Tomato Thokku (Tomato pickle)

Tomato Thokku

Pickles have had and continue to have an important part in my meal. There are almost no readymade pickles that I like and there are almost no home made pickle I dislike. I am usually not a curd rice person but if there is a nice pickle, I will go for it. Tomato thokku is one such pickle that makes me drool even as I post the recipe. It was often made by my mom and grandmother. It is quite versatile as one can have it with idli, dosa, bread, chapatti and ofcourse rice. It comes quite handy when you are short of time as you could just mix some pickle with rice to have a yummy tomato rice with some raita. You can adjust the oil and chilly powder according to your preference. Here is the recipe...

20 tomatoes, medium size

About ½ cup gingelly oil

2 teaspoons mustard seeds

½ teaspoon powdered roasted fenugreek seeds

2-3 teaspoons chilly powder

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon tamarind paste

Turmeric powder

Asafoetida

Heat some oil and add the mustard seeds. When they are about to crackle, add the asafoetida and fenugreek powder and turmeric powder.

Add ground tomatoes. If you have the time and energy, put the tomatoes in hot water for couple of minutes and peel its skin and then grind. If not, just remove the stalk end and grind. Be careful as there will be a lot of splashing and you may want to stay a step away when pouring the tomatoes

Boil until it just starts to reduce stirring occasionally and add the tamarind paste

Allow it to reduce well and add some oil and salt. Also add the chilly powder

Now stir often and make sure it all comes together and when it begins to leave the pan on the sides, it is done. You need to add some oil every now and then

Cool and store in clean and dry air tight container. 

Tips:

Try to store pickles in glass containers. Clean them well and dry them thoroughly

When stored with a bit of oil on top of them, they last a but longer.

Try not to use metal spoons and stick to plastic or wood.

Lemon Pickle

Lemon Pickle

Pickling is an age old process. The intent was to preserve fruits or vegetables for seasons in which they were not available. My favourite pickle is mango (avakai) and lemon pickle is my husband's favorite. I took this recipe from my grandmom and am glad I will be preserving and passing this on. Whenever you make pickles, please remember it needs an extra dash of salt at the time of preparation for couple of reasons. One is that salt is a preservative and pickling itself is nothing but preserving. The other reason is that when kept for some days, the saltiness comes down, so it needs that initial boost at the start. If you are concerned about people with high blood pressure eating these salty pickles, my suggestion would be to make small batches of the pickle, add less salt. This will be great with parathas and rotis too. I prefer to use unwaxed lemons for pickling and specifically buy them for this.

4 unwaxed lemon, cut into chunks

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds

A small piece of solid asafoetida (use powder if solid not available)

Turmeric powder

1-2 teaspoon chilly powder

Salt

Cooking oil preferably gingelly oil

Cut the lemons into chunks and sprinkle some salt. Cover tightly and keep aside for 1 or two days. This will tenderise the skin

Heat a kadai and roast the fenugreek seeds until its colour starts to darken. Heat little oil and also fry asafoetida until all its sides puff up and start darkening. Cool and grind to powder

Pour more oil in the kadai and add mustard seeds. Once it crackles, add turmeric powder and the salted lemon with any liquid it may have, mix

Cook this for couple of minutes and add the ground powder, required salt. Remember pickles need to be salted a wee bit more as the saltiness reduces over time. Having said that, if lemon pickle will be consumed very quickly in your house, you can reduce amount of sugar as you do not worry about how long it will keep.  Add chilly powder, more oil and stir. 

Cook this for atleast 10 minutes. You will notice the skin is now much softer and more liquid has come out. However, do not cook too long and allow all the moisture evaporate as it will make the pickle dry

Store in an air tight container, preferably in the refrigerator

Pavakkai Thokku (Bittergourd Thokku)

Bittergourd Thokku

Believe it or not, I love bittergourd because it is bitter and presents quite a challenge to make a palatable dish. What makes the vegetable exciting is that the dishes usually need sweet, sour and heat in them so you mask the bitterness to a large degree. Some say very dark green bittergourd are too bitter and best avoided. It is a shame that such a medicinally rich vegetable is not even known in this part of the world. The juice of this vegetable is extremely good to keep blood sugar controlled. I wanted to do something different with this vegetable this time and thought making it like a pickle, i could mix it with rice or eat it with curd rice. I had some spice powder left from making the ennai kathrikai kuzhambu so I have used that in this recipe. Click here to see the ingredients for the spice powder. I quite liked the outcome so here it is for you...

