Experimental Escabeche de Verduras

Today we have a big batch of assorted hot and sweet peppers around, so we're going to make something akin to the mixture of pickled vegetables and chiles one sometimes encounters in Mexican cuisine. Our ingredients: The aforementioned peppers, a few carrots, one head of garlic, and an onion.

We sliced the carrots on a diagonal, cut up one quarter of the onion into fairly large pieces, peeled the garlic cloves, seeded and cut up the larger peppers and left the smaller ones whole, and added everything to a big glass jar.

If you want to get yourself a great big jar like this, you could try living with a hippie for awhile. They might leave a few behind when they eventually move out.

Next, we added 1 tablespoon of white peppercorns (also left behind by the hippie) and a brine made from 6 tablespoons of sea salt and a half gallon of water.

We topped off the jar with a little more water (we find that not having much air space at the top inhibits mold growth), put a pint beer glass in the top of the jar to keep most of the air out, and set the jar in a plastic container to catch any overflow.

Finally, we tastefully covered the top with a cloth dishtowel to keep any stray bugs out.

Now the jar is resting atop the fridge, and we will be checking the contents from time to time over the next 4-7 days to see how the pickles are progressing. Ideally they should transform from simply tasting salty to taking on a delicious, zingy, acidic flavor due to the actions of wild lactobacilli. We'll be back in a few days with photos of the jar as it gets cloudier and some notes on the developing flavors...