Make your own pickles without all the hard work involved, at online store Goosebumps Pickles.

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Pickles are one of the greatest comforts of life. We’ve all grown up amidst bottles and bottles of homemade and store-bought ones; some of us with more enterprising mothers would’ve eagerly awaited summer to watch mangoes being cut lovingly, slathered in masala and oil, and being bottled for days together, before one could eat a piece on the sly. For some of us, curd rice was an excuse to enjoy a giant piece of red-flecked avakkai in its entire briny, spicy glory. And for some others, paranthas would’ve been incomplete without aam ka achar.

Today, most of us neither have the time nor the interest to slave over batches of lemon or mango pickles, let alone experiment with Western-sounding ones such as dill or gherkins. That’s whereGoosebumps Pickles, an online store that lets you customise your pickles, comes in. Started three years ago by Pinank Shah, the Mumbai-based brand makes pickles at home and initially offered nine varieties. Now it offers 16, from experimental ones such as jalapeño and olive to vintage choices including mango-ginger (or curcuma amada), gor keri (mango-jaggery) and good old sour lime pickle. The varieties are a combination of North-meets-South and it’s because Shah is from Gujarat and his mother-in-law, from whom this business took roots, from the south.

Starting a pickle company seems like a throwback to the nineties, especially to Tamil cinema, that helped a lot of fictional women entrepreneurs get back on their feet by making humble pickles in their stuffy kitchens. They’d then go house to house and deal with the struggles of selling it, only to be finally rescued by a clever daughter-in-law or neighbour or a son who realises he must support the family. Goosebumps Pickles’ story is similar in the sense that it did start from the humble kitchen of Shah’s mother-in-law. “She makes around 700 kg every year for family and friends. Before I got married, I was working on mobile apps and websites, and soon afterwards, I realised that there was no website retailing pickles,” Shah says. “Think about it like this. What chocolates are to the Swiss, pickles are to Indians. It gives us goosebumps and that’s how we came up with the name — there was no strategy, no deep discussions,” he says.

The exciting part about buying pickles is making one yourself — and by that, I mean you can choose from a list of seven ingredients (lemon, ginger, carrot, kerda, green chilli, asparagus root and karvanda or conkerberry) over a base of mango masala blended in mustard oil for adding that zing. The website allows for a minimum order of 250 gm and the pickles are packed in five layers to render it leak-proof.

That’s not all they offer: you can choose from spices and blends such as tea masala, molagai podi, methimasala, rasam and sambar masala, all made in-house. So the next time you feel your meal is incomplete, round it off with a pickle you designed without breaking a sweat; Goosebumps Pickles will make it for you.

You can now have your pickle and eat it too.

The Portland Pickles Baseball Team

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There’s a new summer collegiate wood-bat baseball league starting with six teams in Oregon and California.  One team out of Portland, Oregon is the Portland Pickles!

The Portland Pickles released their team colors earlier this week which include green (of course), gray and navy.

Their mascot will be Dillon which they tout as the ‘greatest pickle in the world.’

Texas Tito’s, while supportive of any team willing to call themselves the Pickles and feature a giant pickle as their mascot, has to argue with this statement.

Texas Tito’s individually packaged jumbo dill pickles are of course the greatest pickles in the world.

The Portland Pickles will play at Walker Stadium and their 30-home game season will kickoff on June 10, 2016.

More information about the Portland Pickles can be found at www.portlandpicklesbaseball.com.

 

Portland Pickles mascot, Dillon.

Portland Pickles mascot, Dillon.

Pickles primary logos.

Giardiniera Pickles Recipe

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By Tammy Kimbler   –   Mother Earth News

Giardiniera Pickles

Giardiniera comes from the word giardino, or garden in Italian, and is literally a garden pickle. The vegetable combination is very flexible, but the flavor profile usually includes at least hot and sweet peppers. This pickle is meant to be made from what you have on hand. I love giardiniera chopped up on sandwiches, tossed in pasta salads and eaten along side a nice grilled steak.

