Mauritian chili and carrot pickles recipe

Have you wanted to make some hot chili pickles to accompany your Indian dishes and thought it would be too hard and gave up? Well this chili and carrot recipe is certainly meant for you as it does not require much ingredients and most importantly it does not require any maturing time as compared to other pickles.

The first time I made this chili and carrot pickles was two years ago. I had never heard of carrots in pickles before that. It was only when my boyfriend was telling me about his mom's carrot pickle that I thought I should give this a try and it worked wonders. The sweetness of the carrots combines well with the hotness of the chilies, making this pickle not too hot and so much tasty.


So, are we ready to roll?

The ingredients to make this chili and carrot pickle are:

About 5 regular size carrots
12 chilies
5 garlic cloves
3 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoon of turmeric
3 teaspoon of ground mustard seeds
3 teaspoon of tamarind paste (mine were with seeds, if you find some without seeds, add a little less.
4 tablespoon of vegetable oil


Utensils
A food processor (Grinder, use the coarse grinder blade)
A glass can to store the pickles in


Method:

Peel the carrots and dice them up, to facilitate the grinding.
Peel the garlic cloves.
Remove the chilies' tails.

Now for the grinding:

Coarsely grind the carrots along with the garlic cloves first.
Transfer the carrot and garlic mixture in a bowl.
Then place the chilies in the food processor bowl and pulse for a second or two so that the chili is not finely ground.
Add the coarsely ground chili to the carrot and garlic mixture.
Then add the turmeric, salt, mustard seed and tamarind to the vegetable paste.
Mix all those well.
When the mixture has taken the nice orange colour of pickles, you can add the oil.



Note:
The tamarind paste is important as it adds a little sour taste which balances the sweetness of the carrots and hotness of the chilies.
It is important to add the oil after the dry spices have been mixed to the paste, or else the oil will dominate on all the other flavors.

The pickles can be served right away, though the taste will get better after 24 hours. So do make it in large portions.