More pickle!

Ok, some more pickle! Both me and my other half love bread and butter pickle. For those of you who haven't heard of it it's a pickle made from cucumbers and is for eating with bread and butter (not made from it!). It tastes especially good with some strong cheddar too. It normally contains sugar but having looked up a few recipes for pickling cucumbers I know that you can still preserve them without the sugar due to the vinegar and salt content. So I thought I'd use the normal recipe for it but omit the sugar. The recipe is courtesy of my mum this time!


Bread and Butter Pickle
Ingredients
1 large cucumber
1 red onion, sliced very thinly
1 green pepper, deseeded and cut into strips
1 1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt
300 ml white wine vinegar
50 ml apple juice concentrate (original recipe contains 275g caster sugar)
1 tbsp mustard seed
1 tsp celery seed or dill seed (I didn't have any so skipped this!)
5 cm stick of cinnamon
6 allspice berries
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Recipe
1. Peel cucumbers (if you wish) and slice thinly. Mix with onion, pepper and salt in a bowl.
2. Sit a plate on top of the bowl, weigh it down and leave in the fridge overnight.
3. Drain the vegetables and rinse under running water until they don't taste too salty.
4. Heat the vinegar, juice concentrate and spices and simmer for a few minutes.
5. Add the vegetables, stir once and bring to a bare simmer.
6. Put into hot, sterilised jars and put lids on.

Tastes better after maturing a while so leave it for a few weeks if you can! I haven't tried it yet but will soon as we have some nice cheddar in the fridge that would go perfectly....