Showing posts with label Pickle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pickle. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Shob Phaler Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney

Phaler Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney
Shob Phaler Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney
I have been away from the blog for a long while and believe me I missed it so much. I wanted to sit down and type something out every day and I had this kind of lurch in the pit of my stomach because I was procrastinating.And then again there was so much going on that it seemed sheer crazy to sit at the computer while life passed me by.

It has been a "happening August" here in the BongMom household with the girls' paternal grandparents visiting from India and then their aunt(pishi) and cousin joining in for a couple of weeks. The best part was that darling aunt had scheduled her holiday to coincide with LS's birthday which meant that birthday fun just doubled and tripled.

LittleSis turned 6 this year and I had not really planned for a birthday party beyond a small family affair. For one, she wanted to invite her school friends and I am a lazy Mom who thought it was too much work to track down and invite school classmates during summer vacation. I mean it was doable but too much work.So a small homely birthday was the call of this year.

Now over the summer both the girls have acquired young friends in the neighborhood. And that has turned summer afternoons into those similar to my childhood in India. Where there are kids playing on the driveway and sidewalk, spilling from one home to the other, late until dusk sets in and the street lights flicker to a warm orange glow. In this scenario it was only natural that the neighborhood friends were invited to a "birthday party" by LS, a birthday party which I, the ignorant Mother, had imagined to be a small family affair.



Eventually the birthday which was on a weekday turned into a fat, colorful party on the day itself. Those who could come, came. In throes of panic I got a bounce house which the kids enjoyed a lot. BigSis took over as the games organizer and made the group of kids, who were in a varying age range, play games. Her games were quite interesting and included a game called sardines(take on the age old hide n seek), treasure hunt and balloon popping.Food was outsourced and there was shingara, vegetable chop, chana chaat, pasta and Chettinad biriyani. Kids cried, laughed, fought and enough chaos happened. And like every year, I sweared swore to not throw any more birthday party until LS turns 12.


A quick recuperation from the birthday was followed with visits to the beach and park with cousin who is the same age as LS and therefore great pals. During the weekday I managed to sneak out with sis-in-law for sushi, a movie (The Hundred Foot Journey), dinner at a Portuguese place and of course Thai. And then a two day trip to a kids' amusement park was thrown into the medley.

I am very glad that BS and LS get time to spend with both sides of the family almost every year.  These childhood days are precious and the memories they make with family will go a long way.

School starts tomorrow and summer is over. A year worth of new stuff is waiting for both the girls. I should be excited but honestly, I am not.



To start off the blog after this long break, I will share a chutney, something we call a pickle in Bengali, a achaar. It is not really a pickle, but a Bengali ascribes a chaatni as something that cannot be preserved and needs to be served to finish off a meal, while pickle or achaar is something that has a long life. This particular chutney or achaar has vinegar which means it stays well for a month or two. It is made up of a mix of different kinds of fruits, sweet and sour and is a delicious accompaniment to crackers, paratha or roti.

This recipe was something my mother-in-law learned from mys sis-in-law's neighbor!!! It is sweet, spicy, sour and has a definite kick. If I think of it, it is like a family.

Shob Pholer Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney

What you need for this Fresh Fruit Chutney is lots of different kind of fruits and vegetables to begin with. Fruits with a balance of sweet and tart.

I had 1 green mango, 2 plum, 1 apricot, 1 apple, 1 carrot, and about  6 sweet peppers. Chop all of these fruits in small pieces.

Now slice about 6-7 pods of garlic in thin slices. If you want it hot slit 4-5 green chillies.

Heat about 5 Mustard Oil in a wide Kadhai or saucepan, which will give you enough surface to cook.

Temper the oil with 3/4th tbsp of PaanchPhoron and 3-4 dried red chilli.

When the spices sizzle and sputter, add the garlic slices. Saute for a few seconds, do not let the garlic brown.Now add the fruits and green chilli. Stir the fruits around and let them soften a bit. With the kind of fruits I mentioned here, it did not take long for them to soften.

Now add about 1/2-3/4th  Cup Vinegar and 1/3rd cup of sugar. Add sugar according to your taste and the sweetness of the fruits. If you think that the fruits are sweet enough add little sugar. If they are tart, add more. Add salt to taste.

