Pickles & home made Chilli Pickle

You must have seen this rather bizarre advertisement that appears in our morning papers. This is for a new brand of pickle and to hook `health conscious’ wannabes, the manufacturer says the pickle is made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Not only that, the pickle is touted as being cholesterol free. Now that got my goat. Cholesterol free!! Really. Talk about up-selling and gullible customers.

Cholesterol is found only in animal products. Thus, meat, fish, eggs, milk and milk products all have varying degrees of Cholesterol. No oil made from peanut, sunflower, rapeseed, mustard, sesame, palm or coconut has cholesterol. Unless you are making a non vegetarian pickle, which by itself is rare, you don’t have cholesterol in pickles. But here is a crafty manufacturer riding on gullible, innocent and uneducated customers whose instincts are triggered by buzz words and not their God - given brains.

Have you ever realised what pickling actually does? It is a process by which inhospitable conditions are created to prevent microbes from spoiling food. Just one of the ways to achieve this is by adding high proportion of salt or oil or both. Fermentation is another method.

While on the subject of pickles, you must have read about the kitchen garden we have. Last week, we had a lot of chilli that was ripe. After picking most of it, we had 200 grams of chilli. This was too much to use in daily cooking. So we decided to make a chilli pickle. I got a recipe from one of my favourite Aunts who, being from the old school, actually makes pickle at home. It was an extremely simple recipe. I was touched by the measurement. People don’t have weighing scales at home. Therefore things are measured by volume. The only ingredient measured by weight is the pickle, because the vegetable vendor has a scale! The other ingredients are measured by a `Wati’ or `Katori’ which is a small bowl. 1 `Wati’ should contain about 200 grams.

We adjusted the recipe to the 200 grams of chilli we had. We have a jar of chilli pickle maturing. I hope it turns out well. This one has no cholesterol and it’s organic, no chemical fertiliser was used in growing the chilli.    

Some of the Chilli

Clockwise from top left - Haldi, Hing, Salt, Fenugreek, Mustard Daal and Oil

The final pickle

Here is the Recipe

500 grams fresh green chilli

½ Wati or 100 grams of Mustard `Daal’. This is available at most Indian style grocers

2 Teaspoons Methi or Fenugreek seeds

1 Wati or 200 grams salt [I suggest you add about 200 grams at first and if needed add more later]

4 Teaspoons Hing or Asefotida powder

3 Teaspoons Haldi or Turmeric powder

1 Wati or 200 grams oil

Method

Wash and thoroughly dry the chilli. Remove the stalks and chop into 1 cm lengths. Place in large heatproof mixing bowl. Not plastic.

Add the Mustard Daal, Salt and Haldi. Mix.

Heat the oil in a small frying pan, add the Hing to the hot oil, add the Methi and give it a bit of a stir. Don’t let the Methi burn. Pour the oil into the mixing bowl and mix the chilli mixture well.

Once cool fill it in a clean jar and keep away in a cupboard for about 6 days to mature.

After 6 days give it a taste and you could adjust the salt and if you like add some lime juice. Once matured keep in the fridge.

More on salt.

You may have read a previous piece on salt. Well, this is another story about salt.

When I was in school, 1970 – 1980 life was simple, paranoia was minimum. I clearly remember that `short break’ which was between 11.00 am and 11.20 am was spent buying things to eat from the hawkers who set up outside the school gate. If we had more money we loved to buy imported chewing gums whose wrappers had a `transfer’ on the inside. You wet your hand and put the wrapper on it and, lo and behold, you had a tattoo. If we had less money we bought either something called `Bor’ [often spelt `Ber’ which is an widely popular berry also with the botanical name Ziziphus] or boiled green channa spiced up with a onion, coriander, salt chilli powder mixture and a dash of lime or, depending on the season a `Peru’ [Guava] with lashings of the salt chilli powder mixture or `Kairi’ [raw Mango] also with lashings of salt chilli powder mixture.

`Long break’ was devoted to playing in what was called the back garden, a large municipal ground which had been cleverly cordoned off so that only Campion [my school] Fort Convent and St Anne’s students could use it. Lunch had already been eaten, surreptitiously, during class [the illegality with the tension of being caught was such a thrill].

