Bittergourd/Karate is one of the vegetables that is full of medicinal values. I have tried including it in our diet as much as possible. Few days ago aayi told me about this delicious karate goaD nonche (bittergourd sweet pickle) prepared by my sister in law. Aayi usually prepares the spicy version of karate nonche, so this was new to me. I prepared it here and it was lipsmacking good. This pickle does not stay for too long. Refrigerate it after it is completely cooled down and finish it off in couple of weeks.
Fresh bittergourdRemove the seedsCut into thin stripsApply some salt and keep aside for 15-20minsFry them in little oil for 10minsAdd chilli powder, tamarinc, jaggeryMix very wellMake the spice mix with fried mustard, methi, hingAdd the spice powder and mix. Cool well.
Ingredients: 2 cups bittergourd pieces 2 tbl spns jaggery 2 tea spns chilli powder 1 tea spn thick tamarind extract 2 tea spns oil 1 tea spn mustard seeds 1/2 tea spn methi seeds A small stone of asafoetida(hing) Salt
Method: Remove the seeds from bittergourd and cut into thin pieces. Apply salt and leave it aside for sometime. If you want, squeeze them to remove the water, but this also removes the nutrients, so I use them directly. Heat a little oil and fry the pieces for 10mins on a medium low heat. Add chilli powder, jaggery, tamarind. Mix well. Heat remaining oil, fry mustard seeds, methi seeds and asafoetida. Powder them when they are slightly cooled. Add the powder to bittergourd pieces and mix well. Take off heat, cool down to room temperature. Store in an air tight container in refrigerator.
It was a bit difficult to decide which would be my first post. Shilpa and her husband (who call themselves as ‘board of directors’ of this blog) voted for this recipe. This is a pickle loved by my kids and other relatives. I noted that many of the readers of this blog also wanted to know about this pickle.
When I got married, I didn’t know a lot of cooking. I was just out of college and my grand mother hardly allowed us kids to enter the kitchen. When I got married, I had to take over the kitchen (my mother-in-law had passed away before our marriage). My husband and father-in-law were very supportive. One of my sister-in-laws who lived few kms from our home, used to visit us frequently. I learnt a few recipes from her. This pickle is one of them. Over the years, I experimented with it and we like the version I make now.
Here Koccholu means small pieces. I make this pickle with a special kind of mangoes called ‘vishad/ishad‘. Many people say it should not be done with these mangoes. But I have found that, with these mangoes, the pickle remains good for a very long time. With any other mango, the pieces become soft very soon and the pickle gets spoiled. Ishad mangoes are hard and have lot of pulp in them. They have a very unique taste to them. For this pickle, use unripe mangoes that have a hard seed(gorto). As these mangoes are very delicious and very popular at our place, no one sells the raw mangoes. During the mango season, Ishad mango trees bear hundreds of fruits. Some of the branches can’t bear the weight and they fall down. So I use these for hinDi.
These days I make this pickle mostly for Shilpa and her husband who love all kinds of pickles. When stored in air tight container in refrigerator, this remains good up to a year. I still have some from last year’s batch which I took with me when I visited Shilpa last year.
Important to note here that the mango should not be grated. I use the traditional cutting equipment called as “Addoli“. This helps in keeping the pieces crisp. When grater is used, the pieces become soft. But if you are living outside India and don’t have addoli or Ishad mangoes, use any raw mango (which has hard seed) and any cutting equipment available, but I think the shelf life of pickle would be very less.
– The pickle should be salty when it is made, as time passes, the pieces soak the salt and it also increases shelf life. – Make sure none of the vessels have any moisture in them.
Ingredients: 1 cup mango pieces 1 tbl spn mustard seeds 3/4 tea spn methi seeds A small pea sized asafoetida 1/4 cup chili powder 1-2 tea spns sesame oil 1/4 cup salt
Method: Cut mango into small pieces.
Heat oil and fry asafoetida, mustard seeds, methi seeds. Grind to a powder. Cool temperature.
Add the powder, chili powder, salt to mango pieces and mix well.
Store in air tight container.
Hope this helps all of you who love the ‘HinDi‘ pickle.
Added a video to the post on Aug 2 2020. Originally posted on May 25, 2008
Aayi makes some of the amazing pickles I have ever tasted. I never liked any of the ready made pickles because of this reason. She puts very less oil and her pickles remain good for a very long time (more than 2 years, if I don’t finish them off before that). Her pickles are very popular among friends and family. But somehow I don’t remember tasting her sweet pickle. I always loved the spicy pickles, so it is possible that she stopped making this since I never ate it as a kid. Since my brother is not a big pickle fan, most of her pickles come to me. Now I have my husband’s and SIL’s company, who both are great pickle fans.
