110 g4 oz. brown sugar
8 pieces star anise
4 whole cloves
4 sticks cinnamon
8 cardamom seeds
15 ml1 T. allspice
Crush together the anise, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom, using a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder. *
Bring the wine vinegar to a boil and dissolve the sugar in it.
Add 2 T. of the spice mixture, stir well, and pour over the cubed fruit. When it is cooled to room temperature, it is ready to eat. Keeps well in the fridge, and although the fruit browns somewhat, the texture and taste remain fresh.
* I began crushing the spices with my mortar and pestle, but got impatient, cleaned out my coffee grinder very well, and used that after breaking the cinnamon sticks up into chunks. Worked perfectly. I'm watching Goodwill for another coffee grinder to use as a dedicated spice grinder.----Joe
Comments
Revision needed!
For the spice mix, the correct quantities are: 8 cinnamon sticks, 8 pieces star anise, 12 cloves, 1 tbsp cardamom, 1 tbsp fennel seed, 1 tbsp allspice. Incidentally, some of these spices are available at drastically reduced prices in the small Asian groceries that have popped up, and in Winco, a huge high volume store that I find surprisingly useful for mindful cooking! For example, cinnamon sticks were $1.78/lb in Winco this week, and I paid something like $4.00 for less than an ounce of them packaged in a little bottle recently!
Put them all in a pan and toast in a 375-degree oven until they get fragrant, about 10 minutes in my oven, then when they are cool enough to handle grind them up.
This was from the internet recipe which inspired this particular experiment, and worked very well.
Also, I've found that the fruit works beautifully as kind of a chutney; used some yesterday with garlic-kale and tofu sauteed in olive oil, where the fruit made a beautiful counterbalance to the stout flavors of the kale. It raised the tofu to another level, too!
And when the weather gets hot, I'll add some finely-minced Thai chillies to it for an instant sweet/sour/hot condiment for general application!