Spicy Tomato Pickle - Andrha Style

Dawn has been harvesting tomatoes again.

This time the harvest included green ones as she cut down some of the plants harvesting everything on them. I thought I'd try a recipe that could use both red and green tomatoes and decided to adapt this one from Jeyashri's Kitchen.

It asks for red tomatoes, but as it is soured with tamarind I thought I could get away with having some green ones. I used about 750g of cherry tomatoes and a whole bulb of garlic. I also added a little asafoetida and curry leaves to the spices (which I'd seen in other similar recipes).

For the chilli powder I crushed some of the old dried chillis we had found recently.. about 1/2 of this pack. (The photo shows what's left in the pack).

I didn't have any tamarind pods but I did have some tamarind paste which I supplemented with some distilled malt vinegar.

Here are my other spices ready to add to the pot.

First I cooked the garlic cloves (I'd halved or quartered the biggest ones).and some of the mustard until starting to turn colour.

Then I added the tomatoes and cooked for 10 minutes.

After adding the tamarind and vinegar, chillis, salt  and other spices there was still lots of liquid to come out. Tasting as I went on I added a bit more salt and some light brown sugar.

A gentle simmer for another 45 minutes left me with something hot, garlicky and sticky.

Enough for 2 jars and a little bit left over to taste.

I think it will be good to go with curries and poppadoms. Dawn found it quite spicy, but reckons her brother Jonathan and brother-in-law David will both like it. It looks like I'll have to make some more!