Behold: The lime pickle. Not the chili pickle, the mango pickle, the garlic pickle, the eggplant pickle, or any other kind of pickle. And certainly not that abomination, the “mixed pickle.” This here is lime pickle, the greatest and more exalted of all the pickles.
Man, me and lime pickle go back a long, long way. You see, in all my mixed-up, tri-continental, ruthlessly secular upbringing, desi food always held its rightful place. Now we lived in France, not a major center of desi culture either then or now, and this was before the globalization of so-called ethnic gourmet cuisine made the basic spices and ingredients available in all the world’s major cities. But we made do, and the key to our survival, desi food-wise, was the one line of prepared foods, spice mixes and achars on the market, which was inevitably Patak’s. So there was always a bottle of curry paste around — not to serve as the sole ingredient, of course, but to accelerate the process. And whether the curry was prepared from a paste or from scratch, there was always lime pickle on hand to give it the necessary je ne sais quoi.
To this day lime pickle is one of the essential condiments in my refrigerator — that and Dijon mustard (the proper smooth kind, not the grainy stuff), a combination that I guess pretty much encapsulates the flavors of my childhood. I find uses for lime pickle that other people don’t have — or so I think. Except I know that now, as I confess to you that I add lime pickle to my tuna fish salad, a whole bunch of you are going to reveal that you do the same.
When I came back to the U.S. and started shopping at desi immigrant stores I was quite bewildered by the range of achars available, and the ever-growing number of manufacturers. I tried garlic pickles and coriander pickles and who knows what other kind of pickles, and found them ranging in appeal from heavenly to disgusting. Even within each type there is so much variation, in color and texture and smell, which you can often discern even when the vacuum sealed jar is still shut. There are pickles made in the U.S. and pickles made in the U.K. and pickles made at mysterious industrial parks all over India and Pakistan; South Indian pickles claiming additional properties that are indecipherable to my mongrel-Bong knowledge base; chunky pickles and pickles so smooth they seem to have been pureed.
I learned long ago to appreciate pickles other than the Patak’s of my childhood. But the sentimental connections linger. It was a pioneering brand and the first to make it big on the international market, even if the Guju-Kenyan owners of the Wigan firm had to drop an “h” from their name to make the pronunciation, if not always the taste, easier on the firangi tongue. Then a few years ago they had that classic family feud that ended up settled out of court. And now Patak’s is up for full or partial sale, for a reported GBP 200m, in order to raise capital to take it to whatever the next level is in the packaged and prepared Indian foods market. It even seems that Patak’s might be coming home, so to speak, as Indian conglomerate ITC is reported to have put in a bid. Apparently Heinz is also interested. Will we have a battle royal between Indian and American capital for control of the flagship achar brand?
Ah, for the artisanal pickles of our halcyon days. Anyone out there make their own achar? I’d be interested in learning how it’s done.
