Archive for the ‘business of pickling’ Category
Rick’s Rib Rub
Filed under: business of pickling, friends of rick's picks, recipe ideas |
Leave a Comment We are across the walkway at Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket from our good friends Wilklow Orchards. They have a spectacular array of meats which we enjoy weekly. Recently, I’ve become infatuated with slow-cooked ribs. Miles, who works at Wilklow, gave me some ideas for braising the ribs, which takes place in a 300 degree oven for 3-4 hours. And so, voila… Rick’s Rib Rub is here. My secret ingredient is… (drumroll) Rick’s Picks pickles! Sorry I do not have a photo… I left my camera at home… but trust me, the ribs were awesome.
3 28-oz cans diced tomatoes
12 oz cider vinegar
8 oz Rick’s Picks Kool Gherks or The People’s Pickle, diced finely
4 slices Canadian bacon, grilled and diced
10 cloves garlic, diced finely
2 inches fresh horseradish, peeled and shaved with a Microplane
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and shaved with a Microplane
1 stick butter
Juice of 2 lemons
Ground cumin to taste
Black pepper to taste
Melt butter in a large deep pot such as a Le Crusset. Add the garlic and sautee. Add the Canadian bacon, cumin and pepper. Stir for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, the vinegar, the pickles and the lemon juice, stirring constantly. Mix in the horseradish and ginger, and fold together thoroughly. Simmer for 15 minutes. Rick’s Rib Rub will be enough to braise 6 pounds of ribs.
New Amsterdam Market Benefit April 9th: Oyster Saloon (with a very special pickle)
Filed under: business of pickling, events, friends of rick's picks, pickle making observations, recipe ideas |
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Oysters all around.
Our good friend and market visionary Robert LaValva is hosting another smorgasbord/fundraiser on April 9 to benefit his New Amsterdam Market. We’ve been working with Robert since year one of the Market and his benefit parties are not only a worthy expenditure but a hoot. This time, he’s asked us to roll up our sleeves and make something special for the event. We concluded it would be fun to do a pickled carrot. We agreed it should be aromatic and spicy. And I have a secret agenda… I’ve been looking for a reason to fool around with Szechuan Peppercorns. I see great things in the future for this pickle.
These ingenues and their friends are about to meet some interesting peppercorns from Szechuan Province.
I’ll keep you posted when I do the recipe test next week. You can get tickets to the event here.
wedding favors from rick’s picks via martha stewart
Filed under: business of pickling, events, friends of rick's picks, pickle making observations |
Leave a Comment Last night in the mail I got the “save the date” for my buddy Adam and his beautiful bride-to-be Jessica’s wedding. Adam runs our warehouse in Long Island City, where we currently have over 100,000 jars carefully stored for the coming months. So if Adam needs pickles for his wedding, all he has to do is ask. Other folks with nuptuals in the offing might want to consider this cool wedding guest gift that we partnered on with our friends at Martha Stewart Weddings… custom gift-sized pickle jars!
These petite versions of our top-selling pickles make great wedding favors.
These pickles come in 8,9 and 12 oz. sizes and naturally Martha’s team has a bunch of great suggestions on how you can personalize the jars for your special day. Minimum order is 100 jars and for this type of custom order we need a lead time of 60 days. If you are interested or have any questions email us at contact@rickspicksnyc.com or give us a shout at 212 358 0428.
goodbye, mr. sun
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Leave a Comment Mr. Sun has been our next door neighbor on Chrystie Street since the day we started Rick’s Picks. And he was there long before we were. Mr. Sun’s business is vegetables, mostly the kinds popular in Chinese cuisine: bok choy, long beans, melons. He has been incredibly kind to us as we’ve grown, letting us store samples of refrigerated pickles in his coolers, holding parking spaces, and most crucially, letting us borrow his forklift and pallet jacks when we transfer pallets of pickles from our warehouse in Long Island City to the office, to supply our Greenmarket and Internet business. It’s not like you can just go to any neighbor and ask to borrow a forklift. But he was unfailingly generous with what was his, and asked nothing in return (we did our best to keep him in pickles and t-shirts). A few weeks ago, Mr. Sun said he wanted to speak with me. He told me that his landlord was jacking up his rent to the point where it no longer made sense to continue his operation on the Lower East Side. He had decided his only option after 23 years on the block was to consolidate his distribution with his farm in New Jersey. As they say, there goes the neighborhood. It is terrible when a hard-working man running a successful, clean business is forced to depart. I’m sure the inevitable art gallery that will take his place will be groovy and cool, but from my perspective, Chrystie Street between Stanton and Rivington just lost a lot of soul.
