Momofuku Vinegar Pickles

So, I've been posting about my Momofuku journey for most of August now. What I haven't told you is that all of the posts came from one crazy weekend of Momofuku obsessive cooking. When I said way back at the beginning of the month that I couldn't spare my oven for six to eight hours of pork shoulder cooking, it was because it was in serious demand.

The last recipe from that mammoth weekend of Momofuku was two of the twenty-five pickle recipes in the Noodle Bar chapter. There are salt pickles, vinegar pickles, soy sauce pickles, fermented pickles...

Hee. Pickles is a funny word.

Anyway, most of the pickle recipes are very easy. I chose to pickle my cucumber and daikon using the vinegar pickle method, where the vegetables are brined in a water/rice wine vinegar/ sugar/salt mix.

Chang says that the pickles are at their peak optimum flavour after a week. I discovered I very much liked the cucumber pickles and promptly ate the first cucumber I prepared this way. I had more restraint with the second cucumber, only eating half. I prepared a third cucumber and managed to get this lot in the fridge without any further incidents.

I used Lebanese cucumbers for my cucumber pickles.