2 bittergourd, seeded, halved and cut
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
Asafoetida
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
Turmeric powder
Salt to taste
1 teaspoon spice powder
½ teaspoon chilly powder
1 tablespoon jaggery
Heat a kadai and add the bittergourd, tamarind paste and enough water to immerse the bittergourd and boil until bittergourd is just done. Drain the liquid and take a ladle and keep poking into the bittergourd so it gets cut into smaller pieces

Heat some oil in the kadai and add mustard seeds. Once it crackles, add turmeric powder, asafoetida and the bittergourd

Add salt, chilly powder, jaggery and mix well.

After all of them come together, add the spice powder and cook for couple of minutes

Serve

Turmeric Pickle

Turmeric Pickle


Who said medicines have to be bitter or have horrible taste? I strongly believe that the first medicine we all should believe in is our food. The way we all seem to have evolved, we would not really ingest stuff that are not tasty so packaging healthy and nutritive food attractively, not just appearance wise but taste wise is very important. This has been my motto ever since I started cooking in my kitchen and I do hope that readers of the blog have been able to see that. One of the most important and beneficial ingredients in Indian cuisine is turmeric. Typically used in the powder form, it is actually a perennial rhizome. Many would have commonly seen it during Pongal festival as it is usually tied by a thread to the special pot used to make the Pongal. I have written in greater detail about turmeric in this article. I noticed a fellow blogger had posted a fresh turmeric pickle recipe and then it occurred to me that I should try something with this wonderful ingredient. Now that I am in a place with better access to Indian ingredients including fresh vegetables, I got my hands on fresh turmeric. I wanted to stick to a rather South Indian version as that would go down better in my household. I had some ideas in mind and in the interest of time and energy, took a few shortcuts and came up with this recipe. What I really like about this recipe is that unlike most pickles, it does not need an awful lot of oil and is primarily preserved in lime juice. I also did not use much salt to keep it safe for people with blood pressure problems. Ensure you store it in a clean dry container. Keeping it out under the sun for a couple of days is said to augment its flavour and prolong the life. My pickle is going down fast so I am not too concerned about its life! Please note that turmeric is used as a dye as well so when you chop it, it is likely to stain anything it touches. Make sure to lay few papers down on the counter before chopping. It will stain the hands as well, some say this could be avoided by applying some oil before chopping but the stain on teh hand will go away in a couple of days. Here is the recipe...

1 cup chopped turmeric rhizome
1 teaspoon fenugreek powder
3-4 tablespoon oil
1 ½ teaspoons chilly powder
Salt to taste
Juice from about 6 limes
½ teaspoon ginger powder
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
asafoetida
Heat some oil and add the mustard seeds. Once it splutters, add the fenugreek powder, chilly powder, asafoetida

Add the turmeric and rest of the oil and required salt and cook in low flame for about 5 minutes. Then add the ginger powder

Cool for a few minutes and add the lime juice

Store in a clean air tight container

Sun Dried Tomato Pickle

Sun Dried Tomato Pickle


Pickle is almost mandatory in every household in Tamilnadu and am guessing in North India as well. I am such a lover of hot food and needless to say really enjoy pickles. I normally dislike curd rice unlike most tamil Brahmins, but if there is a good pickle, I will just gobble it happily. As I have said in my profile, my ancestral origin is from Kumbakonam in southern India and people from there are very meticulous when it comes to cooking. My paternal grandmother was an excellent cook and nothing can ever beat her pickles. She would make avakkai (mango) pickle with channa dal in it. I really wish I could have written down her recipes. She is my benchmark when it comes to pickles!

