I make these pickled grapes to serve alongside the cheese course when I’m showing off entertaining; they’re a halfway house between a pickle and fruit and they look fab. A dollop of pickle isn’t always appropriate after dinner, and likewise a hunk of apple is better off on a ploughman’s.
These are lightly pickled in a sweet vinegar syrup, which gives them a lovely dark, sticky sheen; they would also work well on a salad with bacon for example or with a rich paté to offset the salt and fat.
I’ve tried various combinations of grape variety and colour, wine, vinegar and sugar, and this is my preferred configuration. Green grapes tend to discolour in the vinegar after a while, which is why I go with red. You also need a seedless grape.
The grapes will be ready after only a few days and can go on for quite sometime before they start to lose their looks and shrivel – although they’ll still be perfectly edible, they won’t have quite the same impact.
They’d make an ideal gift; packed into a little preserving jar to go alongside a hunk of Stilton. More to the point they’re deceptively easy and ever so quick.
Ingredients
(makes 2 average sized jam jars)
1 x supermarket size ‘punnet’ red, seedless grapes
250ml red wine vinegar
250ml red wine
450g caster sugar
Sea salt
Wash the grapes thoroughly and snip small bunches from the main stem to make micro bunches of 5 or 6 grapes each and leave them to air dry.
Bring the wine and vinegar up to a simmer in a pan and add the sugar, stir to dissolve then add a large pinch of salt. Bring back up to a simmer and give it 5 minutes to reduce a little.
Taste it for balance. If it’s a little on the vinegary side, add a pinch more salt first and taste again before adding more sugar.
Leave the syrup to cool to tepid/room temperature before packing the grapes into a jar and pouring it over.
Leave them for a minimum of 3 days, or up to a month in the fridge.