As inspired and succeed by making Mirabelle plum pickle, today’s recipe will be Victoria plum pickle. I received these beautiful plums from my colleague Maria, who has two large trees full of Victoria plums. I asked her specifically for the green, unripe ones which are much better to make pickle with. I just love that Denmark has different kinds of plum and every summer I get to make pickle with a new kind!

I used almost the same ingredients like before – except for jaggery, I used sugar. The holy trinity of Bangladeshi Bangali pickle is paach phoron, mustard oil and chili. But if you only have paach phoron, then you can omit other ingredients like mustard oil and jaggery and still make the pickle taste similar to homemade Bangladeshi pickle!

At first, I took a big deep pan and slightly toasted paach phoron. Then I pounded them in a mortar pestle coarsely and set them aside.

In the same wok, I added 200ml of mustard oil and heat in a medium temperature. Then I added some whole paach phoron, dry chilies and crushed garlic.

When garlic and chili starts to release flavour, I added the plums. I washed them beforehand and pat dried on towel, so there are no traces of water left.

I added the salt at this stage, so it helps in cooking the plums quickly.

I continued to stir the plums and they got softer by self. I did not add any water as the fruit contained a lot of water. As you can see, the outer skins are starting to get loose.

The plums are starting to get softened. It would be faster if the seeds were taken out, but I was too lazy to do that.

When plums were half cooked and softened, I added sugar. The amount of sugar depends on how sweet the plums already are and how sweet you want the pickle to be. In my case, I added almost 1/3 cup of sugar. But you can always taste before adding sugar.

Sugar already melted but I wanted the pickle to be more tight, not watery. So I let the pickle to simmer in low temperature for a while, until it gets to my desired consistency.

I tasted the pickle and I thought it still taste sour. Since I wanted the pickle to taste somewhat between sweet, sour and spicy, I added more sugar. If you want you can add more chili flakes to make it more spicy. In between I added little bit of tamarind to enhance color.

So this is how it looks like in the end. You can eat them as a relish, or sauce for any burrito or even after a heavy meals. But don’t be lazy like me, remove the pits and it will look more nicer!

Recipe: Victoria Plum Pickle for 1 month storage Prepping time: 10mins, Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients: 750 kilo of Victoria plum, preferably unripe Spice and Condiments: 150ml mustard oil 1 tsp Paach Phoron 150-200g Sugar (according to your taste) 1 tsp fine Salt 1 tsp Chili flakes 2-3 cloves of Garlic 1 tsp of tamarind sauce 2-3 Dry red Chili

Instruction: 1. Wash plums with cold water and pat dry. 2. In a big deep pan, dry roast paach phoron and then grind them in mortar pestle. 3. Heat mustard oil in the same wok. Add whole paach phoron, dry chili and crushed garlic. Cook in medium heat and continue to stir until they release nice fragrance. 4. Add plums and stir mix them well. Add salt too. The heat is still medium. 5. After 10 minutes, taste if they are sour or sweet. If sour add sugar or Jaggey (gur). 6. Add little tamarind and chili flakes. In the end add dry roasted paach phoron. 7. When finished, put them in a bowl immediately to cool down and avoid burning. After cooled down, store the pickle in a fridge.