Relishes

No pantry is considered well stocked that does not contain a few relishes. We all have heard of hot dog relish and hamburger relish, but few know about those same products with fresh flavor. Homemade makes it a different world. When I canned my first jar of relish after purchasing commercially made “store bought” for forty years, I had the distinct feeling that I’d been duped all those years. More recently, a friend of mine bought me a VERY expensive jar of relish as a gift. The label was of a quality hardly ever seen, and the jar was as fancy as a jar can get, with the lid embossed with the company logo. The performance was furthered with a fancy name, but as soon as I saw corn syrup and dried onions, I knew the relish would have little flavor. I knew the main ingredients were not harvested fresh and ripe during peak season. The expensive jar might have made a grand paperweight, but it was going to be worthless as a relish. I opened it anyway. The $16 jar of relish tasted like a 5-cent debacle.

It seems there is a relish to augment just about anything and everything one is willing to improve upon. In the South, green tomato relish was a staple on the table whenever rice and chicken, two former boring and bland partners, were served. A black-eyed pea relish, colloquially called Texas Caviar, was the approach to similar dishes in the West, while in the upper Midwest, corn relish graced tables with pork or potatoes. In the arid Southwest, cactus fruit condiments ruled.

There is nothing quite as extraordinary as mustard greens or turnip greens with a dollop of homemade northeastern piccalilli on top, or an after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich smothered with cranberry-orange relish. These are the little special treats that turn a year of ordinary into exquisite with just an hour or two of quiet morning canning and a twist of a lid when the time is right. Enjoy these relishes and make a bunch. Over the coming year, you’ll use enough to wish you had made more!

Relishes

Caponata

This recipe’s origins are from the island of Sicily. Like so much of the melting pot that is our nation, our foods reflect the diasporas of those peoples—poor, humble, and yearning to be free. The vast empire that once was Rome has not only left its mark on our government, law, and language, the former cohorts’ families have cooked up some of the most prolific foods now residing in the United States; consider pizza and spaghetti. Caponata might not soon be the exception. Although maybe eleven hundred years separate the last Roman chariot race with the first serving of this relish, consider that Sicily is, to a large degree, isolated from the lines of commerce linking Italy with the rest of the European continent; consequently, caponata just might be a purer representation of the glory that was Rome. Once you taste it, you’ll agree!

Canning Notes
Ingredients
3 pounds very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, juiced, and chopped
1 cup olive oil, divided
6 cups medium-chopped onion
6 cups celery, cut into 1/4- to 1/2-inch chunks
3 pounds eggplant, skins on, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
4 cups chopped olives (with pimentos, if desired)
12 ounces capers
4 cups cider vinegar
2 cups sugar
Directions

Sauté the tomatoes until soft with 1/4 cup olive oil.

Place the remaining oil in a canning pot with the onion and sauté until clear. Add the celery and eggplant; stirring frequently, continue until the eggplant is soft. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a canning temperature of 195 degrees.

Check pH before filling sterile jars. Seal and invert for specified 2-minute period.

Serving Suggestions

Traditionally, caponata is served as an antipasto. Spread on toast points, it is a great and easy way to begin a meal. My two favorite uses for this relish are for breakfast and supper:

1. For breakfast, prepare a two-egg omelet. As the egg begins to firm, add 2 tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan cheese spread about. Add 2 tablespoons of warmed caponata on top of the cheese before folding the omelet.

2. For supper, split a loaf of Italian or French bread. Paint the insides with olive oil and crushed garlic. Place the bread under the broiler to warm. Layer both sides with sliced rounds of mozzarella cheese, return to the broiler to allow the cheese to soften. Remove from the oven, and ladle on hot caponata. This will become one of those simple meatless suppers that is remembered and requested.

Relishes

Apricot and Lime Relish

This relish is reminiscent of summer and its flavors. The flavor of apricot is bolder than peach, and often this smaller fruit is forgotten because of huge commercial peach crops. It is ideal as an addition to lighter fare like those enjoyed on hot summer evenings, such as white fish or grilled chicken. The relish works equally well on heavier meats like lamb, alleviating some of the heaviness with the lightness of the fruits. But no matter how one uses the relish, you will feel faint summer breezes while dining, even if it’s snowing outside.

