Cranberry Pickle

Story: Does it ever happen to you that an idea excites you so much that you cannot sleep? When this happens, all my mind wants to do is to make plans.. glorious plans about how this idea is going to be a success... that excites my mind even more and I can spend hours thinking about this - idea. Then I wake up the next day .. and suddenly the idea is not fascinating anymore...

Unless of course I act on it.. more importantly keep acting on it and most importantly, give it the most important ingredient - TIME!

For any Indian Achar/Lonacha or pickle Time is a key ingredient. The older it gets the better it tastes... especially this cranberry achar.. with time, the hard skin of a cranberry gets tempered and the super-sour juice is infused with all the spices and the oil of the pickle....

This AshaCool recipe is a hot and spicy, long-lasting marriage of the absolutely firang cranberry with the asali desi spices.

Source: AshaCool

Time: 2-3 hours to make, 2 weeks to mature..

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of raw cranberries cut into halves
  
• 1 tbsp mustard seeds
• 4 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1.5 tbsp onion seeds (kalonji)
• 1 tsp fenugreek seeds (methi dana)
  
• 1.5 tbsp fennel seeds (saunf/badishep)
• 3-4 dry red chilies (more or less as per taste)
  
• 3 cups of mustard oil
• 0.5 tsp hing/asafoetida
  

Recipe:

Dry roast all the spice seeds and dry red chillies in a pan for 2-3 minutes. Grind them into a coarse-fine mixture.

Heat the mustard oil in a pan till it reaches smoking point. To test - add a pinch of hing to hear a hissing sound. Once the oil is heated, add the rest of the hing and turn the heat off. Mix in the spice powder, stir to mix well and keep it covered till it cools down.

Once this mixture is cooled, add the cranberry pieces to this mixture and add lots of rock salt for taste. Mix well and add salt and red chili powder as per taste.

Go ahead.. indulge a little. but it takes about 10 days for the cranberries to completely integrate with the spices.. so give it time and you will reap the rewards.

The perfect companion for hot paranthas!