Piccalilli is such a British thing with that combo of India spices and pickling heritage. I’ve added sweetcorn to my vegetable selection because I always loved sweetcorn relish so it satisfies two things for me. My daughters bought me a great book called The Modern Preserver by Kylee Newton which gave me most of the ideas for this. I’ve done loads of recipes from it. I got other inspiration from Jamie O of course! It should make 3 x 500ml jars full. It’s only called Manchester Piccalilli because I made it there!
Ingredients
- 1kg selection of vegetables, cut into bit size pieces (I used cauliflower, courgette, shallots, red pepper, sweetcorn and radish but you could include runner beans green or yellow peppers, cucumber, fresh peas, broccoli, french beans or okra)
- 2 tbs fine salt
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tbs yellow mustard seeds
- 2 tsp columns mustard powder
- 2 tsp turmeric
- 500ml white wine vinegar
- 30g cornflour
- 100g golden caster sugar
What to do
- Put the vegetables in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, mix, cover and leave overnight at room temperature.
- Rinse the vegetables, dry and set aside.
- Grind the whole spices and mix them with the mustard powder, turmeric and cornflour and some of the vinegar to for a loose paste.
- Heat the rest of the vinegar and sugar in a saucepan and slowly combine with the spice paste. Simmer gently until it thickens to a single cream consistency.
- Combine it with the vegetables and put it into the sterilised jars,
- It is best left for a month to mature although a little bit straight away is fine. Once open keep in the fridge. Unopened it will last a year.
