Months ago, when it was usually the time our trees would hail limes, I complained that the yield had been really low this year.
The fault for that lay, surely, with a now-towering jackfruit tree that hadn’t yet borne fruit. The tree had to go, I said, because I loved my limes and I could get a dozen backyard jackfruits from any number of households selling their extra fruit on the Auroville main roads. I’d rather support them, I said.
In a few months, I was to learn that the jackfruit tree had been listening. It fruited this year for the first time, and how. Eleven jackfruits, some large and some wanting to become larger, a bumper crop for a first year–it was as though the tree was answering my complaint and doing what it could to bear fruit. Were the fruit as large as some others? No. Were they as full of chulaihal or arils as many others? Not at all. Were they the sweetest? Sometimes–jackfruit seems to ripen like the avocado does, only when it’s plucked. And depending on that timing, and the heat at the time of ripening, the sweetness either intensifies or doesn’t. So the fruit wasn’t as fine as all that but the tree was trying and my heart was melting.
This last month I realized that it wasn’t just the jack tree that had overheard our thoughtless conversation under its shading branches, but also the lime nearby. Struggling in the shade of the palamaram, perhaps it likes its company? For it has produced perhaps the largest downpour of limes we have ever had, when we least expected them and when we’ve most needed them.
Which was when I remembered Bela’s nimbe huli.
Bela had sent me a jar of this most delicious lime pickle along with other home-made goodies in a care package after Appa passed away. There’s something about food at unusual times of grief. The body needs unusual nurturing and anyone who understands that is an angel sent from heaven. Here is Joan Didion after losing her husband: “I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of the friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.” Me, I needed the kindness of a warm kanji, certainly, but also more. I needed sharpness. I needed tart-hot-sweet intensity. I needed to be awakened from that surreal state that also sets in after someone dies; I needed reminders that it was good to be alive. I needed that nimbe huli. Somehow, Bela had known.
The thing that mattered most about the nimbe huli was that it’s a pickle made from the juice of the lime, not its peels. Most lime pickles I know use the whole fruit and although a deeply sun-cooked sweet lime pickle with all those tenderized rinds holds such a-peel *cough*, there’s much to be said for just working with the juices. “Nimbe huli” is Kannada and refers to the saucy sourness of the lime; it’s this smooth almost jammy pickle that is paired with hot rice and ghee. That makes it a comfort food par excellence, but not just that. Nimbe huli removed the bitterness, told me I didn’t have to deal with that. Not just now. I needed that reminder, too.
In true Indian style though, the bitterness of the lime’s peels are not thrown away or banished into some other-worldly realm you hope your soul never finds. They remain, for another pickle–this recipe is a twofer as Mattress Mack used to say (was it him?) in those old, horrid Gallery Furniture ads that ruled the airwaves in Houston for a time. So the nimbe huli’s twin is a lime peel pickle that gets made right alongside, though the one is ready in a flash, the other takes a week of sun-cooking.
When the jar was licked clean, I wrote Bela asking for the recipe which she shared as generously as she had the food from her kitchen, and then the images below and the recipe for both nimbe huli and the lime peel pickle. My only real addition aside from immense gratitude is the idea of repurposing lime peels into a basic household cleaning vinegar, which is an excellent idea drawn from Anita Tikoo (though I’d not call it bio enzyme) whose Citrus Quad Marmalade is a thing to die for.
To make nimbe huli, you’ll need to decide on the fate of the peels first — if a pickle, then you might juice less vigorously, and make two batches of the spice mix instead of just one. But basically, you juice the limes and prepare the spice mix and set the peels aside for a pickle or whatever other use. The spice mix proportions are given in the recipe below.
The juice of the limes is what makes the nimbe huli; that gets cooked with garlic and curry leaves and spices.
I used the same spice mix for the peels, though Bela says any pickling spices would work just as well. That clean and bone-dry jar sits in the sun for a week, at the end of which time you have a lime pickle as well.
Nimbe huli & Lime peel pickle
Ingredients
For the pickle masala
- 1/2 cup coriander seeds
- 1/4 cup cumin seeds
- 2 tsp mustard seeds
- 2 tsp fenugreek seeds
- 1 inch piece cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp hing
For the nimbu huli
- 2 cups freshly pressed juice of limes
- 3/4 cup chilli powder
- 1/2 cup rock salt
- 5 cups jaggery grated
- 50 grams garlic chopped
- Few curry leaves chopped
- 1/2 cup oil for tempering
For the lime peel pickle
- Peels of all the limes juiced for nimbe huli
- Juice of 4-5 more lemons (or substitute with vinegar)
- ½ cup or so of rock salt
- A handful of green chillies, broken into 1” pieces
- Pickle masala, as above (or use store bought)
- Jaggery, to taste
- ¼ cup of oil
- ¼ teaspoon hing
For the household cleaner
- 1 part sugar for every 3 parts lime peels
- 10 parts water for every 3 parts lime peels
Instructions
Make Decisions first
- If you are going to make the lime peel pickle jointly with nimbe huli, do not squeeze out every last drop of the lime juice. Leave the lime peels juicy enough to add sufficient acid to the peel pickle.
- If you want only the nimbe huli, then juice vigorously away.
- For a zero waste option, you can make a nice lime-scented household cleaner (which folks loosely call “bioenzyme” though it’s unclear what enzymes are in this exactly and whether they’re doing much cleaning work for you at all). The recipe follows below.
For the Nimbe Huli
- Assemble all the pickle masala ingredients in a small iron kadai or cast iron pan. Roast, stirring frequently to distribute heat and keep the spices from burning. Transfer to the jar of a spice blender, allow to cool slightly, and powder. Set aside.
- Heat oil in a kadhai or other heavy-bottomed vessel. Add hing, curry leaves, garlic, chilli powder, lime juice, roasted powder, jaggery, and salt in the order mentioned.
- Let this come to a strong rolling boil and thicken slightly. Fill into sterilised jars.
- Allow the jars to cool before refrigerating.
- Eat with hot rice and ghee.
To make the lime peel pickle
- Prepare the pickle masala as for nimbe huli above.
- Chop up the peels to the desired size, they can be chunky or fine as you please.
- Add the green chillies, salt, pickle masala, extra lemon juice (or vinegar), and jaggery.
- Heat the oil in a tempering pan until almost smoking. Drop in the hing, and in just a second or two pour this over the lemon pickle.
- Mix well and transfer to a clean, completely dry glass bottle. Keep the hot sun every day for a week.
To make a lime-scented household spray cleaner
- Add the lime peels to a large glass jar, measuring roughly as you do in cups or handfuls.
- For about 3 parts lime peels, add 1 part sugar and 10 parts water. Mix well and close the jar loosely. Leave this out for several days to become vinegar, giving the bottle a shake or a mix with a wooden spoon in daily.
- Once the peels start to get mushy and the smell of the liquid starts to turn slightly vinegary, decant this. Discard the lemon peels and bottle the liquid.
To use the household cleaner:
- for each part citrus liquid, add 10 parts water and a few drops of liquid soap, if desired.
- Transfer to a spray bottle and use on counters and plants as a fungicide!
