Our garden has been producing so many greens that it’s occasionally difficult to know what to do with them! We’ve blanched and frozen misome and turnip greens already. However, the plan was to use them in soup, and it’s been generally too warm this winter for that type of meal. So with the most recent batch of turnip greens, I decided to try something different: pickled turnip greens.
I used this recipe for a traditional brined Vietnamese-style pickle, but modified it by leaving out the onion and including some Szechuan pepper and Aleppo pepper in the brine. I also used ‘alaea (Hawaiian sea salt with red clay).
It turned out pretty tasty! Next time, I’ll use a bit less Szechuan pepper- the flavor is a bit strong in this batch. I like how the bright green color of the leaves is preserved by pickling- I was expecting it to turn more yellowish, so that was a nice surprise.
We had to postpone the not-collard cull this week, but the plan is to tackle them next week- so there may be an experiment at pickled Brassicaceae in the future…