Lemon pickle

PIC COURTESY: google image


Since the beginning of spring I have been thinking of making some home made pickles, especially lemon pickles although there are a ton of ready made pickles out there.

But home made pickles have a taste of their own, so this time when I was at the Asian super market spotted some yellow lemons could not resist so picked up a few.

Lemon is widely grown all over the world. Lemon grows in abundance in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mexico and West Indies.The Ayurveda has regarded lemon as a valuable fruit and admired its properties. Lemon is sour, warm, promoter of gastric fire, light, good for vision, pungent and astringent. It checks the excessive flow of bile and cleanses the mouth. It dislodges phlegm (cough) and expels wind from the digestive tract. It helps in digestion and removes constipation. It prevents vomiting, throat trouble, acidity and rheumatism. It destroys intestinal worms.


The benefits of lemon are countless, and also they can been made into scrumptious pickle, as my parents are here this summer my mom decided to go ahead with the pickle recipe.





so here are the ingredients:

yellow lemon : 8-10

ginger chopped : 2 t sbp

garlic chopped : 2 tsbp

salt : to taste

chilly pwd : 1 tsbp

paprika pwd : 2 tsbp

tumeric pwd : 1/2 tsp

asafoetida pwd : 1 tsp

meethi pwd : 1 tsp

olive oil : 2 tsb

clean and dry the lemons set aside till properly dried, take care not a drop of water to been left as this can spoil the pickles.

add some oil in a pan add the lemons to cook slowly some acidic juice may come out, take care of cooking the lemons on low heat, for about 10 minutes.

then heat a non stick pan add the olive oil , ad d the chopped ginger -garlic saute for 5-8 mins , add the rest of the spices saute for few minutes more , and add salt as needed.

set this aside to cool down.

meanwhile wipe the cooked lemons and cut then in desired size and shape , do not discard the liquid as it is acidic and adds to the tanginess if the pickle .

add these cut lemon pieces to the rest of the sauteed garlic ginger mix, after mixed well .

store this pickle in air tight container and in a week will be ready to enjoy !!

note the spoon also used has to dry to avoid any kind of decay.

Khatte Chicken

Chicken is one of our all time favourite non veg delicacy, and usually tastes good in any shape or form. I had been making chicken mostly the same routine way like curry or with coconut milk or dried chicken, so decided to try something different and something which didn't require a lot of effort too.

Hence my hunt began looking on the Internet (the obvious source) and also the cookery book collection that I had been piling on , that is when I came across a baked and rich chicken recipe in one of the cookery books(the Indian menu planner) called Katte Chicken,

so an experiment was on its way.

I was pretty sure that this would be different from the rest of the chicken dishes I make as it had new ingredients or the ones I never used along with chicken.

Above all that this was going to be baked , but my work paid off (not that I did much :))this turned out really good and is for sure a keeper.

Ingredients:

chicken breasts 12

almond paste 3 tbs

black pepper pwd 1 tsp

cumin seeds 1 tsp

capsicum 3 oz (optional)

ginger garlic paste 4tsp

green chilly 4

lemon juice 1tbs

onions in rings 2/3 cup

saffron 1 pinch

salt to taste

butter 1 stick

yogurt 1cup

• Hang the yogurt in a cheese cloth until reduced by half.
• Make a marinade of yogurt, ginger garlic paste salt cumin pepper lemon green chilly and almond paste, leave it aside for half and hour to marinate.
• Grease a baking vessel place the chicken pieces without overlapping. Arrange the onions and capsicum rings over the chicken pieces and pour the remaining marinade over it.
• Add dollops of butter and bake in oven for 20 minutes at 300 F.
• Remove and sprinkle saffron, and let it stay for 10 mins more.
• Serve with roti or hot rice.

RCI - KERALA

I was looking forward towards this RCI event for long, luckily Jyothsna of Curry Bazzar came up with the event just in time, as we have just returned from our India trip almost a month back the memories are so fresh, we had a great time back home, also went on a boat ride through the ever famous kumarkom back waters, it is BEAUTIFUL!!!

a traditional house boat !!

on the way to the back waters!!

Kumarkom has now become a hub for tourism, very scenic ,also loaded with tourists from all around the world luckily we managed to get a houseboat for about 5 hours , there are also options for the night stay which looked too tempting but due to time constrains had to settle down for a few hrs, may be next time.

The whole trip is like an adventure u get to see nature at it's best, although there are plenty of 5 star hotels on the way but if u want to have authentic food then small food joints are the place to go ,we decided to try out a thaat kaada ( small shop) for lunch, which is just beside the backwaters, my brother and T went to see if it was good enough for all of us and the kids too, when they came back with the dishes I cud say this was going to be one lunch we will cherish for life!!!! see for urself :)

Lovely food just right amount of spices , fresh fish and to mention accompanied with toddy too good!! Kappa and meen (fish) chaar was the starter, along with karimeen fry , small fish fried, also something I never had before turtoise fry tastes like pork fry, and kakka erachi yummy!!!, then was the last course Rice with sambar ,& Payar (beans) thoran, which sealed the deal :)

one closer look at the thaat kada food!!!

It definitely was a great trip and we all were happy that we tried the food at the thaath kada ,which reminds of my entry for the RCI- KERALA.

Kappa and fish curry all time favourite for keralities anywhere and everywhere on the face of the earth :)

here is the link for the recipe

http://spiceandrice.blogspot.com/2007/05/kappa-with-fish-curry.html