Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
I have a jar of Indian "gooseberry pickle" in front of me. It's
yellowish-green spherical fruit about an inch across in oil and
spices. The fruit are the same colour right through, with a
slightly crunchy texture like pickled walnuts. There is one stone
in the middle of each fruit, pear-shaped with six sharp longitudinal
symmetric ridges and three small tufts at 120-degree angles at the
bottom (attached to three of the ridges). The fruit (whole) and the
spicy oil are the only ingredients.

It's labelled in five languages. One is Urdu which would presumably
give me the real scoop if I could read it. The others:

English: gooseberry
French: groseille a maquereau
German: stachelbeere
Italian: uva spina

No Linnaean binomial.

So what the heck is it? Pickled baby triffid?


This doesn't seem to match your description:

http://bhakshanam.wordpress.com/2006/06/13/uppillitta-nellikka-salted-gooseberries/

http://www.aayisrecipes.com/wp-conte...e%20hindi1.jpg

http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/im...ikaya/amla.jpg

I ma coming up with amla, nellikka, nellikaya... The ridges
don't seem that pronounced though. Maybe something related
but not this????

--
Jean B.