Pikliz (Haitian Pickled Cabbage)

From the years I sailed the Caribbean. Shredded cabbage, carrot and scotch bonnet in vinegar — fiercely hot, sharp and crunchy, and one of the great condiments. The name reads straight off the page: English pickle plus French piquer, ‘to sting.‘

Ingredients

• 4 cups green cabbage, shredded fine
• 1 cup carrot, julienned or coarsely grated
• 1 medium onion, sliced very thin
• 4 shallots, sliced thin (or 1 extra onion)
• 3-6 scotch bonnet peppers, sliced (seeds in for full heat)
• 6 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 tablespoon pickling salt
• 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
• 6 whole cloves
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme

Juice of 2 limes

• 2 1/2 - 3 cups white vinegar (5% acidity), to cover

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper · Salt

1. Step 1 - Cut everything fine, and cut it by hand. Shred the cabbage thin, julienne the carrot, slice the onion and shallots as thin as you can manage. Do not use a food processor — it bruises and waters the cabbage, and pikliz depends entirely on crunch.
2. Step 2 - Handle the scotch bonnets carefully. Wear gloves, or you will regret it for the rest of the day. Three peppers is hot. Six is authentic. Seeds and membrane in for full heat; remove them if you want the flavour without the assault.
3. Step 3 - Toss with salt. Combine all the vegetables with the salt and mix thoroughly by hand. Let it stand 15 minutes — the salt starts drawing water and seasons throughout.
4. Step 4 - Pack tight. Press the mixture firmly into a clean quart jar, tucking in the thyme sprigs, peppercorns and cloves as you go. Pack it tighter than feels reasonable; it settles.
5. Step 5 - Lime, then vinegar. Squeeze the lime juice over, then pour in vinegar until everything is completely submerged. Press down to release trapped air.
6. Step 6 - Wait at least three days. Refrigerate. It is edible at 24 hours, correct at three days, and better at a week as the heat distributes into the vinegar and the cabbage softens just slightly without losing its snap.
7. Keeps 1-2 months refrigerated, and the brine is the best part — use it.

Notes

What it is for, which matters more than the recipe. Pikliz is served with fatty fried food: griot (fried pork), tassot (fried beef), fried plantain. It is not a salad and not a side dish to be eaten alone. The acid and the heat exist to cut the fat.

The brine is not waste. Haitian cooks use the leftover vinegar as a hot sauce in its own right, and it is superb — splash it on anything fried, into a soup, over rice.

Pikliz versus escovitch, which get confused constantly, including by people who make both: pikliz is cabbage-forward and is a condiment in a jar, while Escovitch Sauce (Jamaican Pickled Vegetables) has a wider mix of vegetables and is dressed over fried fish. They share the scotch bonnet, the vinegar and the job.

Scotch bonnets are not optional and habanero is the substitute, if you must — similar heat, slightly different fruitiness. Jalapenos will make a nice pickled cabbage that is not pikliz.

A connection I did not expect. The red beans of New Orleans came into Louisiana in the late 1700s with French-speaking refugees from the revolution in Saint-Domingue — Haiti. The same movement of people that produced pikliz produced the Monday red beans that pickled pork exists to season. I had those filed as separate parts of my own travelling for years without noticing.