Canning Notes
Ingredients
6 cups chopped apricots
2 cups medium-diced bell pepper (red, green, or combination)
2 cups medium-diced red onion
4 limes, peeled, sliced, seeded, and slices halved
2 cups distilled vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 cups honey
1/4 cup finely chopped, tightly packed cilantro
Directions

Place all of the ingredients except the honey and cilantro in a nonreactive canning pot and bring to a canning temperature of 200 degrees F. Add the honey and cilantro, and stir in well before checking pH.

Ladle relish into sterile jars, seal, and invert for 2 minutes minimum.

Serving Suggestions

Drizzle the relish generously on a piece of grilled white fish just after it emerges from the grill, allowing the flesh to draw in the flavors as it finishes. Pass on the baked potatoes, selecting instead a nice baguette. From start to sitting down, gourmet dining is underway in less than fifteen minutes.

Imagination is a remarkable thing. The ability to marry many flavors in a harmony of taste, like using diverse instruments in an orchestra, is not the purview of foodies and chefs alone. Anyone with a thought of what might work should give it a try. I give no guidance when I hand out trial jars, because it helps to keep the receivers’ minds working outside what might become their limitations. The feedback is often amazing. After taste-testing this relish, my mother used it as a topping on a lamb burger, while a friend made an hors d’oeuvre using Melba rounds spread with goat cheese and topped with it. Both of these suggestions were excellent, and every canner of this relish should try them. Used as above or simply as a centerpiece of a salad, this summer relish has many untold uses.

Fig Relish

Often the simplest of recipes can produce the finest of dishes. This is one such relish. It is simple to make and inexpensive when figs are gathered in season, and the sealed jars on the shelf stand ready throughout the year for when needed. Figs are a most delicate fruit, so it is only fitting that this relish be utilized on or with delicate fare. Roll the multifarious flavors of the recipe across the tongue of your imagination and consider what you might do. I frequently open a jar, so I quadruple the recipe. Some of the many uses follow below.

Canning Notes
Ingredients
1 cup minced shallots
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 cups honey
4 pounds ripe figs, chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint
1-1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
Directions

Place the shallots in the bottom of a nonreactive canning pot; sprinkle with the salt and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Add the vinegar, turn on the heat, and simmer for 5 minutes before adding the honey and the figs.

Turn the heat to medium high and bring the temperature to 190 degrees. Stirring often to prevent burning, maintain the 190-degree temperature for 5 minutes or until relish begins to thicken. Add the herbs, stirring in well to distribute flavors throughout.

Test pH, hot-pack in sterile jars, seal, and invert for 2 minutes minimum.

Serving Suggestions

This relish begs to partner with chicken. Grilled chicken, baked chicken, or store-bought rotisserie chicken (for when you just can’t see yourself cooking) with a dollop of fig relish ladled over or as a side turns just plain old chicken into something to write about. Since this is not the heavy dinner of steak and potatoes, select light accompanying partners to form a well-balanced meal. For the vegetable, try a nice salad or steamed fresh string beans. And for that quick energy boost we get from carbohydrates (but still keeping light in mind), consider corn either on or off the cob, depending on the formality of the meal.

Peach Relish

Summer relishes, delicate and often subtle like the season’s breezes, are delightful complements to light suppers, especially in the heat. But sometimes one still desires lightness when summer has passed. The problem is that those delicious fresh tastes are not always so easy to find. There is nothing that says summer quite like the peach, and this peach relish might best remind us of those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.”

There is a two-part requirement for the relish to be successful. The first is to pick ripe or purchase ripe local harvest. This ensures that our sun has done the job of ripening that cannot be accomplished commercially with time on trains or trucks or with gases. The second is to be mindful not to exceed the suggested canning temperature. The minimum required canning temperature ensures no bacteria will grow, but with each degree over, flavors diminish. These are the putting-up secrets to successfully capture those summer tastes later in the year.

Canning Notes
Ingredients
6 cups finely diced peeled peaches
2 cups medium-diced red bell pepper
1 cup medium-diced green bell pepper
1 cup medium-diced red onion
1 cup sliced and quartered peeled cucumber
1 cup honey
1/4 cup minced garlic
1-1/2 cups cider vinegar mixed with 1/4 cup tomato purée, or 1-1/4 cups balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup finely chopped hot pepper of choice (seeded and deveined is optional)
1/2 cup finely chopped, tightly packed mint (leaves with tender stems only)
Directions

Place all but the mint in a nonreactive pot and bring to 187–190 degrees F. Add the mint and stir in well; check pH while holding the heat.

