Recipe corner: spicy pineapple pickle

So you remember how in my last post I gave you a recipe for a pineapple cake?  Today we find out what happened to the other half of the pineapple.  You may, of course, wonder why we didn't just eat said pineapple and I couldn't tell you the answer.  I tend to eat more fruit at work, when it is in my lunchbox and just there than when I am at home.  It's not that I don't like it, I just tend not to think of it.  Definitely an area for improvement.

Anyway, pineapple pickle.  This was a last ditch attempt to save some pineapple that was going a bit brown and (no other word for it) manky.  It was a dying pineapple.  It was on the brink between this life and the next.  And it made a fantastic pickle I am very happy to say.  We had it with a curry (paneer and red pepper, if you're interested, from Meera Sodha's lovely "Made in India").  We had it with some jerk chicken and potato salad (our food combinations are somewhat random at the moment but don't judge - this was delicious!) And we had it in ham and cheese toasties wherein it was EPIC.  

Talking of random - I realised once I had started that I didn't have any mustard seeds (don't worry, they've subsequently been ordered online - the importance of a fully stocked spice cupboard is not to be under estimated) so I, er, rinsed off a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard.  It clearly didn't affect my enjoyment of the finished product but it felt a bit weird.  Mind, I read somewhere the other day that Jack Monroe, who has managed to carve out an entire career telling people what to do with random tins of food, recommends rinsing off spaghetti hoops in one of her books to make a store-cupboard version of cacio e pepe*.  So rinsing is apparently a thing in times of desperation.  

*I will, most very definitively, not be trying this.

Ingredients

2 dried chillies, soaked in boiling water (I see no reason why you couldn't sub in a fresh chilli if you didn't have dried.  If you do use dried, then soak them for at least an hour or else they won't be soft enough to blitz.

1 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated

1 garlic clove, grated

1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds

1 tsp ground turmeric

200ml white wine vinegar

Tbsp light brown sugar

Half a ripe pineapple, cored and cut into chunks

Drain the chillies and put in a pestle and mortar along with the ginger and garlic and a good pinch of salt.  Pound to a paste.  Add a tiny splash of the chilli water if it needs a little bit of help to amalgamate.

Heat a small, dry frying pan and then, when it is nice and hot, dry fry the mustard seeds until they start to the pop.

Transfer the seeds, and the paste, into a bowl large enough to hold all the pineapple, then add the turmeric, the vinegar and the sugar.  Set aside for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often, until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Taste at this stage.  You may wish to add a bit more sugar if your vinegar is a particularly sour variety.

Add the pineapple and a decent pinch of salt.  Stir to ensure the fruit is coated in the liquid.  You could transfer it to a jar at this stage if you intend to take a nice picture of it for your blog (which you then forget to do).

Don't eat straight away - let it sit and collect itself for at least an hour before serving, and preferably longer.  The original recipe said that it would last three days in the fridge but I reckon you'd get a bit longer out of it than that.  Still, once you try one of those toasties you'll probably run through it in no time.