30 April 2015 / leggypeggy

Three walls of pickles—my kind of heaven

Anand, Australia, cricket, earthquake, Kalimpong, meat, Nepal, pickles, Prayaan India Overland, shopping, West Bengal

The shop owner adds labels to the jars

Pickles of all kinds are at the top of my food chain, and I’m happy to eat ’em, cook ’em, make ’em, mix ’em, steal ’em, promote ’em.

One of my favourite sandwiches—I have no idea how, when or where I learned this recipe—is good bread with thinly-sliced dill pickles and a generous spread of peanut butter. Go on, try it. You might love it as much as Poor John and I do.

Poor John used to tease me about this unusual combo until the day I sent him off to work with that exact mix in his lunchbox. That was when I was still making his lunch (a service that didn’t last much longer).

He came home raving about how delicious it was. Duh, he could have believed me from the outset, but I had to prove it sneakily.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to discover Pickle Heaven (not its real name) in Kalimpong, West Bengal, India. This was serious pickle-dom, and the woman who runs the place makes all—well almost all—the pickles herself.

All kinds of vegetables, chillies and meat are done up in various sizes of glass jars and plastic packaging, and all crammed into a narrow shop on Kalimpong’s main street.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to buy anything to take home. Glass and liquid aren’t good travelling companions, and Australia’s quarantine regulations prevent many foodstuffs from being brought into the country.

But I was determined to buy/try some. The owner graciously offered to open jars to let me try, but I had a better idea.

When India and Australia were facing off in the semifinals of the ICC Cricket World Cup. Anand and I promised to buy a present as a consolation prize for the loser. Not only did Australia beat India in that game, we won the entire competition. Sorry New Zealand, because we wouldn’t have minded if you’d won because it was the first time ever that New Zealand made it to the finals.

The whole cricket competition was over and I still owed Anand his present. How about I take you to Kalimpong’s pickle emporium and buy you five kinds of pickles—your pick?

He couldn’t believe there’d be five kinds of pickles he actually wanted, but then he walked into the place.

Anand may be Indian, but he’s not vegetarian. And there, on the shelves, he found jars and bags of goodies such as pickled beef, pickled chicken and pickled pork. Choosing his five ‘prizes’ was too easy and I bet he’ll shop there the next time he’s in Kalimpong.

If you’re a fan of pickles, chutneys and sambols, you might like the mint sambol recipe on my cooking blog.

On a sad note, Kalimpong is close to Nepal and the devastating earthquake that hit there earlier this week. Three people are confirmed dead in West Bengal and some buildings have collapsed. I can’t imagine the shelves of pickles fared well.