Working fast, immediately fill and seal sterile jars while pot is maintained at temperature. Invert jars for 2 minutes minimum.

Serving Suggestions

This relish belongs on top of a piece of light, grilled, broiled, or baked white fish like grouper, flounder, stripper, tilapia, mountain trout, or one of our inland lakes fish. Light is the key—not fishy or oily like mackerel or cod. Fowl and pork, although not as light, work great as well. Again, it is imagination that makes and limits its use. With a complementary light vegetable and a simple whole grain baguette, this becomes a complete meal in less than twenty minutes. It’s even easier and lighter in a nice salad: On a bed of butter lettuce, add a selected grouping of mixed baby greens and an ice cream scoop full of peach relish; dressing is optional. A salad lunch with a pint jar of peach relish will serve four in under a minute!

Relishes

Sweet and Spicy Corn Relish

As an early teen summering on a working farm, I often remember that all children would be summoned to pick corn as supper approached. Holding hands we would skip to the barn, harness a mule to a cabbage cart, and gleefully head to a nearby cornfield. Four of us would pick from the back of the cart as Johnny edged the animal onward. Heading home on the dirt roads and sitting cross-legged on the cart, we’d shuck the fifty or more ears to feed a table of sixteen. The corn would go straight from the cart into pots of boiling salted water. I was spoiled for life, and corn never tasted quite that good again. Now you can lock in those splendid fresh flavors for a continuing treat throughout the year. I love this recipe, and use it a lot, so much so that I put up enough to dedicate an entire pantry shelf in its honor.

Canning Notes
Ingredients
3 cups cider vinegar, divided
2 teaspoons Colman’s Dry Mustard
2 teaspoons turmeric
1-1/2 cups sugar, or 1 cup honey
3/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup red pepper flakes
1-1/2 teaspoons whole celery seed
1 teaspoon pure salt
1-1/2 cups medium-diced red bell pepper
1-1/2 cups medium-diced green bell pepper
2 cups medium-diced red onion
3 cups sliced celery (stalks sliced lengthwise once and cut every 1/4 inch)
18 ears (approximately) corn, cut (not scraped) off the cob (9 cups total)*
Directions

Make a paste with a little of the vinegar, dry mustard, and turmeric. This way the powders will diffuse easily without clumping in the pickling solution.

In a nonreactive pot, add the remaining vinegar, sugar, lime juice, pepper flakes, celery seed, and salt. Bring to a boil and add the mustard/turmeric paste. Stir in well. Add all remaining ingredients except the corn and bring to a boil. Add the corn, return to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Check for safe pH. Return to just under a boil (205 degrees F) and prepare to can. Ladle relish into sterile jars and top off if necessary with pickling solution from the pot, ensuring vegetables are covered. Seal and invert for the required 2-minute period.

Serving Suggestions

Corn relish makes a remarkable addition to a simple green salad. Aside from bringing many diverse flavors and a touch of heat and sweetness to the greens, it adds a glorious bouquet of sprinkled colors: reds, purples, greens, and yellows against a backdrop of green. With a simple cider vinegar and olive oil dressing, there is neither a healthier nor a tastier salad combination.

But corn relish isn’t just for salads. Whenever there is rice on one of my plates, a scoop of corn relish replaces the former obligatory block of butter. Unless using another put-up recipe, consider opening a jar when serving chicken, fried, grilled, or baked. A served plate might look like this: chicken, broccoli or spinach, and maybe brown rice as a carbohydrate, each taking up a third of the plate. A little 3-tablespoon mound of relish in the center does wonders for the bland starch, livens up the green vegetable, and is scrumptious with the chicken. The bright colors add a carnival-like atmosphere to the plate, a feature fine chefs charge extra to achieve.

And there is a medicinal advantage. It was not so long ago that a condiment bowl of pickled offerings like this corn relish was a staple of dining tables. There was a reason and, like many old rooted traditions, 5,000 years of human history is seldom wrong. Cider vinegar is a remarkable health aid. John Adams (1735–1826) refused to accept the position as ambassador to France until his government guaranteed that he’d have a supply of homemade cider vinegar. Its benefits are impressive.