Gather up what you have left in the garden, from your neighbors or from your local farmers market, and pickle the best of it before it’s all gone.

Mixed Vegetable Giardiniera Pickle Recipe

Ingredients:

• 3 quarts mixed chopped vegetables like zucchini, yellow squash, kohlrabi, cauliflower, sweet peppers, hot peppers, carrots, celery, onions, yellow beets, radishes, green tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.
• 1/2 cup salt
• 4 cloves garlic quartered
• 4 hot chiles, halved
• 1 bunch fresh oregano
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp celery seeds
• 2 tsp crushed black peppercorns
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 2 1/2 cups white wine vinegar

Instructions:

1. Cut vegetables into chunks, slices or planks, just so that everything is similarly sized.  Leave green cherry tomatoes, small onions/beets/radishes whole.

2. In a large bowl combine all the vegetables and 1/2 cup salt.  Cover with water. Cover the bowl and allow the mixture to sit on the countertop overnight.

3. The next day, drain the vegetables and rinse thoroughly with cold water.

4. Prepare your water bath canner.  Place 4-5 pint jars in the water bath to warm.

5. Bring the vinegar and water to a simmer in a separate pot.  Into the hot jars, divide the garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, celery seed and peppercorns.

6. Pack the vegetables into the jars, then pour over the vinegar solution.

7. Add the lids and process the pints for 10 minutes.

8. To serve, dress the pickles with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, course salt and freshly ground pepper.

Yield 4-5 pints

Tammy Kimbler is the blogger of One tomato, two tomato. A cultivator at heart, Tammy’s passions lie with food, preservation, gardening and connecting to her local community through blogging and urban agriculture. She eats well and love to feed others as often as possible. She currently resides with her family in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Chutneys and pickles with Rosa Mashiter

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By West Country Life

As we are in October, it is clear-out time, especially in the gardens and allotments, and time to do something with those tomatoes which have failed to ripen, as well as use up windfall fruit and perhaps the last of those runner beans which are not really now at their best.

It is, of course, time for making pickles and chutneys again, and, yes, they make excellent birthday and Christmas presents.

A few tips for making good chutneys are: always remember to use a stainless steel pan, check the correct consistency of your chutney by drawing a spoon across the pan base – you should have a clear line showing that there is no free liquid left – always pour chutney into clean, warmed jars while hot and, when cool, cover with a vinegar-proof lid of glass, plastic or coated metal.

Green tomato chutney with ginger:

Ingredients

2kg green tomatoes; 450g onions; 450g cooking apples (or use windfalls); 600ml vinegar; 28g dried root ginger; 225g sultanas; 1tspn salt; 450g granulated sugar; 1tspn cayenne pepper; 2tspns Dijon mustard

Method

Chop the tomatoes. Peel and chop the onion. Peel, core and chop the apples. Put the tomatoes, onion and apples into a heavy based pan with the vinegar, root ginger, sultanas, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper and Dijon mustard and bring to the boil, lower the heat and cook for about an hour, or until the mixture is reduced to a thick consistency. Using a slotted spoon remove and discard the root ginger, and then ladle the chutney into warmed jars. Cool, cover, seal and label.

Autumn chutney

Ingredients

1kg pears; 1kg apples; 450g onions; 450g dates; 1 litre vinegar; 25g pickling spice; 1tspn salt; 2tblspns dried English mustard; 25g ground ginger; 1kg golden syrup

Method

Peel and core the pears and apples and cut into small dice. Peel and chop the onions. Chop the dates.

Put the vinegar into a large preserving pan with the pickling spice tied in a muslin bag, add the salt, mustard, ginger and golden syrup and boil together for just five minutes. Remove the spice bag and add the pears, apples, onions and chopped dates and simmer together until thick and brown. Ladle into sterilized jars, allow to cool then cover and label.

There’s pork in our pickle jar

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By Aatish Nath   –   The Times of India

Home chefs are cashing in on a new demand for pickles that are made with meat Kairi, already tangy, takes on an ability to have you involuntarily squint when eaten pickled.

