Bitter gourd pickle/ Karele ka Achar/ Kakarakaya karam

 All of us in the family enjoy this recipe. I wouldn't say it is a healthy dish, but atleast the dish can be enjoyed once in a while.

So here goes..............

I have taken 250 gms of bitter gourd.

Cut the bitter gourd into half circle pieces as shown in the picture below. Here, you can either directly fry these pieces or to remove the bitterness, you could sprinkle about a tablespoon of salt and mix well and leave it for half an hour. Then squeeze out the water from bitter gourd and then deep fry them. I usually don't squeeze out the water since the healthy part in bitter gourd is it's bitterness. So I leave it like that and at the end, you wouldn't find the dish that bitter anyways.

Add about 4-5 tablespoons of oil in a wok or pan and fry a handful of the cut bitter gourd pieces. I usually do it that way because the bitter gourd leaves it's bitterness into the oil and you cannot re-use the left over oil for any other dish. So if it's less oil, you can discard it if you cannot use it. You can keep adding oil as it gets used up.

Take about 9-10 peeled garlic cloves and add 4-5 teaspoons of red chilly powder, 2-3 teaspoons of salt and grind it without adding any water. The oil in the garlic will give it the consistency of somewhere between a powder and a paste.

The ground paste would look something like that in the picture above and the fried bitter gourd pieces should look like those in the picture below.

Add the paste to the fried bitter gourd when they are hot. Sometimes, the paste might not mix well with a laddle or spoon. So mix it with hand and add 2-3 teaspoons of hot oil used for frying the bitter gourd pieces to mix it well and accentuate the taste.

Serve with hot rice and butter. This dish can be stored easily for a week, but because of it's taste, it will definitely be consumed soon.

Happy Cooking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

R.