Chinthakaya pachadi can be eaten in the hot summers to bring down your body heat. So why are we making it in winter? Raw tamarind is available in local markets around this time of year and so in olden days, chintakaya pachadi was made in winters, stored in jars and eaten in summers.
Also, when you are down with fever and your appetite has taken a vacation, you can have Chinthakaya Pachadi in hot steaming rice and your taste buds will sing in appreciation! Not exaggerating!
Ingredients:
- Chithakayalu (raw tamarind): 150 grams
- Salt: generous amounts
- Turmeric Powder: generous amounts
- Red Chillies: 10
- Green Chillies: 10
- Sesame seeds: 1 tbsp
- Mustard seeds: 1 tbsp
- Fenugreek Seeds (Methi): 1 tsp
- Asafoetida (hing): a pinch
- Sesame seed oil: generous amounts
Procedure:
- Wash and dry the chinthakayalu. Break the tamarind to bite size pieces. Keeping all the ingredients dry for this recipe is of utmost importance if you want to store the pickle for an year and yes, it can be stored for an year! If the ingredients are even slightly wet or moist, then there is good chance of fungus growing in the pickle and effectively wasting your efforts.
- In a mortar and pestle, take a handful of raw/ green tamarind, generous amounts of salt and turmeric and grind to coarse paste. Salt and turmeric will help in preserving the pickle for longer time, so do not hesitate in using good amounts of them.
- Transfer the coarse paste to a dry jar let it sit for three days.
- After three days, separate the seeds and fibre. Since it marinated for three days, the seeds and fibre can be easily removed.
- In a pan, heat oil and add mustard seeds, sesame seeds, fenugreek seeds, asafoetida, green and red chillies. Let it cook till it turns aromatic, turn off the heat and cool it down.
- Now grind the above ingredients once they cool down along with the de-seeded tamarind mixture into fine paste.
- You can save some part of oil, mustard seeds, sesame seeds and fenugreeks seeds while adding them in the mixer. Add this oil to the fine paste in the end. Or you can heat fresh oil, cool it and add it to the paste. If you want to store this pickle for an year, then you need to add more oil to preserve it better.
Tasty and tangy chinthakaya pachadi is ready. You can have it with hot rice along with ghee!