We will miss Mr. Sun.
Imbibe The Brown and Bloody Caesar at Jeffery’s
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Leave a Comment You don’t have to be a mixologist to have a strong opinion about how to make the perfect Bloody Mary. We’ve got our own ideas here at Rick’s Picks, but after checking out what our friends at Jeffery’s are up to over in the West Village, we think they may have topped ‘em all. The Brown and Bloody Caesar at Jeffery’s is a complex concoction.
The Brown and Bloody Caesar astride the counter at Jeffery's.
Gabriel Stulman, John McNulty and their cohorts have brought together Dogfish Head Brown Ale, Clamato, sriracha, chipotle, Worcestershire sauce, and cocktail sauce, dressed it with an oyster and garnished it, we are pleased to note, with Smokra and a caper berry. It’s zesty, refreshing and begs for company. Such as the killer weekend brunch at Jeffery’s. After you finish imbibing, you can avail yourself of Jeffery’s selection of grocery items, which includes the aforementioned Smokra, plus Hotties, Mean Beans and Phat Beets. See you there!
speaking in public
Filed under: business of pickling, friends of rick's picks, pickle making observations |
Leave a Comment This month has brought a couple of unusual opportunities to speak in public. Last week I was asked to go to Chicago to a participate in a fundraiser for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Lisa’s involved in a wide range of excellent initiatives… check out her site.
The current and future Attorney General of Illinois, Lisa Madigan.
I was there to prepare a spread of pickled treats (some of the ones I made are here) and to talk a bit about pickle-making and what is interesting and relevant about it in a social context. I focused my remarks on the way that pickles reflect what is best about our country. We are a nation of immigrants, and practically every culture brought some form of pickling, drying, salting, canning or fermenting into the mix. When David Dinkins ran for mayor of New York, he characterized the population of the city as a “gorgeous mosaic”. It’s a phrase I’ve always liked and it certainly applies to the nation as a whole. Our gorgeous mosaic of Japanese, Poles, Mexicans and countless others breathe life into our food system with their unique forms of preserving. At Rick’s Picks, we try to reflect the wide range of influences in our product line. Our newest pickle, Hotties, will be out in about a month and a half and it features a delectable spicy brine of Sriracha and dried habanero powder. A little Vietnamese influence by way of California, and a fiery jolt from South of the border.
Rick's Picks presents Hotties. Coming soon to rickspicksnyc.com and markets everywhere.
The second speaking opportunity is upcoming. My 25th college reunion is Memorial Day weekend, so I’ll be heading back to New Haven to revisit my bright college years at Yale.
Boola Boola.
I’m going to be on a panel discussing entrepreneurship and the challenges of making a mid-life career change. Running a business like Rick’s Picks requires energy, commitment and patience, no question. But one thing that I only came to understand once I made the switch from a stable career in television to start my fledgling enterprise is the need to be comfortable “floating”. By this I mean functioning (and hopefully florishing) in a state where numerous things are uncertain at the same time. The easiest way to understand this to think about vegetables. In 2009, we made our annual production plan based on what we forecasted we would need for the next 12 months. And then it rained for 25 out of 30 days in June. Thus the growing season throughout the Northeast was delayed and/or compromised and we had to be wait for things to come, hope they would still be up to our quality standards and at reliable prices, and then make a tremendously greater number of pickles in a much shorter window. As the rain fell in June, I could see the problem coming, but I trusted it would work out, which it did. That’s what I call floating. I’ll do a second post when I get back from Yale about some of the things my fellow entrepreneurs shared.
