When winters smelt of pickles!

South Asian food, which is known for its spice quotient, has a lot to offer, in terms of taste. The pickles for instance, are in itself a cuisine of sorts with an elaborate variety. The most common pickles are made from mango and lime.

Other vegetables include cauliflower, carrot, radish, tomato, onion, while some regions also specialise in pickling meats and fish. The recipe is simple – finely-chopped vegetable marinated in brine or edible oils along with various spices. But one thing that the simple recipe of pickle-making does not suggest, is the lost tradition where families would come together to make this spicy home product.

Aruna Jethani, a resident of a colony in posh south Delhi, reminisced the days when she lived in a much more humble setting. “The winters smelled like pickles,” Jethani said. After talking at length about the hazards of having too much pickle, she spoke about how  making vegetable pickle was more like a ‘family affair’.

“When I was a kid, I used to beg my parents to let me cut vegetables. My father would hand pick the vegetables from the market and wash them before my mother along with my aunt proceeded to chop them.

My father always said that I would end up cutting my fingers instead of the vegetables so I would only help in mixing salt into the spices,” said Jethani, now 64. “It was still fun,” she added.

Over the years, food products have gone through aggressive commercialisation. Products like pickle are produced in large factories where men and women pack the food before it enters households. Or as Jethani puts it “unknown men and women”.

This nostalgia, has a strong foregrounding, according to Veerji Sharma, a city-based family counsellor. While in conversation with Metrolife, Sharma spoke about how memories of one’s family are intertwined with food.

“Pickle, being one of those foods, which requires greater family participation, in this sense certainly leaves a mark on a person's memory. Moreover, pickle making or other such exercises which has different members of a family contributing, only helps in bringing a family closer,” Sharma said.

Sharma however said that the culture of making pickle has certainly suffered an enormous backlash after introduction of a variety of brands but has not disappeared completely. Paul Mathias, who works in an event firm in Delhi, serves as an example.

A native of Kerala, Mathias spent most part of his childhood in Ernakulam. “I have been working in Delhi for past seven years,” said the 30-year-old. “There is one thing which keeps me going, my mother’s fish pickle. I bring at least two bottles every time I visit my parents and I am extremely stingy about pickle,” Mathias added.

“My father scaling the fish and my mother heating oil and preparing a marinate mix. It reminds me of them, it reminds me of home,” said Mathias.