By Melissa McCart
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Heather Shorter inherited more than her grandmother's passion for pickling. She also got all the equipment: a giant kettle, a case and a half of Mason jars, bands and lids, and a dog-eared copy of "Ball Blue Book of Preserving," complete with recipe notes in the margins.

Shorter remembers tasting her grandmother's jam, not her pickles, but figures that pickling must have connected her to her German roots and her Milwaukee childhood. Sure enough, among the memorabilia the family has been looking through since her death in 1998, "my mother recently found my great-grandmother's pickling recipe for piccalilli," a medley made with an array of vegetables such as cauliflower, red peppers, onions and carrots, Shorter says.

In the years since she took up pickling and jam-making, Shorter has discovered that "pickles are kind of show-offy, even more so than bread. If you make your own, for some reason, it really knocks people out."

Just this summer, the 42-year-old has decided to test whether her penchant for pickles will lead to a profitable side gig in addition to her part-time work in arts administration. After testing recipes on relatives, friends and acquaintances in the restaurant industry, she has decided to take the plunge and lease space in the kitchen of Ray's the Classics for her new business, Jam Tomorrow.

The name is a reference to Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," in which the White Queen tells Alice, "The rule is, jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday, but never jam today." The phrase "jam tomorrow" came to mean the promise of something that is never delivered, but Shorter, a graduate of the now-defunct Culinary School of Washington, is certainly hoping her business becomes more than that.

So far, she is creating samples for a couple of restaurants and pickling cocktail ingredients for several bartenders. She'd like to expand her restaurant clientele and sell four to six kinds of pickles and jams online and in specialty shops.

Shorter isn't the only one with a hankering for pickles. Just look around at bistro menus, on cheese and charcuterie boards and at condiments for fish, sausages, burgers and sandwiches of all sorts.

The renewed popularity of a practice that just a few years ago was lumped in the same genre as knitting circles and baking contests is partly due to a return to retro. "What's old is what's new," says chef Brian McBride, who always has something pickled on his menu at Blue Duck Tavern. (His current favorites are peach pickles, made with the crisper white variety.)

The eat-local movement also has something to do with it. "People in CSAs need something to do with 30 cucumbers or a box full of beets," says McBride, referring to the farm-subscription programs known as community-supported agriculture.

Chef Liam LaCivita of Clarendon's Liberty Tavern agreed. "People want local produce, and pickling things now means cooks can eat it through the fall and winter," he says. LaCivita gets exotic with his pickles on the Amish charcuterie plate, brining watermelon rind for his mostarda, a Northern Italian fruit pickle seasoned with powdered mustard.

Although pickled peaches and watermelon rinds might have been fashionable in the '50s, the origins of the craft are ancient. They're referenced in stories of Cleopatra (as a beauty aid) and Amerigo Vespucci (who before exploring was supposedly a pickle peddler).

Even Thomas Jefferson endorsed the pleasures of pickles in his notes in the collections at Monticello: "On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar." Once Ball jars went mainstream in the 1890s, pickling became more accessible.

Pickles can brighten a plate with acid, crunch and color, can cleanse the palate on a fatty charcuterie or cheese plate and are a natural for cocktails.

Pickling is also a way for cooks to get creative, notes chef Jamie Leeds of Hank's Oyster Bar and the newly opened CommonWealth in Columbia Heights. At her latest restaurant, Leeds offers piccalilli, pickled beets, cornichons and pickled carrots for now and says she intends to expand her repertoire.

With pickling hot among restaurant chefs, it's only a matter of time before home cooks are aboil over it, too. In addition to equipment, all it takes to pickle is a simple brine or vinegar and in-season produce, as Shorter aptly demonstrates one morning in her Takoma Park kitchen. Not such a bad way to extend summer's boon.

During summer and early fall, it's more common to eat fresh-packed, refrigerator or quick pickles. McBride's peach pickle, LaCivita's mostarda and Leeds's piccalilli are all quick pickles, for which vinegar provides the bite, and refrigerated produce is ready within a week or less. Shorter's spicy dill pickle spears are also fresh-packed.

Shorter is meticulous about safety to prevent spoilage and contaminants such as botulism. During her recent pickling session, bowls of fresh herbs, chopped veggies and spices line the countertops. Dressed summer-casual (shorts, T-shirt and bare feet), the auburn-haired Shorter glides from counter to counter of her L-shaped kitchen as she talks, pulling ingredients from her mise en place. On the stove, water reaches a full boil in the kettle, hot enough to sterilize jars before she combines ingredients. She is about to make one of her classics: spicy dill pickles.

First she sterilizes jars in boiling water that's at least an inch over the top of the jars for 10 minutes, as recommended by U.S. Agriculture Department canning guidelines. Next, she turns off her burner, working quickly to fill jars with fresh dill, coriander seed, chopped garlic and cucumber spears, with the blossom ends cut off, once the jars are ready.

"You want to take jars out of the water one by one, so they stay sterilized," Shorter says. In addition, "a cooled jar has a greater chance of cracking" once the ingredients hit it.

She lines dill sprigs on the bottom of a jar along with coriander seeds and garlic. Then she packs in cucumber spears. They're four-to-five-inch Kirbys she buys at the Sunday farmers market at Dupont Circle.

Next, she pours a room-temperature brine (water, sugar, vinegar, sugar, salt, dill seeds, peppercorns and pickling spice) over the spears via a crucial tool: a wide-mouth funnel. "It's just easier," she says.

Shorter tops each can with sliced red jalepeño rings and more dill, then covers the jar with a new lid -- "Do not reuse lids," she cautions -- and a sterile band to secure it.

After five days in the fridge, Shorter's spicy dill pickles are crisp, bright and ready to eat.

For shelf pickles, the process is more elaborate and the produce becomes more pliant. That type of pickling requires sterile jars, bands and lids, as well as a heated brine with vinegar above 5 percent acidity, mixed with pickling salt to keep the liquid clear.

In the case of her pickled beets and dilled green beans, Shorter removes jars from the hot water, packs each and adds heated brine, leaving a half-inch space at the top. Before sealing, she removes air bubbles with a nonmetallic stick such as a skewer, a chopstick or the plastic one that comes with most canning kits. "Metallic ones are more apt to break the glass," she says.

Once the jars are sealed, they boil for 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the recipe. Generally, the lower the acid content of the produce, the longer the boiling time. Acid levels in vegetables are important when it comes to pressure-canning vegetables, a variation of preserving Shorter has just begun to teach herself. As the name suggests, pressure canning requires different equipment and more stringent safety precautions.

After she removes jars from the boil, Shorter lets them cool to room temperature on clean dish towels. How does she know her pickles are done? "I'll hear a pop, either while it's boiling or just after," she says. "It's confirmation that it's vacuum-sealed." Three to four weeks later, her pickles can be eaten at any point up to a full year.

Because Shorter's trip into pickling was inspired by her grandmother, she plans to pass along her passion to her children, Emma, 9, and Ian, 6. They haven't yet acquired a taste for pickles and prefer the sweet stuff. "For now, they love homemade jam," Shorter says.

For now, perhaps. But as Shorter knows, there's always tomorrow.

Melissa McCart writes the Counter Intelligence blog at http://melissamccart.wordpress.com. She and Heather Short will join the Food section's Free Range chat at 1 p.m. today.