Pickled Pumpkin Slices With Lemon Juice And Dried Sour Plum

When I read this recipe...I was like  " wow,,,this is healthy and I must make this "  Pickle with lemon juice...mind this this perfect for me. So I asked WB to take me to Jusco and I got myself a small chunk of organic pumpkin to make this yummilicious pickle.  And to add flavor to this pickle...added some asam boi and chilli to it.  This is truly addictive....refreshing, crunchy and  slight spicy hot after taste.  A wonderful and healthy pickle that will have you craving for more.  Eating pumpkin raw is my first time.  This is better than the pickle green papaya ...of course,  this is my personal preference :)Try this pickle..you will agree with me.  The pumpkin should not be over ripe.

mix lemon juice, cut chilli,  chopped assam boi and sugar together

and let the ingredients marry each other :p

a 450 gm chunk of organic pumpkin

peel off skin and use a peeler...peel pumpkin into thin slices

love the color of the sliced pumpkin..

cheerful looking :)

mix together the pumpkin slices and the lemon juice mixture

in a mixing bowl

let it sit for an hour in room temperature

ready to be store in glass jar

can keep for a week or two

I make small batches....finish make again

Pickled Pumpkin Slices With Lemon Juice And Dried Sour Plum

ingredients

450 gm pumpkin - sliced thinly with peeler

(A)

3 assam boi - deseed and chopped into small pieces

3 bird's eyes chilli - sliced

2 lemons - squeeze for juice and sieve away pulps and seeds

3 tbsp of castor sugar

Mix (A)  together and leave aside

Peel off skin and peel pumpkin slices thinly.  Mix together pumpkin slices with (A) in a mixing bowl. Let it rest for an hour.  It is ready to be packed into a glass jar and store in the fridge over night . Pickle is ready to be served as a side dish or snacks.

Enjoy !

Pickled Papaya

After helping out in our community garden, I was automatically accepted as one of the members of this group of gardeners :p and whatever fruits they harvested from their own garden, I too get a share of the fruits LOL! So super happy and feeling blessed when I was given two organic green papaya with one showing slight yellowish on the surface. I decided to pickle one and leave the other one to ripen on its own before eating it . I googled on how to make pickled papaya and thus found one from Wendy's blog. Thanks Wendy for the recipe.  It turned out great...I manually slice them all as thin as I can go.  Crunchy and it tasted so good that WB walloped almost all of it :)

Pickled Papaya  - adapted from Table for 2

ingredients:

1 kg firm papaya ( clean weight w/o skin and seeds )
2 tbsp of salt
300 gm rice vinegar
300gm sugar
10 bird's eye chillies

Method:

1. Boil rice vinegar and sugar, stir so that sugar will not set to bottom. Let it cool down completely before use.

2. Peel papaya. Half the fruit, remove seeds and rinse the fruit.

3. Cut into small pieces and slice with a mandolin.

4. Put salt over sliced papaya and rub salt all over papaya slices.  Make sure the slices do not stick together and are properly rubbed with salt.

5. Leave salted papaya for 5 mins ( not too long ) the papaya is ready to be rinsed when it looks pliable.

6. Rinse slated papaya twice. Shake off excess water.  No need to squeeze.

7. Put papaya slices into a non reactive vessel ( glass, stainless steel, ceramic )

8. Snip bird's eye chillies and pour cooled vinegar syrup over.

9. With a clean dry chopstick, stir papaya slices to make sure the papaya is submerged and coated with the vinegar syrup.

10. Let the papaya sit for a few hours.  Adjust taste.

11. Let papaya pickle for at least 2 days in the fridge before serving.

Enjoy !

Pickled Ginger In Natural Pink

I love anything that is natural and I don't like food that uses food dyes .  I used to eat at Japanese Restaurant and I noticed that their pickled ginger are pinkish in color. And I thought they used food dye to make them pinkish.  I discovered that you don't need to use red food dye to make them pinkish recently.  A dear friend of mine taught me to use lemon juice on the young ginger slices before pickle them.  Wow...and true enough they turned a natural pink.  Woohoo..... dancing on my trotters now.  So , I am sharing here with you the secret of turning pickled ginger into natural pink :)   A very nice natural pink color...makes food interesting. You can add these pickled ginger to your salad or egg with century eggs appetizer or go with your sashimi...mmmm I know I am going to enjoy my pickled ginger for now :)  

soak the young ginger slices in lemon juice for

at least 30 mins...they will instantly turn pinkish

Pickled Ginger In Natural Pink  -adapted from  Tastehongkong  with a twist

600 gm baby ginger - scrap of skin, wash , pat dry and sliced thinly
1 tbsp coarse salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 lemon juice

