Hello everyone! Welcome to the second issue of Yesterday’s Curry, my newsletter all about Goan food. Firstly, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who read my first piece about Goan bread making and I’m so grateful to all of you who also purchased my e-book of bread recipes.
When choosing my topic for issue 2, I wanted to embark on something which has long mystified me; the Indian pickle. Having eaten many a jar of tart and spicy Goan mango pickle, and marvelled over my grandmother’s pickled limes, which were scored and quartered before being opened like a flower and stuffed with pungent spices, I hesitated to leap into pickle making myself. Now a chef, pickling doesn’t hold the same insurmountable dread as it used to, but coming to grips with the flair required to experiment with Indian pickles has still been a mountain to climb.
First, we should talk about what pickling actually is and where it started. In essence, pickling is the act of extending the shelf life of something. What started in prehistoric times as man salting meat to draw out the moisture and thus keep it fresher for longer, developed over the centuries to include every fruit and vegetable imaginable. The first documented pickled cucumbers in 2030 BC were taken from their native India to the Tigris Valley, and this was the beginning of the evolution of pickles as we know them today. While each part of the world maintains their own style of pickling, the Indian pickle, or achar, as it is more colloquially known, has elevated the cuisine of India to extraordinary heights with its sheer variety of spice combinations and exotic ingredients available for pickling. The modern Indian pickle, which varies per region, is almost infinite in its possibilities. Any fruit, vegetable, stem, seed, leaf, herb, fungus, berry, or part of an animal has the ability to be turned into a vibrant, explosive morsel of flavour with the enhancement of carefully selected spices and preserving elixirs.
Rolling up my sleeves to try making a few of my most loved Goan pickles, I realised there was more to this than just following a few recipes blindly. To make my own Goan pickles, I first had to understand Indian pickling as a whole, and to do this, I needed to find the expert. After a few google searches, I stumbled upon Usha’s Pickle Digest, a book I later discovered had achieved cult status in India due to its brilliance, volume and difficulty to source. The 1000 recipe, 350 page textbook is clearly the work of a diligent and conscientious writer and it didn’t surprise me to learn that Usha Prabakaran had formerly practiced as a lawyer. Intrigued by the woman behind this acclaimed piece of work, I emailed Usha and was delighted by her willingness to share with me her foray into pickle making and all of her culinary knowledge on the subject.
Published in 1998, Usha’s Pickle Digest is the culmination of 15 years of hard work and focus. Usha never intended to write a book about pickles, but when 25 recipes for friends turned into 5000 which she then had to painstakingly whittle down to 1000, the book seemed to write itself. Her interest began while acting as sous-chef for her mother in the kitchen as a child. “My association with pickles was needless to say sentimental,” Usha tells me, and she serendipitously married into a family of gastronomes who set in motion her pickle making escapades. Under the tutelage of her mother-in-law, Usha, as she puts it, “unravelled the mysteries of the art of cooking and pickling” and was exposed to an extended family and network of friends who each passed onto her their recipes and secrets to making the perfect pickle. At the precise moment her book was to be published however, Usha’s health took a sudden turn and 2 brain surgeries later, The Pickle Digest was as good as forgotten, laying in waiting for investigative food writers to plunge it out of the ether. “It has now risen like a phoenix from the ashes” Usha tells me, and the mystery surrounding this 20 year old book has resulted in it becoming a somewhat retro hit.
When I ask Usha to impart her Indian pickling wisdom on a relative beginner, she tells me that “pickles are not complicated in their preparation. Almost all recipes can be prepared in the average kitchen. No fuss, no mystique, only rewarding authenticity.” But before even embarking on any cooking, buying the best quality, undamaged ingredients, using clean and dry sterilised equipment and salting correctly are key. Salt, spices and oil are the three key components of Indian pickles, and their appeal lies in the moorish, tangy, spice-laden juices which coat the ingredients and pleasantly assault the taste buds with every bite. Salt draws out moisture (the enemy of pickling) and kills bacteria, spices offer a range of holistic benefits and oil acts as a sealant, preventing air from reaching the pickle while also allowing the spices to adhere better, and therefore enhancing the flavour. Commonly, once the star ingredient has been salted, it is then sun dried before being cooked in a rich masala of spices which has been first simmered in a large helping of oil, and is finally finished off with sugar and acid to balance the flavours. Another popular method, seen in many of the recipes in Usha’s Pickle Digest, involves submerging fruit and vegetables into brine, spiced vinegar, lemon juice, tamarind or even whipped curd. Usha, who has been pickling now since the 80s, gives me a thorough run down of the scientific role of each preserving ingredient, the healing and digestive properties of each spice and the subtle differences one can experiment with, all of which have allowed her to come up with as many as 5000 recipes.
