I began creating pickles in Brooklyn, New York for fun back in 1997. It all started out of nostalgia for making and eating pickled cukes and dilly beans with my parents in Vermont in the 1970s. The Prospect Park Greenmarket was right up the street from where I lived in Brooklyn, and so I used the excellent locally produced vegetables and herbs available there to make versions of the tried and true recipes of my childhood. It was cramped in the kitchen of my one-bedroom apartment, but the feedback was positive from the friends and colleagues with whom I began sharing the results of my labors. I remembered what I had never really forgotten: pickling is fun. There’s something intensely satisfying about putting things in jars, processing them, watching them sit there doing their thing for a couple months, and then popping open the jar and devouring what is inside.

On the heels of these early efforts, I began to experiment, working with other vegetables as base ingredients, modifying existing recipes and making ones of my own. Almost every culture has some connection to pickling, and researching pickling traditions yielded lots of ideas. I began bringing flavors from Poland, Mexico, Japan and other regions into vibrant and fresh combinations. Classic recipes were refined to enhance what was already strong about them; new recipes were designed to create exciting hybrids. And soon the incubating concept known as Rick’s Picks had over a dozen varieties in development.

In November 2001, I went to the Rosendale International Pickle Festival, located in Upstate New York with a car full of jars, proudly labeled with paper printed on my home computer and applied with a glue stick. To my surprise, I won six ribbons, including Best In Show for my Windy City Wasabeans, a green bean in a soy-wasabi brine. The following fall, in November of 2002, I defended my title at Rosendale, again taking home Best In Show for the Wasabean.

Next November, Rick’s Picks took home ribbons at Rosendale again, receiving awards for the Phat Beet and the Kool Gherk as well as the Wasabean. 2003 also saw the first Rick’s Picks pickling demonstration at Broadway Panhandler in SoHo, New York City, not to mention my participation in a street festival in Dallas, Pennsylvania, as well as the various events in the studio building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where I had a work space. At this point, there was no turning back, and it was time for the inevitable: on March 30, 2004, Rick’s Picks became Rick’s Picks LLC. The carefree amateur days were over. But the spirit of the sweaty evenings experimenting over the hot stove at home still animates everything that happens. That’s where the good stuff is. Rick’s Picks world HQ is still here on Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side. Stop by, say hello and have a pickle if you are in the neighborhood. Or visit Union Square Greenmarket in New York. I’m there every Wednesday.

- Rick