Pickled bur gherkins

Posted on February 5, 2013 Updated on February 3, 2013

There is a great love in gherkins in the household, for adding to burgers and the like. So when I saw that Digger’s Club had seeds for “West Indian Gherkins”, I jumped at the chance.

The plants grew very vigorously, taking over a whole garden bed. But the fruit was odd to the say the least. Some head-scratching and Googling revealed that they weren’t the typical French gherkins, but something called a bur gherkin (also known as West Indian Gherkin or West Indian Gourd).

Native to Africa, these sure are strange looking things, and spiky to boot! Even odder, if you leave them too long on the vine, they suddenly grow out to become something that looks like a WWI grenade:

Apparently they taste and pickle just like a normal gherkin. So with 55 picked in a single session, we’ve prepared three jars of “Kosher Pickles”. We’re going to let them steep for a month or so, and then we’ll report back on the taste! 😉

PS. the keen-eyed reader will have spotted our new jar labels, with our brand-new Lewisham House logo. More on this in a future post, and we’ll get the logo added to the website when we have a chance.