Aayi just sent me these pictures. She used the big totapuri mangoes for this. Any unripe mangoes can be used. This pickle needs to be used up in 2-3 weeks.
Mango sweet pickle(GooD nonche)
A sweet a spicy pickle which goes really well with chapatis or rice
I planted some tomatoes in our backyard this year. I was not sure what would be the yield, so in the small vegetable patch, I planted 8 plants. They grew so big and soon filled with tomatoes. I planted mostly cherry tomatoes of different kind, along with 1 bigger variety, since Ishaan loves the tiny juicy cherry tomatoes. I have not bought any cherry tomatoes in last 4-5 months. Last week we had to do some lawn work and I had to cut down the low hanging branches. When I did that, I got almost 3 kgs (around 6lbs) of tomatoes, most of which were still green. I was sure I couldn’t use them all, so I wanted to make green tomato pickle. When I googled, I found this recipe by indosungod. I mostly followed that recipe but I thought ginger would give it some extra flavor. So I used some steps from my aayi’s avale hinDi. The pickle came out so good. I think I will be making this again in future.
Pictorial: Make the spice powder by frying mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, asafoetida and powdering them. Cut the tomatoes. Fry chillies, curry leaves, ginger and then add tomatoes. Add the masalas when the tomatoes have softened. Add the lemon juice and cook.
For some extra aroma, add a seasoning of curry leaves at the end.
Magge or moggem is a special kind of cucumber. It is widely used in cooking at our place. In Bangalore, it is sold as Mangalore Southekayi (cucumber), this is called Dosakaya in Telugu. This is usually cooked before consuming, but there are few recipes where tender magge is eaten before cooking. These sundried cucumbers or magge salli are very popular among Konkanis in our area. Tender magge which are called magge murto are used for this dish. Once the pieces are sundried with all the spices, they are served like pickle. They have a nice crunch to them. We used to make these very frequently when we grew magge in our backyard. These days were buy tender ones from sante (farmer’s market). These stay good for a week or so.
Pictorial: Cut magge and apply salt and sundry. Apply the spices and sundry again.
Sundried Mangalore Cucumber (Magge Salli)
Spices are added to tender magge/Mangalore cucumbers and then sundried to make these crunchy magge salli.
Many of you asked me for a garam masala recipe. Frankly, I have used many different recipes for this popular spice blend. Some I liked, some not so much. After a while, I just started using store bought one. Then I really started liking garam masala that my friend Pallavi uses. I asked her recipe, she said her mom makes it for her. It is from a Marathi book called Annapurna by Mangala Burve. I borrowed the book and got the recipe. I changed it a bit to decrease the amounts of some ingredients and so far I really like this garam masala. It is quite different from any I have tried so far. This has lot more ingredients than any I have tried, but I like the aroma of it. It brightens up any dish with a unique aroma. I leave out the black cardamom, no one at home likes the strong aroma of this spice. I am sure it is a acquired taste, so far we are not able to get used to it.
It has been a long time I posted anything here. Today I thought of posting a Gooseberry Pickle recipe which was introduced to me many years ago, by a neighbor. I normally make avaLe hindi which is loved by everyone that has ever tasted it. Recently we were trying to think of recipes which we have not posted here and I remembered this.
The gooseberries that we get at our place are very small, so I get my batch from either Bangalore or from Mumbai. This is a quick pickle which does not stay well for a long time, so eat it within couple of days. For any pickle, preferably use asafoetida that is available as small stones. The powdered one does not give the same aroma.
Ingredients: 1/4th kg gooseberries (avaLe) 15-20 green chillies (increase or decrease according to taste) 1 tbl spn mustard seeds 1/2 tea spn fenugreek(methi) seeds 1/4 tea spn turmeric A small piece of asafoetida Salt Oil
Method: Cut green chillies into small pieces. Pressure cook them with gooseberries and salt till they are soft. Remove the seeds from gooseberries and cut the soft edible part into small pieces. Let them cool down completely. Heat oil and add mustard seeds. When they start popping, add asafoetida and fenugreek seeds. When they are fried, add turmeric and take off the heat. Using a mortar and pestle, grind them to a powder. Add the powder to gooseberry-chilli mixture and mix well. Transfer the pickle into a airtight jar and refrigerate.
Last December when Shilpa visited us, we were trying to remember if there were any recipes that my mother prepared, which we have not posted on this site. While discussing this with my brother, he suggested this shrimp pickle. My aayi was a vegetarian, but she cooked nonveg for us. But they basically started making nonveg dishes at home after my marriage. I had heard my brother and father mentioning about this shrimp pickle many times. I had never tasted this before. I got the recipe from her and wrote it down in my diary. I have prepared this a couple of times. My brother has very fond memories of this pickle prepared by my aayi.
