Recipe: Hypocras-Spiced Watermelon Pickles

[iasmin]

Hypocras-Spiced Watermelon Pickles
Originally uploaded by iasmindecordoba

When I was a little girl I was very lucky to have a father that enjoyed reading to me. He would read Hardy Boys novels, the Bobsy Twins, The Boxcar Children, and Nancy Drew. All very typical, though likely a bit more advanced than most parents would consider reading to their children of the same age (I was roughly 3.5-4 years old when he started these). But one of the things I remember most was my father reading me poetry. Robert Frost and e.e. cummings were some of his favorites, but there was a special place in his heart for the book "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle" (in which the poem of the same name appears). We would always begin the reading with Eve Merriam's suggestion:

Don't be polite
Bite in.
Pick it up with your
fingers and lick
The juice that may
run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now,
whenever you are.

I smile when I think of this and as I was cutting up the watermelon for lunches this week, I thought about those nights when, even utterly exhausted from work, my father would take the time to read me something, even something as small as a poem, kiss me on the head, and send me off to Dreamland. These are for him.

The Ingredients

• Water and salt as necessary for brining (see steps below for details)
• 3-6 lbs of watermelon
• 5 cups sugar
• 2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons whole hypocras spices

The Instructions

1. After you've had the joy of eating the watermelon itself, save the rinds. Using a vegetable peeler or a sharp knife, trim off the hard, outer skin of the melon only as far as necessary to get the skin off. You may find you leave teeny bits of the skin still on the rind. That's ok.
2. Once the rind has been peeled, cut it into small chunks and place them all in a large bowl.
3. Using a measuring cup or an old, quart mason jar, pour water over the chunks one quart at a time until all the chunks are completely covered with water to a depth of at least an inch.
4. For each quart of water you used, add 1/4 cup salt and stir until the majority of the salt is dissolved in the water. Weight down the rind with a lid slightly smaller than the bowl's mouth if too many pieces float to the top of the brining solution. Let this soak for a minimum of 24 hours.
5. After 24 hours minimum soaking, drain the brine and rinse the cubes with fresh water, strain, and set aside.
6. Start a large canning pot of water boiling.
7. In a smaller pan combine the sugar, vinegar, water, and spices, and bring to a boil, cooking until the sugar is dissolved completely.
8. Add the watermelon rind chunks and cook until translucent but still firm, about 15 minutes.
9. Using sterilized canning jars and lids, fill the jars with the chunks and some of the syrup, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.
10. Seal and process in a waterbath canner for 15 minutes.

The Notes
I didn't actually weigh my watermelon. I'm guessing based on size and how they felt. Mine were larger than softballs, about the size of a small child's head, and I had two of them.

Boiling canning water always takes me longer than most other things, so I start it first to avoid waiting at some critical juncture in the canning process. If the water boils before I'm done preparing what's to go in the pickling jars, I just turn down the boil to just below a simmer and add water if necessary to maintain the level.

If you do no have a specific hypocras mixture, use what you would for spiced or mulled wine. I recommend considering any or all of the following spices as hypocras spices were widely varied: cinnamon, black pepper, white pepper, long pepper, cubebs, bay leaves, caraway, cloves, galingale, ginger, mace, musk, rosemary, and saffron. Actually there are a few more but these are the ones most of you are familiar with and that are easily available.

If you have them available, I highly recommend using a canning jar lifter for moving jars in and out of the water as well as a canning funnel for filling the jars.

Finally, I had canning syrup left over and ended up canning the extra until I could figure out what to do with it. It seemed a shame to waste it but after a quick chat with gwynubis, it may well end up as the base for sekanjabin.