Gayani Jayathilake

Last year, during the time of the Sinhala New Year, I found myself downright in a pickle kind of a situation. So, I made pickle.

Jokes apart, I literally made pickle. This is what happened. The Sri Lankan New Year / the Sinhala Tamil New Year was fast approaching and the usual boasting and gloat of my family and cousins about what they were doing and making for the New Year, put me in this awkward position, where I was wondering why I’m not making anything or doing anything. So, I decided that I need to pick myself up and make something nice so I could brag about it too. I also needed to compete with my husband’s kiribath (milk rice) that was a staple for the New Year spread. So, just like that I decided I shall add homemade pickle to the menu.

As usual I called up my Mother to get help with the recipe. This Sri Lankan delicacy was just easy peasy to make and add spark and relish to our New Year spread that year. We dug into our plate of milk rice with much gusto that year.

The ingredients below are according to the recipe I made which was per my taste and how big I wanted my pickle to be. You can of course reduce or increase as per your taste.

Ingredients

About 40 shallots

About 30 green chillies

1 large carrot julienned (Optional)

1 raw medium sized green papaya julienned (Optional)

1 tbspn Mustard seeds

¾ tspn salt

1 cup White Wine Vinegar

Directions

– First I cleaned and washed the onion and green chillie and spread it out to completely dry. Also, I made a small slit on one side of each green chillie.

– Next I cleaned and julienned the carrot and spread it out to completely dry off the water as well.

– I removed the skin, halved and deseeded the papaya. Then julienned it and washed and spread it out to dry as well.

– Then I crushed and grinded the mustard seeds with salt in a mortar sprinkling a little White Wine Vinegar to get a paste. I grind it until it was a smooth but lumpy with scraggly bits of mustard seed, paste.

– Next, I poured the White Wine Vinegar into a cooking pot and brought it to a boil. Then I add the carrot in the boiling vinegar, left for about twenty seconds and spooned it out quickly. I did the same with the papaya, green chillie and shallot. Just dunked them in the boiling vinegar and took them out.

– To this boiling vinegar, I add in the mustard paste and cooked it for about one minute.

– Then I moved pot away from heat and add in the carrot, papaya, shallot and green chillie with the mustard and vinegar concoction and mixed it well.

– Lastly I filled up well sterilized glass jars with the pickle and enjoyed it and bickered about it with my family for the next five or six months.

Tips

– Make sure the storing jars are well purified. I ran my jars through a water bath sterilize before using them.

– The pickle can be stored in a clay pot.

– A tip I learnt later is, after blanching the vegetables in the boiling vinegar, not to use the same vinegar, but use a new serving of vinegar for the mustard paste. Reason being, if by any chance there was water inside the vegetables, it could go bad sooner and cannot be stored for a longer period.

– Can substitute the carrot and the papaya with green bean, radish or can simply add them all in together.