night of 1,000 ramps, aka the rampage
Filed under: business of pickling, friends of rick's picks, pickle making observations, recipe ideas |
Leave a Comment The other night was the fourth or fifth annual Night of 1,000 Ramps, aka The Rampage. For those of you not familiar, ramps are a fern-like root that grows wild on the forest floor for a short period during Spring. Like a scallion in appearance but with an earthy depth of flavor, ramps were considered until recently to be only suitable for poor folk, who forgaged for them where they could. Well now here in NYC, chefs are tripping over each other to get enough supply and the ways they are using ramps are incredibly diverse. Ramp pesto, ramps in pasta dishes, cream of ramp soup, ramps this, ramps that. Me, I like to pickle ramps. This probably comes as no surprise. Nor are you likely to be surprised that I call our finished finished products On Ramps. Our Greenmarket buddy Rick Bishop always has the best ramps and he set aside two flats for us this year, then threw in an extra ten pounds of so for good measure.
Rick Bishop with a the well-earned results of lengthy foraging. The man has a cool first name and some top-quality ramps.
Making pickled ramps is a labor of love. Let me be very clear about that. Here is a little perspective: with 5 friends working for a total of 20 cumulative hours, we made 70 jars of ramps. In the same number of real time hours, we can make about 2,500 jars of Phat Beets. My secret to a productive evening of making On Ramps is to invite over eager friends and make sure they always have a cold Tecate in their hands. The photos of the evening have an amber wash to them which is due to a faulty white balance choice by yours truly, but there’s also an instant archival effect that you get also.
Sarah, me, James and 50 pounds of ramps.
What really takes the time with ramps is the cleaning. First you trim the green leaves off of the tops (and save them to saute or make the aforementioned pesto) and the wispy roots off the bulbs.
This process is so meticulous it makes Pointilist painting look like finger painting.
The result should be a four-inch specimen, pearly white at the bulb end and richly purple at the top (four inches is the desired length because that is how much vertical space you have to pack vegetables in a standard pint Mason jar).
You know what they say about many hands and light work. In the background, Andy appears to be using his hands to google "efficiencies in ramp peeling"
One of the great things about pickling ramps is that they lend themselves to a diverse number of brines. In the past, I’ve used a white wine vinegar brine with muddled green peppercorns and coriander to bring our the sharp savory aspect of the plant. This time, I fashioned a brine that evokes the the other side, the lingering sweetness in ramps. I used white vinegar, dried hibiscus and muddled pink peppercorns.
Everything but the brine.
An added benefit of going this route is the dried hibiscus transmits a beautiful rosy coloration to the brine. They would be an excellent Valentine’s Day gift, if they ever lasted that long.
Finished beauties in formation.
Ramps are sufficiently time-consuming that it is impossible to imagine ever making them in a commercial scale. But I kind of like that aspect… they are almost like a secret handshake between a chosen few.
If I look like it is 1:30 in the morning, that is because it is 1:30 in the morning.
I’m on TV today
Today (Saturday) at 1 PM EST I’ll be appearing on Your Questions, Your Money on the Fox Business Network. The show runs from 1 to 2 PM; the producers told me they expect I will be on during the first half hour. Check it out!
a rick’s picks video on oprah’s OWN network
Filed under: business of pickling, friends of rick's picks, media |
Leave a Comment A while back, I did a video shoot with the Oprah team about what its like to make a switch in careers in the middle of life… in my case, from being a TV producer to being a pickle maker. It was kind of like a class reunion because my old VH1 buddy Jack was the videographer. Oprah’s OWN Network, which launches on 1/1/11, is all about empowerment in various forms… and it’s true, over the years, many folks have asked me what it felt like to leave my comfort zone and try something new. My answer is always the same: what’s more comforting than a nice pickle? You can watch the video here.
pickled, potted and canned
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My friend Larry gave me this interesting book as a present. It’s called Pickled, Potted and Canned, and unlike a lot of other books on pickling which focus just on recipes, this is a social history and more. As it says on the back cover, it is “a rich and lively narrative of the art and science that forever changed the face of civilization and world trade: food preservation”. Weighty words, but there’s a lot of truth idea of food preservation having such a central role in the evolution of society as we know it. I have yet to crack the book, but it looks great and I’ll write a review here when I am done.
