Red Weapons
I lifted these spicy pickled tomatoes from Ben and Karen Barker’s book Not Afraid of Flavor: Recipes from Magnolia Grill more than a decade ago. I’ve tweaked them over the years both to suit the specific needs of my kitchen and because I hate being a copycat, but the recipe you see here, the one I can hardly cook without, is more or less theirs.
Make this recipe and you’ll find yourself with not one, but four distinct ingredients whose versatility will force you to find a permanent space in your fridge to house them. Those four are the pickled tomatoes themselves, the jalapeños, the pickling liquid, and the oil that floats to the top.
Ingredients
2 pounds plum tomatoes, cut into quarters lengthwise
1 bunch scallions, sliced thin
5 jalapeños, sliced into thin rings
3 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
3 tablespoons minced garlic
1½ tablespoons yellow or brown mustard seeds
1½ tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt
1½ teaspoons cayenne
1½ teaspoons turmeric
½ cup unseasoned rice wine vinegar
¾ cup white wine vinegar
¾ cup packed light brown sugar
1½ cups extra-virgin olive oil
Directions
1 Put your tomatoes in a large, wide, heatproof bowl that is plenty large enough to hold all the ingredients. I like to assemble and start to “pickle” my weapons there on the counter, letting their flavors marry as they cool down. Then, once they’re mixed together and have reached room temperature, I transfer them to smaller containers suitable for the fridge. (This recipe is sized to just barely fit into two quart-size mason jars, but you may have a little extra. While you can try to pull it all together directly in the jars, that might just be a big mess waiting to happen.)
2 In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, bring all the ingredients except for the tomatoes and the olive oil to a boil over medium heat. Let it boil for 1 minute. Then add the olive oil and bring back to a boil. Immediately pour over the tomatoes in the big bowl, pressing them down to make sure they are submerged.
3 Let the tomatoes and the liquid cool to room temperature without the aid of an ice bath or anything to speed the process along. If you’ve got room in your fridge, the big bowl can go in there. But if the weapons sit out at room temperature overnight, that’s totally fine. The more slowly they cool down, the more quickly they will pickle. Once they’ve cooled, transfer the weapons to jars and refrigerate for a minimum of 3 days or up to 3 months.