Kumquat pickle - Kerala style

On a visit to the Oriental grocery around chinese new year, I happened to pick up a rather large container ( the only size available) of Kumquats. These miniature oranges are so cute to look at & sniff, but can be quite challenging when trying to decide what or how to cook with them.
For one thing, this egg shaped citrus is quite reversed in its flavor profile. The peel is sweet & redolent of citrussy orange flavor, but once you peel it, you can barely make out 4 tiny segments bloated with inedible seeds. To top it all, the teeny bit of pulp is extremely lip puckering sour.
And so, these fruits sat on my kitchen counter for about 3 weeks. I kept weeding out the occasional rotten bad eggs from the rest, until i decided to use some of the peel for last weeks recipe. (yes folks, the pannacotta was garnished with candied kumquat peel, not orange)

Cut to my umpteenth sweep of Mrs. Ammini Ramachandrans book 'Grains, Greens & grated coconuts' ( I just have to read the recipes to take me into a gustational high!). This time, I stopped at the recipe for 'Naranga curry' (p. 178). If Meyer lemons were an acceptable substitute, why not kumquats?
Naranga curry is one of those quick Indian pickles that are whipped up for festive occasions when one does not have the luxury of having time to pickle the citrus fruit. A quick saute in oil softens the fruit and facilitates the absorption of the spice flavors. These do not keep well & have to be used up quickly. ( which is not an issue since they're so delicious!).
Since i really did not want a sweet pickle, I had to peel the rind of, which was labor intensive, but I just juliennned to & added to to a large take out container filled with confectioners sugar. I'll keep you posted on what results!
Except for the kumquats, the ingredients used are the same as Ms. Ramachandran's list, but in different proportions.

For this pickle you need:

1 cup of peeled kumquats, (seeds & all)
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/4 tsp asafetida powder
1 tbsp Red chilli powder
1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
1 tsp mustard seeds
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp Fenugreek seeds, toasted brown & powdered.

Heat the oil in a pan & Saute the peeled kumquats till soft.
Using a fork & paring knife, make a slit in the fruits individually & scrape off the seeds from the softened fruit. Discard the seeds.

Avoid using your hands as much as possible & try not to squish the fruit to a pulp. Season with salt & turmeric powder, toss well & set aside .
In the same oil used for sauteeing the kumquat, add mustard seeds & allow to sputter. Add the red chilli, fenugreek and asafetida powders. Add the kumquat, stir to combine well & remove from heat. Allow to cool before transferring into a dry glass container. Ideally the pickle should 'rest' for a day before serving.

(but this tiny batch of mine never saw the light of the next hour, leave alone the next day!)

(Entering this post in the sweet heat chili challenge hosted by Michele & Lyndsey
http://foodfootballandababy.blogspot.com/2012/01/sweet-heat-chilli-challenge-4-lets-rock.html)

Unusual Ingredients - Unripe Blueberry Achar

T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats, the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as

Sputtering back....

I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30 minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their

ShylajaMarch 3, 2011 at 11:34 PM
Mouth watering pickles... Wish I tasted them with curd rice
PanfusineMarch 4, 2011 at 11:48 AM
heh heh, what do you think i did?... the residual oil was polished off with plain rice like avakkai saadham!
A_and_NMarch 6, 2011 at 5:23 PM
Just wrote a comment on the biscotti post since I intend to try them for a potluck here :) But I wanted to come back for this post. I love thokkus, oorgais like no one else. This looks perfect for thair saadam like 'sweethome' has pointed out!
MichelleJanuary 3, 2012 at 5:49 PM
OMG, those look gorgeous. I can almost taste them right now, and I love the way you described those kumquats :-) My mum makes some yummy lime pickles and now I have to try out these as well. Pickles go down very quickly in our house.

Thanks for entering Sweet Heat. We'd love it if you could add a link back to my announcement to this post, but anytime you want to do that is fine.

Cheers!

Michelle
sanApril 3, 2012 at 11:38 PM
http://passionforlife.posterous.com/pickling .Thank you NIv.It tastes awesome....
sanApril 4, 2012 at 1:08 PM
http://365project.org/sankrishna/365/2012-04-03

Panfusine

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