Sun-dried Tomato Pickle

As I grew up in Andhra, the "land of Pickles", I started having a special liking for PICKLES. I am sure there might be very few who may not be aware of Andhra Aavakaaya and Gongura...hmmm..I absolutely love these pickles especially with hot rice,gun powder and ghee and is absolutely a great combination to try when someone visits any Andhra restaurant.Still there are so many varieties of pickles like "Maagaya", "Usiri Aavakaaya", "sun-dried tomato Pickle" etc(will try to post all those soon). Even my husband is a big fan of pickles,both Andhra and North-Indian style pickles which are made by my MIL.
Every year, we get a huge supply of all these pickles from my Mother-in-Law. Since she has come down to stay with us for a few weeks, I thought this might be a good opportunity to learn from her. This is the season for Tomatoes so we thought of making Tomato pickle which can be had with several dishes. One can serve this with hot steaming rice, Idly, Dosa, Akki roti or any other type of roti. While the process of making this pickle is quite time consuming the advantage is that this can be stored for more than a year....some advantage ..eh.

I am sending this pickle for sanghi's FALL in LOVE(FIL)-Tomato Event


and Lakshmi's SWC-Meals-on-Wheels Event



Ingredients:
1 Cup Red Chilli powder
200 gms Tamarind

To dry in Sun:
1 kg Good Ripen Tomatoes
1 cup levelled Salt
1 tsp haldi

To grind:
1 cup Mustard seeds
5 tsp Methi seeds

For Tadka:
2 tbsp Mustard seeds
8-10 broken red chillies
1 tsp Hing
250 ml Sesame Oil




Method:

1) Wash the tomatoes and then wipe it and pat dry for some time. Chop the tomatoes into eight pieces, mix it with salt and cover the vessel with clinge wrap and keep it for two days continuously(atleast for one day).

2) Squeeze the water from the Tomato pieces completely.Soak tamarind in the water that would have come out from the tomatoes. Keep the tamarind mixture and Tomato pieces under sunlight for two days until it dries completely.

3) On the second day grind tomato pieces with the tamarind mixture(the one kept in sun) to a coarse mixture. (Use the whipper mode in the mixie)

4) Slightly roast methi seeds and cool the seeds.Grind Mustard seeds(raw) and Methi seeds to a smooth powder.

5) Mix the ground tomato mixture with the ground methi-mustard powder,red chilli powder.Taste the mixture at this point and adjust salt according to taste.

6) Heat oil,crackle mustard seeds,add broken red chillies and hing and fry for a minute.Cool the oil completely and mix in the tomato mixture and store it in Air-tight containers/Glass jars.

Serve the Tomato pickle with rice/Akki roti/dosa/idly/chapathy or you can even use it as a bread spread ! A very versatile dish ..isnt it ..