Home-made chilli pickle

Chilli pickles bought from grocers can be sour and full of preservatives etc. The following recipe will help you create your own pickles at home. At Take5 we buy some pickles, but do usually make our own for you when we have time. The recipe below is a great favourite I created , which is even loved by my private Asian friends with a ‘classy’ taste!

Make extra jars to proudly share with your friends. Surprisingly this recipe will help your chilli pickle to be not too ‘hot’ but tasty and mild.

Do shopping at local Indian grocers and buy a bottle/tin of blended mustard oil, crushed yellow mustard seeds(or crush them yourself), black mustard seeds, onion seeds, dried mango powder, turmeric, 1 lemon , 1 lime, and a bunch of big mixed red and green chillies, as well as a few rocket(thinner and longer) green chillies. Have some jars ready too.

Method
1) chop the chillies lengthwise into thin strips, without deseeding them. prepare a bowl of these chillies.

2) heat up a small ladle/4 tablespoons of blended mustard oil in a kwok, and add 2 teaspoons of onion seeds, 1 teaspoon of black mustard seeds, 2 teaspoons of crushed yellow mustard seeds, 1/2 teaspoon of dried mango powder, and gently stir till these seeds start popping. Now, reduce the fire to low and wait 1 minute.

3) Next, add the chillies and 2 teaspoons of turmeric as well as salt. Gently stir so that the chilies get coated with the rest of the ingredients in the kwok. Keep the fire reduced so as to not burn the chillies quickly.

4)As you see the chillies beginning to turn colour, quickly squeeze in half a lemon and half a lime. Stir and taste for salt. Squeeze in more lime or lemon juice according to taste. The pickle is nowready and should look shiny, fresh and coated with a yellowish sauce with mustard seeds. Using a tablespoon, quickly spoon the pickle into your jar, cover with a lid and once cooled, refrigerate it. Serve this pickle sparingly especially with Asian food letting people request for more.

Tips: 1)In making this pickle. the fire has to be low else the chillies will quickly turn soft and loose colour. The chillies do not need thorough cooking. They just need to be coated with the other ingredients and take on the taste of the mustard, and shine from the mustard oil. 2) You can variete this recipe by gently frying very thinly cut long pieces of ginger before you add the chillies. 3) Another variation is to add a spoon or half of white sugar, together with the chillies to create a sweet sour pickle.

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