*To cut fresh corn off the cob, hold a sharp knife at a 20-degree angle to the cob and slice in until hitting the cob. Then, with the blade tilted slightly inward, very carefully cut down the cob. You’ll know if you cut into the cob because they are tough. Just reduce the angle of the blade and continue.

Relishes

Cranberry-Orange Relish

Even before winter begins to knock on our doors, but just about the same time trick-or-treaters do, the New England and Northwest coast cranberry fields are in full harvest. The season of these berries may be short-lived, but the flavor speaks autumn itself, and no Thanksgiving table is complete without something cranberry. My first book, Putting Up, featured Cranberry Chutney, and before the holiday seasons commence, this has always been one of my biggest sellers at the farmers market. But I have always wanted something a bit less overpowering than chutney, something subtle yet with the taste of cranberry, maybe with fruity accents and the lightness of a relish. What I created was equally good with a just-carved steaming turkey and much better than anything yet tried on those leftover turkey sandwiches. Last Thanksgiving season, when both products were sampled, this relish outsold the chutney three to one.

Canning Notes
Ingredients
5 cups fresh cranberries, washed, picked through, and roughly chopped
2 oranges with zest but no pith, seeded, sliced, and chopped
3/4 cup apple juice/cider
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup finely chopped sweet onion
2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
1/4 cup+ minced crystallized ginger
Directions

Place all ingredients in a nonreactive pot. Bring to just under boiling, stirring often to prevent burning.

Reduce heat and ladle into prepared jars, seal with sterile lids, and invert for the required 2-minute minimum.

Serving Suggestions

It doesn’t take Thanksgiving to enjoy or fully appreciate cranberry-orange relish. When I was creating this recipe, I went through several store-bought rotisserie chickens until I got the flavors just as I wanted them; I’d slice off a big chunk of breast meat and smother the relish on top; third try was a charm, as they say.

For an hors d’oeuvre in the autumn, I spill half of a small jar of relish over a block of cream cheese and surround it with water crackers. Quick and easy as well as colorful, it never fails to draw the crowd. Also, a party favorite is a paste of either chicken or turkey chopped and mixed with equal parts of relish. Place on toast points as an exquisite canapé that will set apart a hostess.

Hot Pepper Relish

I left this recipe in the relish section rather than moving it to All Things Hot, simply because it is up to the maker to decide how hot the hot will be. Much like the sweet pepper relish from my first book, Putting Up (but with the addition of a Scoville increment determining the heat level to best serve a home canner’s needs), these jars quickly become family favorites and are standing favorites of farmers market patrons. We produce three heat scales, one for each tolerance: mild yet warm, medium but getting there, and screaming hot for those who dare. Interestingly, it is the hot that vanishes first.

Not so ten years ago! Back then, six mild jars might have lasted the summer without a taker. “The times they are a changin’.” Bob Dylan, you were correct!

Canning Notes
Ingredients
6 cups medium-diced bell peppers, assorted colors
2 cups medium-chopped yellow onion
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon mustard seeds
Jalapeños, chiles, and/or habanero peppers, to taste:
Very Mild: 1/4 cup finely chopped jalapeño, seeded and deveined
Standard Mild: 1/4 cup finely chopped jalapeño, seeds and veins left in
Medium: 1/4 cup finely chopped chile peppers
Hot: 1/4 to 1/2 cup finely chopped habanero peppers (seeds in or out)
Screaming Hot: 1 cup finely chopped habanero, but reduce bell peppers by 1/2 cup
Directions

Place the prepared vegetables in a canning pot with the vinegar and bring to a boil. Take pot off the heat, allow temperature to drop below 200 degrees F, and then test pH. If at or below guidelines, continue. If not, drain vinegar and use another measured cupful per single recipe.

Add remaining ingredients and bring to a canning temperature of 205 degrees F.

Check pH again, ladle into sterile jars, seal, and invert for 2 minutes minimum.

Serving Suggestions

This is a simple relish with a bit or a lot of zing. It works well, just like store-bought, but the flavors are so fresh and rich in comparison that where the store varieties find their way, sometimes reluctantly, to hotdogs and burgers, this relish will be heaped on and also used to enhance many supper plates featuring animal, fish, fowl, and vegetarian main courses. Further, by using a medley of different colored peppers, the color-enhanced plate of food is delightful art. A favorite is to ladle over pan-fried, broiled, or baked freshly caught white-meat fish like bass.

Relishes