A new kid on the lime pickle block

Jaffna Lime Pickle

Out for a curry? Papadums pre-starter? Various chutneys and relishes? Well, all the lime pickle has to be eaten. Look, mate, I don't make the rules, but them's the rules. If having eaten all the lime pickle you ask for more, then all that must go, too. Harsh. But fair.

There's a new kid on the lime pickle block, and it's a contender.

My jar's Niru Brand. Lime Pickle (Jaffna Style). Like that, with the brackets. It has a looser, thinner consistency than a standard lime pickle, good citrus from the small segments of well-softened lime. It has a hot chilli punch and plenty of underpinning salt...

...I'm going into wine buff territory here, aren't I? Soon I'll be getting a cheeky hint of the bins round the back of the Rawalpindi takeaway...

It has a short list of ingredients, and none of the additives and messing about some commercial brands have to list. It is made of: lime (bit of a giveaway in the name of the stuff, I know, but nice to see lime get top billing), salt, fenugreek (which is an absurd name to call anything), mustard and chilli powder.

Under the ingredients, in red block capitals, it says “USE ONLY DRY SPOON”. I don't know if that preserves the integrity of the chutney, or whether there's a mogwai / gremlin thing going on here. Insert a wet spoon and stand back for the fireworks...

Sacrilege

I have never read anything like it. I'm still in shock, I think. It's enough to send a bloke over the edge into gibbering wreck territory (what? eh? yeah, I do read this rubbish...oh...I see).

Anyway, there's some well-known facts. Like these:

• Water runs downhill.
• When you spot that prime parking space from a distance, on getting closer, there's one of those really small, short cars parked up tight to the barrier.
• International friendlies are a waste of time, unless you have an injury fetish, a substitution fetish, or a injury and substitution fetish.
• Politicians will say anything to get power, and fiddle their expenses.
• S**t happens.

With one overriding, absolute, undeniable law to trump them all. The Smoked Streaky Principle. The Gloucester Old Spot Law.

Absolutely anything is better with bacon in.

There's also the Hickory Smoked Lean Back corollary:

Anything with bacon already in it, will generally be better with more bacon.

And the Speck Principle:

Unless there's a local disruption in the very fabric of the universe, you can't have enough pork products.

Yet the online Goulash recipe says, categorically, no bacon. Either the Hungarians are a very, very strange race indeed, their country occupying a local disturbance in the very fabric of the universe (see the Speck Principle, above), or there's been the typo to end all typos.

I think I need a cup of hot sweet tea and some sedatives...oh...and a bacon sandwich, naturally.