sweet pickled black cod

alchemy of flavor, discoveries, fish, flowers 1 Minute
I can't say that I've ever been a fan of commercially made sweet pickles. More often than not, they're cloyingly sweet or too heavily spiced to win me over. That all changed when I encountered a product that showed me what a sweet pickle should be.

Low Country Products, located in South Carolina, makes a line of artisanal pickles, preserves and soups. Their website buzzes with all of the right trigger words: handmade, handpacked, small-batch, farm-driven, local, seasonal– but ultimately, the proof is in the pickle. 

While I can't vouch for any of their other products, the Sweet Cucumber Pickles were an epiphany. The list of ingredients reads like Grandma's recipe: cucumbers, cider vinegar, sugar, garlic and pickling spices. Long after the pickles were gone, I kept the jar of brine because it was just too good to discard.

IMG_3958

Miso-glazed black cod was another epiphany. Nobu's iconic dish was the west's introduction to the sustainable sablefish, or black cod, and the ancient method of curing in a sweet and acidic marinade of sugar, sake, mirin, and miso. Using this method with the sweet pickle brine rendered the flesh lush and silky and allowed for deep caramelization without overcooking.
IMG_3968
Being an advocate of flowers-as-food, I'm delighted to see that edible flowers are becoming more readily available at grocery stores, though it concerns me that they are being marketed as garnishes and destined to become nothing more than a gratuitous flourish, replacing the token mint sprig on a desert, instead of relevant components of a dish. 
Perfumers recreate scent profiles by carefully selecting and blending flower essences– can't we do the same with flavor?
My intention with this dish was to integrate the flavors in the sweet pickle brine with a purposeful selection of flowers. Yellow and purple chive blossoms reinforce the garlic, dianthus petals (which taste of cloves) supports the warm spices, and the sour bite of oxalis leaves (the flowers close up at night) substantiates the vinegar. Borage, had it flowered in time, would have been a fitting reference to the cucumber.
Unknown's avatar

Published by playingwithfireandwaterofficial

Published

7 thoughts on “sweet pickled black cod”

  1. Personally, I love gindara no saikyo yaki and sablefish (black cod, gindara) is my second-favorite fish to work with.
    I’m not too sure about the sweet pickle brine, but your description and the color of your fish makes me think about the brine from the cans of Wei Chuan pickles I grew up. Since I know what that tastes like, it could be used to supplement the sake and mirin normally used to thin our the miso and sake kasu.
    I should get around to growing edible flowers since I paid something like $5 for 12 pansy flowers the last time around.
    By the way, how did you grill the fish? Charcoal?

    Like

    Reply

  2. The fish was cooked on a plancha.
    Yes you should. Even apartment dwellers can grow edible flowers. A 6-pack of plants cost about 2$ and can be kept on a sunny windowsill. With pansies, the more you pick, the more you get.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.