If the freezer is full of garden bounty — try pickling!

Pickling is a great way to use up a glut of produce from your garden or greenhouse. Just about any vegetables can be pickled, from onions and peppers to carrots, courgettes, aubergines.

Use glass jars and lids that have been sterilised by washing in warm soapy water and then placed in the oven at 150c for ten minutes — there’s no need to dry the jars or lids.

A basic pickling liquid recipe is a litre of cider or white wine vinegar, a litre of water and 2 tablespoons of salt. Bring this to the boil in a large pan and add your vegetables, sliced to whatever size you prefer but probably no larger than 1cm thick. Small veg can be left whole. Boil the vegetables for 3 minutes.

Lift the veg out with a slotted spoon and place in a bowl with a marinade of 500ml of extra virgin olive oil, five cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced and a fresh red chilli, deseeded and chopped. Stir well and place the vegetables in the clean jars, cover with the marinade and put the lids on tightly. Store the jars somewhere cool and dark, preferably leaving them for about two weeks before use. The pickled vegetables should keep for about three months. Happy pickling!

Spicy Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

6 pickling cucumbers , or 2 regular-sized cucumbers

2 banana shallots

2 teaspoons mustard seeds

½ teaspoon turmeric

2 star anise

75 g caster sugar

150 ml vinegar

Method

  1   Cut the pickling cucumbers in half lengthways, and slice regular ones through the middle, then into fingers. Peel and finely slice the shallots.

  2   Put the cucumbers and shallots in a colander. Sprinkle over 2 teaspoons of sea salt. After 45 minutes, rinse well.

  3   Combine all the other ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

  4   Fit the cucumbers snugly into a sterilised Kilner jar, then pour over the liquid. Seal and leave for at least 24 hours.