We bought this bottle of pickle from the store below. It says "Sweet Ginger Pickle". Because I like sweet stuff, I took a big dollop of it on my food and was soon gasping. It was HOT. Not hot as ginger is, but hot as chilli. I checked the ingredients: "Ginger paste, Jaggery, Edible vegetable oil, Tamarind, Salt, Chilli powder and Other spices". Now, for some reason I thought the ingredients were supposed to be listed in the order of decreasing quantity. Perhaps they did, and the chilli is extra hot - after all they haven't listed which chilli and India has many varieties of chilli including the hottest chilli in the world. Upon retrospect, the warning in red should have alerted me - "ONLY FOR INDIAN MARKET"!! However, not all Indians eat (or can eat) hot stuff! "Sweet(ness)" seems to be a relative term. This thing about degrees of hotness reminds me of my favorite Mark Twain quote below.
"In India cold weather is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy." -Mark Twain, Following the Equator
8 comments:
i didn't know ginger pickle exists! i know a lot of indian food are extremly sweet. sometimes too sweet for my standard, but i love indian food :)
Lovely post, quote and insight!
hehe, bit of a shock to the system hey? We have a company here which makes chili sauces and has a temperature gauge on the label from yellow for mild to dark red for extremely hot, quite handy, although as you say, how you perceive 'hot' is very subjective. Again, great quote!
ooooh, that does look very red and spicy!
Hi
Can you give me the name of a store in Hyderabad that might sell
tradional Indian music instruments?
Need to know before Friday
GMAIL IT SAID WOULD EMAIL THE RESPONSE TO ME.
Good one!! I love ginger pickle :) I can check your blog everytime I miss Hyd :) Keep posting!!
@susan - I could not find an email address since your profile is inaccessible. So here is the info. I hope you get it in time.
The first one is a very old shop known for musical instruments.
1. Dharam Sangeet Shringar
Address: Opposite Ram Mandir
4-8-814 Gowliguda,
Hyderabad 500 012
Phone: 91 40 2461 2288
91 - is the country code for India
40 - is the area code for Hyderabad
2. Avanti Musicals
Showroom address:
6-3-662 1st floor
C.Space No.7 : Zore Complex,
Oppsite Erramanzil Colony,
Panjagutta, Hyderabad - 500 48
Phone: 91 40 2332 6456
quite the quote! I like hot but not enough to melt the tongue!
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