Radishes, radishes and more radishes

I should share that all this work happen on Friday after our Thurs. pick up. - I'm slow to getting around to writing :-)
As I mentioned in my last post I picked up both my family's and friend's as well. She's two weeks away from getting back into town and I wanted to make sure I could store as much of her food as possible for consumption later. With 2 large bunches of radishes I thought to myself, why not preserve them both? So I went on a search.... lots of recipes for pickled radishes. Now, I would have gone this route but I also had some small red onions to deal with and I knew I had a head of cauliflower sitting in my fridge. The Italian in me screamed "MAKE GIARDINIERA!" 

That oh so delicious antipasto that plain old pickles just can't touch. Yup, that's what I'm making. 

So I broke out my food processor and went to work slicing up those beautiful radishes, along with a few peeled carrots from the fridge.  I halved the red onions and cut the entire head of cauliflower up into florets  Added a couple of stalks of celery and a few cloves of garlic and then loosely followed this recipe from about.com to can it all properly. I left out the cloves and added a couple of flower heads from my garden dill.

The end result, 2 1/2 quarts of pink (thank you radishes) yet tart and scrumptious pickles that I will happily be eating on my salads for a good long time. 

I just hope MB and her family enjoy it :-)

Giardiniera adapted from Kyle Phillips recipe on About.com

Ingredients

1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into small florets

2 bunches of radishes, sliced

3-4 medium carrots, sliced

3-4 stalks of celery, large dice

3-4 small onions, peeled and halved

6-8 cloves of whole garlic, peeled 

1 qt white wine vinegar

3 dill flower clusters or dill seed clusters

4 bay leaves

1 tsp. of peppercorns

1 tbsp. salt

Directions

Bring the spices and vinegar to a boil. Add the vegetables and boil for 15 minutes. Place the vegetables in sanitized jars and fully cover with cooking liquid. Cover the jars and set to cool. Check for tight seals before storing in a cool dry place for up to a year. The flavor will mellow over the first couple of weeks and meld over the first couple of weeks. Should some of the jars not seal, they can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.

Please remember when canning anything to make sure to check jars periodically for bloating or sign of spoilage. Discard anything that does not look right to you. Stay safe!