Green chilli pickle & mixed vegetable pickle ( achar )

Ingredients

1)Green Chilli Pickle:

• 1 kg green chillies
• 50 gm imli (tamarind)
• 250 gm gur/shakkar
• Salt
• 20g rai (mustard seed)
• 10 g methi seed (fenugreek)
• 30 ml vegetable oil
• 2)Mixed Vegetable Pickle
• 5 kg vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, turnips), washed and cut evenly
• 500 g onion
• 250 g ginger
• 3 whole garlic bulbs
• 300 g salt
• 125 g red chilli powder
• 300 g rai (fine reddish brown mustard seeds)
• 1 litre mustard oil
• 600 g gur (jaggery)
• 600 g tamarind
• 750 ml malt vinegar

You may like

Easter vegetable garden (hummus and littles vegetables)

Preparation

• 1)Green Chilli Pickle:
  Slit chillies (or cut in halves). Make paste of imli and gur/shakkar in a little water. Roast mustard and methi on a dry griddle for a minute. Grind to a powder. Mix with the paste, salt to taste and try to stuff in the chillies if slit, or just mix thoroughly. Heat oil and cook the chillies for about 5 minutes. Cool and bottle.
• 2)Mixed Vegetable Pickle:
  Boil a vast pot of water. Put in the evenly cut vegetables and turn off the heat. After 10 seconds, drain vegetables completely and dry. Coarsely grind the rai. Grind onion, garlic and ginger to a fine paste. Along with salt and chilli powder, mix the lot with the oil. In a large non-reacting pan, mix this oily masala paste with the veggies. Keep for a day in the sun. Meanwhile, grate gur and soak in a little vinegar. Soak the tamarind in the remaining vinegar. Leave both overnight. Next morning, strain the tamarind through a fine mesh sieve and mix clean pulp and gur paste with the vegetables. Transfer to glass jarsand place in the sun. To dry the vegetables, lay out on a clean cloth for a few hours or overnight (no need for fan or sun.) To keep temperature high, bring more than one pot of water to boil and do the vegetables in two batches; else the introduction of kilos of cold vegetables will cool the water. The rai will take a few days to mature in the sun but the pickle, because of the vinegar and tamarind, will be ready to eat in a day. The veggies will be crisp.