Hi, Ray here again.
I don’t know about you, but I eat a fair amount of chutneys and pickles. And the amazing thing is that I’ve never made any. All of the curry recipes that I’ve tested over the last four years and not a single one of them has been for a chutney or a pickle.
I noticed that my jar of lime pickle, carefully hidden away at the back of the fridge, had passed its expiry date by a couple of months. I had been using it since its expiration date and was still alive, but decided it was time to jettison the old pickle.
I looked at the chutney and pickle recipes section of the Curry Focus recipes and saw that there was a very simple lime pickle recipe.
A quick check in the pantry showed that all I needed to buy was the limes. But I wasn’t sure how long the malt vinegar had been around. It was still within its expiry date but I decided to buy some fresh malt vinegar just to make sure.
Is there such a thing as “fresh” malt vinegar? I’m not sure.
I deseeded the limes and chopped them up into small pieces. I figured that the pieces needed to be pretty small so that I wouldn’t get big chunks of pickle when I was eating the finished product.
Then I added the salt, chilli powder, garam masala and sugar before mixing them up, covering the bowl and popping the bowl into the fridge. Easy peasy.
The next morning saw me in familiar territory, heating the oil and cooking the onions.
Then into the saucepan went the limes and all the juices and a good 15 minutes of cooking and stirring.
Finally, in went the vinegar, everything was brought to a gentle simmer and then the hour long simmering, with lots of stirring.
Eventually I set aside the lime pickle and let it cool before I bottled it up in a couple of jars that I had carefully cleaned.
It really was that simple.
The hardest part was leaving the lime pickle alone for three weeks.
At last the pickle was ready to try so I grabbed a frozen beef madras out of the freezer, let it thaw and then heated it up, along with a couple of roti.
Now I was ready for the taste test. I shared up the beef madras and roti amongst the four tasters and served a generous helping of Lime Pickle on each plate.
And the lime pickle was a stunning success. The pickle had a good consistency and wasn’t lumpy at all. There was a good vinegar and lime tart taste. The lime pickle was not as oily as most commercial products and obviously had no artificial flavours or colours. The pickle received a great taste score of 8.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of “Medium to Hot”.
I was so excited at trying out the lime pickle that I forgot to take a photo with the curry and roti, but here’s a pic with a yummy poppadum.
If you like lime pickle at all then you really must try out this recipe and give yourself a great curry accompaniment.
