An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [99]
Pickles in India are a world in themselves. A whole book could be written about them. Pickles preserve, and in a land of warm climate and little refrigeration, almost everything gets pickled in order to prolong its life—hard berries, onions, raw mangoes, green chilies, cauliflower, carrots, turnips, limes, lemons, squash, eggplant, mutton, shrimp, lobsters, quail, partridge, bamboos, and what-have-you. My very dear brother-in-law once spotted a mound of rose petals on their way out to the garbage can. Appalled by the waste, he immediately retrieved and pickled them. A week later the rose-petal pickle jar was opened for tasting. Well! Not wanting my brother-in-law’s morale and pickling initiative to fade away, we all kept saying, “Not bad, not bad at all, very interesting taste.” I decided then that pickled rose petals were one thing I intended to stay away from!
Pickling is generally done in oil, vinegar, water, or lemon juice. Oil pickles can last for years, whereas water pickles have a limited life of 2 to 3 weeks, during which there are waxing, peak, and waning periods. Oil pickles can be hot and sour or hot and sweet (jaggery—or Indian molasses—often providing the sweetness). While ceramic or glass jars are used for oil pickles, the traditional water pickles are made in mutkas, round pots of half-baked clay. As the water pickle matures, it picks up an earthen flavor that is very refreshing. These pickles are sour (a bit like the gherkin and cucumber-barrel pickles) and hot if you want them to be. Before each meal, a large bowl of the pickles, both water and vegetable, is removed from the earthenware pot and put to cool—in a refrigerator if there is one. This bowl is then brought to the table at mealtime. Each place setting has a cup or nonmetallic bowl into which people serve themselves both the vegetable and the water.
Fresh ginger or green chilies can be pickled in lime juice. The juice is boiled first and then added to the ginger or the chilies.
Small boiling onions are often pickled in red vinegar. These are then lifted out of the vinegar and served with dishes like Tandoori Chicken.
There are, of course, many other relishes as well. And here we come to my category “others.” Chopped or sliced onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers are sprinkled with lime juice (or vinegar), salt, pepper, and cayenne, and served in varying forms all over North India. Numerous dishes made with yogurt are also very popular. I feel America has still to discover the versatility of plain yogurt. At the moment, yogurt seems to provide nothing more than a quick lunch for the girl on a diet. Indians use yogurt as East Europeans use sour cream. Apart from cooking with it and using it as a marinade, we use it for hundreds of relishes. Raitas are one of them. Here cooked or raw vegetables are added to well-mixed yogurt, seasonings are sprinkled in, and the dish is cooled before being served.
Various “dumplings” can also be made and put into yogurt. Since they never comprise a main dish, “relish” is a very good word for them.
Most Westerners seem to think that the usual relishes served with Indian food are Major Grey’s chutney and little bowls filled with nuts, grated coconut, and sliced bananas and apples. If you have developed a taste for these items, eat them, by all means. But do experiment with some of these much more interesting local relishes.
Sweet tomato chutney
MAKES 2½ CUPS
I make this chutney with canned tomatoes. You could, if you like, use fresh tomatoes when they are in season and really tasty. To peel them, you will need to drop them in boiling vinegar. When the skin crinkles, lift them out and peel. Then proceed with the recipe. When cooked, this chutney is sweet and sour, thick and garlicky.
1 whole head of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
A piece of fresh ginger, about 2 inches long,