This pickle is made with small shrimp. They are fried on a very low heat till they become hard and almost crispy. The pickle has basic pickle masala. It remains good for few days if you take care to fry the shrimp properly. Eat it like any other pickle in small quantities, it tastes great with rice.
Ingredients: 1 cup small shrimp 1 tea spn mustard seeds 1/4 tea spn methi seeds A pinch of turmeric powder A big pinch of asafoetida (use the best available) 1 tea spn chilli powder Oil Juice from small lime sized ball of tamarind or 1/2 tea spn thick tamarind extract Salt
Method: Heat oil and fry mustard, methi and asafoetida. Take them out in a mortar and powder them. Keep aside. Heat oil and add shrimp. Let them fry on a low heat. Take care to make sure they don’t get burned and they get cooked through and almost become crispy. Now add chilli powder, turmeric, mustard-methi-asafoetida powder and tamarind. Add salt, a little bit more than you would add to any dish – salt acts as preservative. Cook on a medium heat till all the water from tamarind is well absorbed. Cool to room temperature and store in air tight container.
We came to US last week to stay with our daughter for a while. Since both of them love pickles, I started with their favorite cauliflower pickle. Usually I make no-oil, no-masala version cauliflower pickle, it is very healthy as it does not involve even a drop of oil. This time, I wanted to try my mother and grand mother’s version with the pickle masala (mustard, methi are fried and powdered).
On the first day, I made it with a cup of cauliflower and it got over in one meal. So I made another big batch next day. The pickle masala gives a very nice taste to it. It remains good for couple of weeks when stored in refrigerator. It can be eaten on the same day, but for better taste, let it rest for one day. Finish it off while the cauliflower pieces are still crunchy.
Ingredients: 5 cups cauliflower cut into small pieces 4 tbl spns red chilli powder Salt 1/2 cup lemon/lime juice 2 tea spn oil 4 tea spns mustard seeds 1/2 tea spn fenugreek(methi) seeds 1/2 tea spn asafoetida 1/2 tea spn turmeric powder
Method: Wash the cauliflower pieces and spread them on a paper. When the pieces get dried , mix them with salt and lime juice. Keep them aside for 2-3hrs. Heat oil, add mustard seeds, fenugreek and asafoetida. When mustard pops up, take off the heat, powder them. When the pan is still hot, add red chilli powder and turmeric(do not heat the pan, this step lightly warms up the powders and also soaks any oil used for frying mustard). Stir it few moments. Add the powders to cauliflower pieces. Mix well.
Hope you all had a great vacation. I could not post anything here for last few months, but hopefully I can post something once in a while.
Rasam is very common in South Indian meals. Usually it is very watery and does not have any vegetables like sambar which is thick and has vegetables. Rasams can be made with tomatoes, lemons, peppercorns etc.
The powder can be made in advance and saved or made at the time of preparing rasam. Usually for this rasam, only the water used for cooking toor dal is used (dal can be used for some other dish). Since we like to eat it with rice and I add very little toor dal to it. I make it little spicy. It is very suitable for a cold weather and also when you are suffering with a sore throat or runny nose.
Rasam Powder: 1/2 cup (30gms approx) coriander seeds 1/8 cup (30gms approx) chana dal 3 tbl spn (30gms approx) red chilli powder 1 tbl spn (10gms approx) pepper (for better result, use white pepper)
Method: Dry roast coriander seeds, chana dal, pepper till a nice aroma comes out. Switch off the heat and add chilli powder. Keep mixing taking care not to burn anything. Cool to room temperature and grind to a smooth powder. Store in an air tight container.
Rasam: 2 tbl spn toor dal(optional) 1 cup chopped tomatoes 3 cups(approx) water 1 and 1/2 tea spn rasam powder 1/2 tea spn mustard seeds 4-5 curry leaves A pinch asafoetida 1/2 tea spn tamarind extract 4-5 strands coriander leaves finely chopped Oil Salt
Method: Pressure cook toor dal in water and mash it very well, add water (or just use 3 cups of water that is used to cook dal and leave out dal). Add tomatoes to the dal water and bring it to boil. Add tamarind, salt. Cook till tomatoes are cooked. Add rasam powder. (If required, add extra chilli powder, as we already have chilli powder in rasam powder, I don’t add it again). Add coriander leaves, take off the heat. Heat a little oil in a small pan and add mustard seeds. When they start popping, add curry leaves, asafortida. Pour this seasoning over rasam. Serve hot.