Pickling solution
2 cups rice vinegar
1.5 cups sugar

Method:

Scrape off skin from baby ginger, wash and pat dry, slice thinly with a sharp knife or a mandoline. Mix the ginger slices with 1 tbsp of coarse salt and let them stand for an hour, after which some liquid will exude. Discard liquid and rinse with drinkable water, strain dry.  Add lemon juice and sugar, mix well . To ensure that the ginger slices are in good contact with the lemon juice, it is best to have them laid in a large flat container while they are being steeped. Stir and turn the ginger for several intervals. Leave it for 30 mins. The ginger will turn natural pink at this point. Pour away the lemon juice.  Place the pink ginger into a glass jar.

Meanwhile , cook the rice vinegar and sugar till the sugar has melted. Leave it to cool (10 mins ). When the vinegar solution has turned warm, pour over the ginger slices in the glass jar. Make sure the ginger slices are covered with the pickling solution.  Close the jar when the pickled ginger is completely cooled down.  Keep in the fridge and you can serve the ginger slices after 2 days.  This pickle can keep for months in the fridge.

Enjoy !

Pickled Chillies Stuffed With Shredded Papaya

Lately I have been looking out for side dishes recipes from Korean  to Baba Nyonya cuisine.  It is hobby to surf the internet for new inspiration...life for me is just too short so I want to try out recipes which I have never tried.  Pickled chillies with shredded papaya as stuffing is one example of Baba Nyonya cuisine and I have tried this only once and this was many years ago.  My grandma's relative who is also my very distant relatives came visiting and brought this in a bottle for us.  I was twelve years old and my grandma allowed me to try it...haha she thought that I will stop at one bite but who knows I ended up walloping two stuffed chillies :p  yea I am a hot stuff ! * wink 

Why I suddenly wanted to make this appetizer...okay, my neighbor who lives opposite gave me two homegrown papayas from his garden.  One was ripe and the other was still very green. I kept it for two days , it was still green.  Thus, this made me decide to use the green papaya for this recipe. I googled for this Baba Nyonya cuisine and found the recipe from this blog  ' To Indulge Oneself.... "  and by the time , I was ready to start making this appetizer, I realised the papaya was a step nearer to be on the ripe stage though the flesh was still firm.  I shredded it and dry in the sun for a few hours, though the recipe called for sunning for a day :p  This involved a bit of work but the end result is a bottle of finger licking good pickled chilllies with shredded papaya stuffing !  Yumm!

for a start, I use only 15 pieces of green chillies

the shredded papaya looks more orangey because of the 

fresh turmeric I used while stir frying them :)

not easy to stuff them but it was fun okay....

arranging them in the bottles takes skill too...but I ended up

just throwing them in :p

pickled them for 3 days and they tasted good

almost like the one I ate when I was 12 yrs old

I want to make this again !

Pickled Chillies Stuffed With Shredded Papaya - adapted from To Indulge Oneself

2    medium sized green papaya
15  large green chillies
100 g shallots ,slice
100 g garlics, slice
20   g ginger, shredded
20   g turmeric, shredded
50 g dried prawns, soaked and pounded
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
seasoning
2 tbsp vinegar
15g sugar
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt
pickling solution
150g sugar
250 ml vinegar
250 ml water
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt or taste

Preparation

1. Peel and shred papaya.  Dry in the sun for 1 day.

2. Wash and drain the chillies.  Make a slit in the chillies and scrape away the seeds and set aside.

3. Heat up half of the oil and fry the dried prawns, ginger and turmeric until fragrant.  Add in papaya and stir in seasoning.  Stir fry for about 2 minutes. Remove and let cool.  

4. While waiting for the papaya to be cooled, prepare the pickle solution by heating up the remaining of the oil, add pickling solution and bring to just a simmering boil.

5. Stuff the papaya mixture into the slit chillies.  Arrange stuffed chillies, shallots and garlics in a suitable glass ware. Pour over with pickling solution.  Make sure that the chillies are completely covered by the solution.  Allow to pickle for 2 days before consuming.  It keeps well for about 3 days at room temperature and can be kept in the refrigerator for about 1 week.

Enjoy !