The unripe mango, floating in coral red oil, along with mustard and fenugreek seeds, is what most people think about when you mention achaar, but a new breed of home chefs is introducing city folk to a wholly different meat-based pickle -inspired by regional recipes and some imagination.

Gitika Saikia, who originally hails from Dibrugarh in upper Assam, has been hosting North Eastern meals at her home in Juhu.Seeing the demand for her pork pickle (the recipe, she confesses, is her mother-in-law’s), she was soon doling out the piquant meat to friends and lunch attendees. She soon decided to extend her business and started selling it, along with other vegetarian variants. Saikia, however, cautions, “It’s a North Eastern pork pickle, so it’s not like other varieties such as the spicy Goan pork pickle. This doesn’t contain any masalas.”

In fact, the ingredient list is relatively short and consists of a little vinegar, mustard oil, bhut jolokia (which she sources from back home), ginger, garlic and onions. Due to the low amount of vinegar used, the pickle can only keep for about 40 days. Using technology to her advantage, this and other (vegetarian) pickles from her, can be ordered on yummade.in, a website that allows home chefs to connect with customers.

Also on Yummade is William Pinto, who makes pickles under the name, The Pickled Chick. As the moniker suggests, he makes only chicken pickles in five different styles. A former chocolate maker, he made the switch to savoury pickles in 2012.Pinto explains, “I started making Kerala-styled pickles from my family’s recipes.”

He now prepares Andhra, Punjabi and Goan versions of pickles, along with a chicken balchao spread, “that isn’t as spicy as his other variants”. The recipes for all his offerings have come from observing flavour profiles from each region and trying to match his pickles to it. With a three-month shelf life, the pickles are a hit with paying guest students and those who want their meat fix without the headache of cooking a meal.

In fact, one of the reasons Pinto started the venture was because he wanted meat in the fridge, “after a hard days’ work”. He shares, “I’m a hardcore non-vegetarian and I need my chicken and pork at the end of the day.” Returning home and finding no meat in the fridge got him started on pickling chicken and his venture has only grown. Says Pinto, “I only started in May of this year with Small Fry Co’s Bombay Local and the response has been great,” smiles Pinto, who will be spending this weekend in Pune, at a farmers MARKET for home chefs.

Zinobia Schroff seems to have an innate knack for spices. A Parsi caterer based in Dadar, her reper toire of pickles extends from the popular prawn to the harder-tosource fish roe (she makes it with eggs from bhing also known as hilsa) and chicken, mutton, pork and bombil (Bombay duck). For those looking for a lip-smacking preserve of a particular type of fish, she pickles most types that can be found in local waters. The monsoon is the best time to source the roe needed to make her garbh nu achar, but it’s been getting harder to find and more expensive these days. Schroff says, “I keep getting standing orders for the bhing roe preserve, but in recent years, I have had a hard time keeping up.” This monsoon season, though, she managed to make more than enough, and has bottles left for the taking. Prices vary from Rs 250 a for quarter kilo of chicken or pork, to Rs 550 for 250 gms of the bhing roe pickle. Schroff, who had spent her childhood watching her grandmother pickle, ensures that her variants are all preservative free.

Artisanal, small batch pickles, may seem to be too off the moment, but these three pickle makers aren’t trying to cash in on any trend. For Saikia, it is a chance to showcase the often overlooked cuisine of India’s North East, while Schroff prefers to prepare most of her pickles in the Parsi style even if she hasn’t learnt the recipes from anyone in her family. The spurt in flea MARKETS and pop up bazaars too has allowed interested chefs to test out recipes and concepts before setting up busi nesses. Insia Lacewalla, who runs Small Fry Co, the company that regularly hosts weekend bazaars under the name Bombay Local, says, “Most home chefs have started pickling in response to customer demand. The knowledgeable consumer is always looking for something new, and these pickle-makers have cashed in on the demand.”