Gongura pachadi (gongura pickle)

About this pickle

Gongura is the sour leaf of Telangana and Andhra cooking, a fixture of Hyderabad vegetable stalls, and gongura pachadi is the form that goes into a jar. The leaves are cooked down until they collapse into a dark, almost jammy mass, then brought together with red chilli. The taste is two things at once: a clean, lemony sourness from the leaf and a deep, rounded heat from the chilli. Ours is 3 of 3 on our chilli scale and contains garlic. You'll find the same leaf in the gongura rice on our Hyderabad Wednesday lunch menu; this jar is the stronger, saltier version that you add a spoon at a time. In English it's sometimes called sorrel or roselle-leaf pickle, but in Hyderabad people simply ask for gongura. Once you have it on the table, plain rice never feels plain again.

How to enjoy

• The Hyderabad way: hot rice, a spoon of gongura pachadi and a little ghee or oil, with raw onion slices on the side.
• Stir half a spoon into plain dal for a sour-hot dal rice.
• Serve a small spoon beside curd rice; a little goes a long way.
• Spread thinly on a dosa before folding it.