Now the fruits will release water. Let them simmer and thicken. Taste and adjust for the thickness of the chutney. Take a spoonful out and put on a plate to check that the consistency is thick and not runny. In this case, it was done in about 20 minutes or so.

Once the chutney cools, put in a jar and refrigerate. It stays well for a month or two.

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Monday, January 21, 2013

Manisha's Lemon Pickle -- No oil and so good

Last week at Wegman's I chanced upon a bag of Meyer lemons. Now earlier I had no clue about these lemons and so they never caught my eye or fancy. However every other person I know in the blog world has posted something or the other about Meyer lemons in the recent past. So when I saw them at Wegman's I had to buy them even though they were going more expensive than my 5 for $1.00 lemons at Patel Brothers. But you know I told myself "these were no ordinary lemons and it is not every day that I get to see them", so I bought a bag of lemons.

Having no specific plan about them I used them as any other lemon. Which means I squeezed them on my black tea with honey, on BS's dal rice, on the Sunday mutton curry and even on the cucumber salad. They were full of juice, plump and overflowing. The skin was thin and smooth and the juice sweeter.


And then the weekend being very warm and sunny it struck me that I could use them in a bottle of Manisha's famous lemon pickle. Very excited at the prospect I shelved the plan for Monday. It was supposed to be sunny said my phone. Monday morning, being a holiday, I dunked 5 of the Meyer lemons and 2 of the regular lemons in water with the thought of making "an achaar". Since we love green chilli in our pickles I decided to add those too. LS was home with me and she stood beside me on a step stool helping me throughout.



Once the lemons were soaked, dried and cut in the manner Manisha had told us to, the clouds started gathering in the sky. The sun played a peek-a-boo and finally decided to call it day. It was only 11 in the morning. I panicked. How to sun my pickle ? I thought. The weather now showed "Snow" even on Wednesday. Being a novice pickle-er I did not want to take a risk.So, I thought I will go the stove-top way of pickle making which again Manisha had suggested in her post. "I will then sun the cooked pickle with whatever sun I get in the next few days", I told myself. Now she had warned that cooking on the stove top will not bring the same flavor that slow curing in 60 days of sun would. This would be like going to the tanning salon instead of the beaches of Hawaii.

Ah! whatever I told myself. I have Meyer lemons. I need a pickle. The sun I have no control on so I will take this route.

All of you do follow Manisha's Lemon pickle pictorial for the original taste. I have adjusted my measures because I saw the size of my lemon were smaller than hers and I used only 5 to her 6 large ones. I also increased the juice and reduced the salt since I was doing it on the stove and decide I did not need that much salt for curing.

After two hours of cooking on very low heat the chilli-lemon pickle tasted truly amazing. Did I tell you it does not have a drop of oil either ?





Here is how I did It

Wash 5 lemons and about 12 green chillies well and then dry them. They should be really, really dry.

Next cut the lemons the way Manisha has said. Slice of the edges to begin with. Since mine were smaller in size I first cut each lemon in half, then each half in two so that we have four quarters from a lemon. Each quarter wass then further divided in 3 or 4.



For the green chillies, I removed the stem and chopped in half.

Put the lemon pieces and green chillies in a glass jar. In my case I put them in a saucepan.

To it add the following
1/4th cup of sugar
1/8th cup of salt (Manisha suggests 1/2cup salt for 6 lemons. I had 5 but I could see mine were smaller in size and I was also doing it on the stove top so went with less to start)
2 heaped tbsp red chili powder(again Manisha uses 1/4th but I had green chilies so I put less)
1 tbsp Turmeric powder




Next make a spice powder by roasting the following
1 tsp Methi seeds
1 tsp Mustard seeds
1/4th tsp Hing
and then grinding to a powder.




Add this spice powder to the cut lemons.

Now juice two of the lemons and add this juice to cut lemons and green chilies.

In the original recipe you would have added all of this to the jar of lemons and then left it to sun. In my case I put the saucepan on low heat on the stove top. The lemons were cooked at very low heat for almost two hours. They released enough water and I cooked till the texture was something like the picture below. I then cooled and put it in a glass jar which I have left on the window ledge. At this point this lemon-chili pickle is edible and it really tasted awesome. Since I have not had the sunned version I cannot compare but it must surely be better.