Kevin West

Cut to look like cucumber spears, zucchini makes terrific pickles.

Processing your pickles in a hot-water bath rather than a boiling-water bath will give you a firmer texture. It follows that if you want pickles with real snap, don't process them at all. These dill-pickle spears—or sandwich chips, depending on how you slice them—can be processed, if you want, for long-term shelf storage, but first try making a batch to keep in the refrigerator. They will be crisp, and the flavor of raw cucumber comes through. It's the freshest-tasting pickle in this book, and perhaps my favorite. The recipe can be scaled up.

When you're making preserves, fully 50 percent of your success is in the shopping—good fruit makes good jam. Technique matters also, and a sound recipe makes a difference. But the crucial remaining factor is organization. Especially when dealing with a large quantity of perishable fruits or vegetables, you have to think through your strategy and plot out your work. If you can't get everything put up immediately, you have to take into account how the produce will ripen—and soon fade—as it waits for you. My strategy for how to use a bushel of peaches would look something like this:First day/underripe fruit:Pectin levels peak just before ripening, so I'd start with peach jelly. If you don't want to make jelly, give the peaches another day to ripen.First day/just-ripe fruit:Peaches that are fragrant and slightly yielding but still firm enough to handle are ideal for canning in syrup, as either halves or slices in syrup.Second day/fully ripe fruit:As the peaches become tender and fragrant, make jam.Third day/dead-ripe fruit:By now, the peaches will likely have a few brown spots that will need to be cut away, so I'd work up a batch of chutney, which requires long, slow cooking that breaks down the fruit anyway.Fourth day/tired fruit:无论现在所使用的桃子还没有将莱克阀门ely look a little sad, but even really soft, spotty ones can be trimmed for a batch of spiced peach butter. Southern peach chutney evolved from an Indian relish calledchatnithat British colonials brought home during the days when the sun never set on the Empire. According toThe Oxford Companion to Food, chatniis made fresh before a meal by grinding spices and adding them to a paste of tamarind, garlic, and limes or coconut. Pieces of fruit or vegetable may be incorporated, but the chief flavor characteristic is sour. The British turned that into a fruit preserve, explains theOxford Companion: British chutneys are usually spiced, sweet, fruit pickles, having something of the consistency of jam. Highest esteem is accorded to mango chutney… .Chutney later spread across the Atlantic to the West Indies and the American South, where the esteemed mango was replaced by the honorable peach.

June 24 is the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, the traditional day to harvest green walnuts for making nocino, a delicious liqueur invented at a congress of witches, according to Anna Tasca Lanza, the doyenne of Sicilian cooking. Lanza's witches were Italian, but other countries from Croatia to France to the chilly Teutonic regions equally claim greenwalnut liqueur as their own. I learned to make it at the Institute of Domestic Technology, a cooking school in Altadena, California, where I also teach. When you harvest the nuts—working barefoot, according to some folklore—they are smaller than eggs, smooth to the touch, and crisp like apples, because the shells have not yet hardened. The nutmeats, at this stage, are jelly. Like most liqueurs, nocino is easy but requires patience. You slice the nuts and cover them with strong booze, sugar, and spice, and allow the mixture to infuse for forty days, until it is nearly black. The real test of patience begins after you bottle it. Ten-year-old nocino is said to be the best, and certainly you would never drink this summer's batch before cold weather sets in this fall. Mature nocino has a complex flavor of nutmeg, allspice, coffee, and caramel. Drink it neat as a digestif, or use it to flavor desserts. A few tablespoons of nocino lightly whisked into a cup of heavy cream will cause it to seize, as if magically transformed into cooked custard. The thickened cream is called "posset," and can be used as a sauce alongside cakes or other desserts. My nocino recipe is based on those from the Institute of Domestic Technology and Lanza's Sicilian cookbookThe Garden of Endangered Fruit. Its fundamentals are green walnuts, 80-proof grain spirits, and sugar. (My secret ingredient is coffee beans.) You can change the aromatics if you like, but use small quantities, because the spices can take over. Green walnuts are sometimes available at farmers' markets, or can be ordered online at www.localharvest.org.

Make this salad as tart or as creamy as you like with the addition of more vinegar or mayonnaise.

Smear the bread with mayo on both sides and then grill in butter for the ultimate golden-brown crunch.

Infuse lemony, garlicky chicken with even more flavor by basting it with rosemary branches dipped in olive oil.

This puckery, sparkling aperitif is booze-optional.

Use this versatile, brightly flavored vinegar in dressings, for deglazing when making pan sauces, and for theRaspberry Shrub

Pair this bespoke ketchup withGrilled Rosemary Chicken.

These brined green beans get their snappy flavor from fermentation. Use them to make theDilly Bean Potato Salad, serve with charcuterie, or use as a Bloody Mary garnish.

Earl Grey tea gives these easy preserves a subtle floral note.

These old-school sandwich pickles strike the perfect sweet-sour balance.