Actual Food No. 3: Lime Pickle (Complete)

July 5, 2011 at 9:30 pm · Filed under 10 Foods

Due to the unforeseen trouble with locating an appropriate waffle iron, the original Food No. 3,  stroopwafel, has been postponed. BOO.

Instead, we’ve moved on to lime pickle: the weirdest and most delicious Indian condiment ever. So wrong it’s right.

We had a few false starts—the first recipe was a dud, and I had to redo the first step of the new recipe once or twice after getting distracted during the multi-day process.

Lime Pickle (blatantly stolen from The Chilli King):

2 litres water
1 tsp turmeric
10 limes
10 tsp salt

5 chili peppers
5 garlic cloves

1/2 cup + 1 Tbs vegetable oil
2 tsp mustard seeds
5 Tbs chili powder

1. Bring water to boil, add (whole) limes and turmeric. Continue cooking for 3–5 minutes, remove from heat, allow to cool.

2. Cut limes into bite-size pieces. Put in a large lidded jar with the salt (shake around to get everything all nice and coated) and leave at room temperature for 24 hours.

3. When the 24 hours are up, slice up the chilies and garlic.

4. Heat 1 Tbs of oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the mustard seeds and cook until they start popping. Add the lime mixture, chilies, garlic, and chili powder and stir well. Increase the heat a bit and cook off some of the moisture for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

5. Put the mixture into a jar and add the remaining 1/2 cup of oil. Seal the lid securely (important!), and shake or stir it all up. Keep refrigerated. Eat with stuff.

Notes:

a. The original recipe calls for green chilies, but you can use what you want. Either way, I would recommend handling the peppers as little as possible and/or wearing gloves when slicing them up. Particularly if you are a contact lens wearer. For reals.

b. The first time I used this recipe, I failed to cut the limes small enough, so when we actually wanted to eat it, I had to painstakingly cut all of the limes up when they were already covered with pickle. Annoying. Just cut them correctly the first time (I cut each lime into 8 wedges, then cut each wedge into 10 wee pieces). The second time, I forgot to add the turmeric to the boiling water, so I mixed it with the salt before adding it to the cooked limes—worked just fine.

c. You could probably do something like officially sealing the jar in some fancy way and keeping it in your pantry forever, but I don’t know how to do that so that can be your own  special problem.

d. I also don’t know how long it lasts in the refrigerator because we eat it too fast. It does seem to taste even more awesome the longer it’s been around, but at some point the bell curve must start going the other way.

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