Today, I believe, all this has changed, drastically. Today children are taken to school by their parents. In my day if a parent came to school it was a matter of extreme embarrassment. It meant you had done something wrong in class and your parent was called for a bollocking by the Principal. This of course meant a subsequent bollocking at home for you. Today children are virtually locked into school. Getting inside a school is like entering Fort Knox. Everybody is paranoid about kidnapping, sexual molestation and what have you. What are the chances of a child in the 7^th or 8^th standard going for a walk during the lunch break today? Zero I would imagine.

Anyway, how many of you remember eating some tangy, sour fruit with salt chilli powder mixture? What about the simple pleasure of eating a `Bhutta’ [Corn] with salt chilli powder mixture smeared on it with a cut lime during the monsoon. Now with the hybrids `Bhutta’ is available year round. Remember the salt chilli powder mixture? Remember making it at home? Well I do and I am sure many of you all do too.

This afternoon while I was at the neighbourhood grocer `Modern Stores’ I saw two plastic bottles on the counter which caught my eye. I casually picked them up and found to my amazement they were flavoured salt with the rather silly brand name `Tata Salt Flavoritz’. A combination of flavour and flavour, how juevenile. I was most intrigued. I looked at them a little more carefully. This is a new product which is a brand extension of Tata Salt. Salt with Paprika [Chilli powder to you and me]. This cost a staggering Rs. 45 for 60 grams which translates to Rs. 750 per kilo. This is for salt and red chilli powder! If you bought a half kilo of salt which would cost about Rs 8 and a half kilo of chilli powder which would cost about Rs 150, the combined product would cost you just about Rs. 158. All you have to do is mix the salt and chilli powder, both perfectly normal ingredients which every one of us has at home. No rocket science.

Have we become so utterly lazy that we cannot mix two powders? Are yummy mummys now just so daft and brain damaged that they cannot mix these two things? Have we lost all sense of proportion that we need to pay Rs 750 per kilo for a powder that costs just Rs 158 if bought separately.

What is going on? I don’t blame the manufacturer. Obviously, some sort of market research and survey must have led Tata Chemicals to believe that there is a market for a product like this. In other words Tata Chemicals research clearly shows that lazy, daft, and thoroughly incompetent moms exist who cannot mix salt and chilli powder and, that there exists a market where this can be pre-packaged and sold at a huge profit. Is the company wrong? I certainly don’t think so. Have we lost all sense of reason. I think yes. Shame on us.   

If you are really interested and want to rush out and buy them, they are available in three variants. Have a look at http://www.tatasalt.com/products/flavoritz.html

Sorry

First, an apology. Sorry! 

I have neglected the blog for the past two weeks. I am sure you must have been hugely entertained by the goings on in our Bharat.

Immediately on my return things went pear shaped in India for our Nanny, the Government, both local and national. First off our local Nanny raided a `Rave’ that never was. How utterly scandalous. Our newspapers were beside themselves with excitement. You all know what happened ultimately, people were charged with drinking without a permit! Then it was the shame at the IPL. Shah Rukh Khan had the temerity to get drunk and abuse a poor watchman at the Wankhede Stadium. Immediately wall to wall TV coverage, insanity and shouting. 


Then our Nanny decided to raise petrol prices, a move devoid of rational thinking. Equally irrationally, the opposition, both within and outside the Government wanted a roll back. More wall to wall TV coverage, more insanity and shouting. Within a week a roll back is announced a grand Rs 2 per litre. I save Rs 100 every time I top my tank, enough for one beer at home. 


While the Nanny is in the throes of this excitement, Anna Hazardous and gang step up with over the top allegations saying that Manmohan Singh is, gasp, corrupt!!!! Now that is really the limit, you will be jailed for even typing Manmohan Singh, without the words `whose honesty and integrity is beyond question’ following. Frankly, I believe he is honest, but that is about it, totally and absolutely ineffectual, but honest. Still more wall to wall TV coverage, still more insanity and shouting.

All this of course is totally meaningless. The real issues, of which there are many, are to be glossed over. There is however one bit of silver lining. I am happy to see Abhsheik `BJ’ Singhvi back on TV. Apparently, it’s now been decided that getting a `BJ’ is a private matter so he is off the hook. Looking for inspiration in the middle of all this `tamasha’ was difficult.

Anyway, I am now refreshed and normal service should be resumed.