Ingredients
Method
Stage 1: Chop and brine
- Place into a bowl the green and red peppers, jalapenos, celery, carrots, onion, and cauliflower. Sprinkle over the salt, and fill with enough cold water to cover. Cover and leave for about 8-12 hours.
Stage 2: Marinate / pickle
- The next day, drain salty water, and rinse vegetables. Place back in a bowl and cover with the vinegar. Cover and again leave for another 8-12 hours.
Stage 3: To finish the giardiniera
- Drain the vegetables but reserve the vinegar. Put the vegetables back into the bowl.
- Add in the garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, and black pepper. Combine well.
- Pack into jars - I use a spoon to pack in the vegetables pretty tightly. Pour over olive oil to just about cover the vegetables, then top up with a little bit of the reserved vinegar. (Olive oil is pretty expensive so you can use more vinegar, up to a 50/50 ratio of olive oil/vinegar. I have noticed that when using more vinegar, the resulting giardiniera tends to get cloudy, but it's still tasty!)
- Cover, and refrigerate for a day or two before using (if you can wait this long! I usually can't).
Notes
Feel free to adjust the quantity of vegetables to suit your liking. Once you’ve chopped everything and mixed it in a bowl, you can look at the mix and decide if you want to up the quantity of anything – I almost always add a bit more carrot and cauliflower. The red chilli flakes are optional – if your jalapeños aren’t very spicy, you might want to add them to up the heat factor a bit. As to chopping the vegetables, the size is up to you – sometimes life calls for a finely chopped giardiniera (great for putting on sandwiches, hot dogs, etc) but chunky giardiniera is best for the relish platter.