Coming to tomato pickle, I have my own standard recipe that I follow and will post it soon. I just wanted to do something different. I remember a neighbour of my grandparents made a tomato pickle and I gathered only part of the recipe (I was probably 12-13 years old then). I knew she used tamarind and she had sun dried the tomatoes. If you know about British summer, you may appreciate my difficulty getting even clothes dried in the sun leave alone tomato. Even if I attempt, there is every chance that it will unexpectedly rain and I will bin everything. So decided to keep things simple. Bought a packet of sub dried tomatoes, which I thought were pricey. And here is what I did with it...

½ packet sun dried tomatoes

¼ tablespoon tamarind paste

1 teaspoon fenugreek powder (if you do not like its flavour skip or reduce quantity)

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

½ teaspoon chilly powder (adjust according to your taste)

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

¼-1/2 teaspoon asafoetida

Salt to taste

Cooking oil (preferably groundnut oil)

Tear up some sun dried tomatoes using your kitchen scissors. Try not to make them too small. Add the tamarind paste to water (about a cup) and soak these tomatoes in it for 30-60 minutes.

In a wok or skillet or any heavy bottomed vessel, add a tablespoon of oil. Once it heats, add the mustard seeds. After it splutters, add the fenugreek powder, asafoetida and turmeric powder. Cook for a minute taking care they do not burn.

Add the soaked tomatoes along with half the quantity of water. Simmer. Keep adding the left over tamarind water so you can avoid adding too much oil.

Allow it to reduce well. Add chilly powder. Add salt as well but be careful not to add too much as the sundried tomatoes themselves are coated with salt. If you are making a big batch or will keep the pickle for long, then you may have to put slightly more salt.

Simmer well, the longer it simmers, the better the flavours. Add a teaspoon of oil just before you take it off the flames.

Pickle is ready! Enjoy with rice or any bread.

Kothamalli thokku/Flavoured Coriander Paste

Ever since we came back from India, my husband has been finding the mildest of chillies also hot. The devoted wife that I am then started cutting down on the heat and almost used just two chillies only to be told it is still hot. Cutting down the heat so much is not entirely for me so I was desperate to eat something hot and spicy. Around the same time my brother and his wife were going to visit us for the first time. I tried to make some biscuits and a sweet for my brother as he has a sweet tooth and also wanted to make something for my sister-in-law. I always get annoyed when the in-laws family focuses on what their boy likes and not really bothered to make anything the daughter-in-law may like. I thought it is unfair to discriminate. These were the triggers to make this wonderful recipe. I have already talked enough about the health benefits of coriander like it help fighting salmonella infection, urinary tract infection and lowering bad cholesterol. The freshness of the aromatic coriander just made me even more motivated to try this new recipe. I was a bit impatient and tired so could not be bothered cooking on the stove and used the microwave. You could happily do this on your stovetop too. I was very pleased that my sister-in-law really liked this recipe.
2 bunches coriander
½ teaspoon tamarind paste (adjust based on your taste and kind of tamarind)
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds powder
¼ teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
Asafoetida
Cooking oil (you will have to be a bit generous), preferably groundnut oil or gingelly oil
10 dry red chillies
Salt to taste
Microwave safe dish
Separate the coriander leaves from the stalk as I prefer to use only the leaves for this dish. Soak chillies in hot water for about half hour. If you are using tamarind block, then you can soak it with the chillies. Grind the red chillies, tamarind and coriander together to make a reasonably smooth paste. In a microwave safe dish add 1 teaspoon oil and heat for a minute. Now add the mustard seeds and heat until it splutters. Add fenugreek seeds powder turmeric powder and asafoetida and heat for 30-60s. Add more oil (about 4-5 table spoons) and heat for less than a minute. Add the ground mixture to it and cook for 10 minutes stirring every 3 minutes. Season with salt towards the end. The longer this cooks, the better. With oil, it is always more the merrier. If you desire, you can even add about half teaspoon of jaggery or brown sugar and cook for a while.
This dish tastes great when mixed with rice or eaten with curd rice. It can also be used like a base spread on wraps and chapattis or even in a sandwich.This tastes as good or even better than the equivalent you get in Grandsweets !