Armed with enough information to get stuck in, I turn my attention onto the Goan pickles I am itching to master. Pickles are prepared in the dry pre-monsoon months in India, avoiding the humidity which has the potential to encourage mildew and in Goa it is no different. April and May are prime pickling months before the rains set in, and provide the perfect temperature to sun dry fruit, vegetables, fish and meat. The annual fishing ban which takes place in June and July in several coastal Indian states also means that fish, the staple food of Goa, must be pickled so that it can be enjoyed out of season. Popular Goan pickles include, but are not limited to, hot raw mango pickle, also known as miskut, tendli pickle, brinjal (aubergine) pickle, lime pickle, tender mango in brine, prawn balchão, pork pickle, and para (hot pickled salt fish). While generally speaking vinegar is optional in pickle making, it is the toddy vinegar unique to Goa which lends the distinct pungency to Goan pickles, if you are able to find it.
After plenty of my own experimentation with Goan pickles from my London home, which sadly does not benefit from the blistering heat required for sun drying, I decided to extend the net of my research. After asking the online community to share their own stories and recipes of Goan pickles, I happened upon a couple of women, who like Usha, are passionate about preserving their roots and sharing the pickles they ate in early life. With such historic origins, pickle making is something which travels down family lines, bonding generations together in its ritualistic preparation and secret family recipes. One such woman who drew my attention was Priyanka Gupta who moved to Goa from Rajasthan, an area of North India so horticulturally diverse, that it is home to a whole host of unusual and exotic pickling fruits, vegetables, legumes, shoots, stems and flowers.
Priyanka is the co-founder of pickle company Nirvaan (formerly Nirvana) based in Porvorim, Goa and specialises in healthy pickles, her most famous being a sweet lemon ginger, free of both oil and sugar. Like Usha Prabakaran, pickle making started in the family for Priyanka. Growing up in a household with her parents, aunt, uncle and both grandparents, drying mangoes in the sun and preparing vessels for pickling were common daily traditions. These early pickling memories instilled in Priyanka a love of cooking, and it was in Goa with time on her hands, that she began to share her creations with others. One pickle variety soon turned into 17 when Goan customers couldn’t get enough of Priyanka’s unique concoctions. “Our pickles are a mixture of Goan and North Indian style” she tells me, “we combine both the recipes and make something new out of it”. What Priyanka delivers to her customers, in a time when homemade delicacies are making a comeback, is the perfect fusion of her new life in Goa and the family memories she left behind in the North.
Searching for hand me down family recipes, beyond my own, I was delighted when one of my readers, Sharon, shared with me the recipe for her late mother’s famous brinjal pickle. For Sharon, her mother’s legacy lives on fervently through the hand-written documentation of her cooking and I am honoured that she trusts me with it. Lourdes Fernandes who died in 2000 at just 55, came late to cooking, but when she did, her culinary creations became legendary amongst friends and family alike. After moving from Panjim to Fontainhas, Lourdes was initiated into a group of women who shared with her their Portuguese style Goan food, and it was here that her own cooking came into its own. Soon she was turning homegrown mangoes into pickles and jams and using homemade toddy vinegar to produce jars of balchão, molho and para. After attempting to make a half quantity of Lourdes’ Goan brinjal pickle, I can safely say that it lives up to its reputation. Sweet, spicy, umami and tart in equal measure, it has been an addictive accompaniment to almost every meal since I have made it.
Pickling makes magic out of the ordinary and allows even the most inconspicuous ingredient to become “dainty, fiery, parcels of dynamite” as Usha Prabakaran so eloquently describes it. I have learned from talking to all three women that pickle making is so much more than preserving fruit and vegetables; it is also a way of preserving the past. Memories of relatives lost and aromas that linger just out of reach, making pickles is a way of keeping a part of our collective history alive. It was a steep learning curve spending the past month making Indian pickles, but as Usha told me, the prepping is the hardest part. Making pickles is a highly rewarding skill to learn, and there is no end to the variations of ingredients one can experiment with. From hot and rich meat pickled in spicy oil to vegetables brined in gently aromatic vinegar (and everything in between), there is something for every palate and diet.
I look forward to bringing you all another newsletter next month, and you can keep up to date with what to expect in the next issue on my social channels listed below. Until next time!