Nellika achar/ Amala Achar/Indian Gooseberry pickle

Thinking of Nellika/ Gooseberry itself makes me nostalgia. When I was kid, I used to like it a lot. First when you bite it will be bitter but after that when you drink some water it will be sweet taste that lingers for some time. For that the feeling of changing taste, I used to eat them lot. Amma will buy nellika/gooseberries and put them in salted water. In 4 or 5 days, gooseberries absorb the salt and tastes very nice. Some time she makes pickles with them.

Gooseberries are rich in vitamin C and they have immense health benefits from eye care to cure for diabetics and even anti-aging properties read from here and here.

When I was young, I used eat pickles in unique way. When grandma or amma serves pickles to appa or uncles, I will ask her to put in my plate too. I knew it was hot and won?t able to eat them as such. So when I finish my lunch or dinner, I will take my pickles in hand and wash them with water. Hence my biggest problem was solved by this method, heat is gone and only salt and a little bit of heat absorbed in nellika or mango will remain. I love them. One day my uncle finds out what I was doing and asked me to stop eating pickle by this method. However, my grandma told me do whatever I like. So this process continued until I was able to handle heat in my pickle.

After my marriage I found out that my hubby is a real fan of Bedeker mango pickle. However I don?t like it that much because of too much salt and fenugreek and so on. Thus I have started to make pickles, whenever I get green mangoes. Once I tried lemon pickle and failed big time. So I won?t touch that one anymore. For this vishu I made some green mango pickle, my hubby and friends who visited us liked it very much, as they came out tasty. When I went to Indian store, I found a packet of frozen Gooseberries, so happily I picked that immediately thinking of making some pickle or chammanthi with them. I love fresh ones very much, however, if you only get frozen use it also? I got this recipe from this blog. It is in Malayalam. I changed little bit by adding some turmeric powder, roasted fenugreek powder and some hot chili powder and skipped curry leaves, as my curry leaf plant is only started to come back after a big frost, since I don?t want to pluck from my little plant. Here goes the recipe.

Nellika/Gooseberries: 20 no

Chili powder: 2 and ¾ tablespoon of Kashmiri chili powder/Paprika + ¼ tablespoon hot chili powder

Salt: ½ tablespoon + 3 teaspoon

Turmeric: 1/8 teaspoon

Fenugreek seeds: ½ teaspoon

Mustard seeds: 1 teaspoon

Asafetodia: ¼ teaspoon

Red chilies: 3 no (Halved)

Gingerly oil/Sesame oil (Indian variety): 2 ½ tablespoon

Vinegar: 1 tablespoon

Water: 2 cup

Boil 2 cup of water and add gooseberries and cook them for 10 minutes. Switch off the flame and keep aside, don?t throw the water in which gooseberries are cooked. You need them for making pickle. Remove the seeds from the cooked gooseberries, cut into halves. Keep aside.

In a frying pan dry roast ¼ teaspoon of fenugreek seeds till brown it takes about 3 minutes. Once cooled grind them into fine powder and keep aside.

In the same pan add oil, mustard seeds, halved chilies and rest of fenugreek seeds and fry them. When mustard seeds starts spluttering switch off the flame and add turmeric powder, and chili powder( Paparika + hot variety) and fry them until raw smell removed for a 2 minutes to this add cooked goose berries and salt .Mix until everything combined and add 1 tablespoon of vinegar and let it boil it takes about 1 minutes. Then add 1 and ½ cup of gooseberry cooked water and mix and switch off the flame.

Transfer to bottle and keep aside for one or two day at room temperature so that gooseberries absorb salt and chili powder. If you want long shelf life store them in refrigerator.