Lovepickle Indian Pickle

One of my regular tasks for Grape Vine is to comb through websites and press releases of trade promotions, to see if there are any forthcoming competitions to look out for. And I often get sidetracked, especially when I'm reading the food and drink sections.

This happened a few days ago  when I saw mention  of a new range of Indian Pickles called  Lovepickle. My mind can go off at smutty tangents and ....well,  Lovepickle sounded to me like a pet name for something else, so I made a comment to that effect on Twitter.

Within moments, I got  a reply from @lovepickle_uk who offered me a jar to try. I thought that was a great piece of PR - first of all to be proactively searching social media for mention of their product, and secondly to invite somebody who had been joking about it to try it and see whether it really IS funny. So I replied, telling them about this blog and saying I would write about it here.

The pickle comes in three strengths, mild, medium and hot, so I asked to try the medium one.

The ingredients list is a joy to read - 50% tomatoes, along with vinegar, mustard oil, mustard seed, ginger, garlic, chilli and spices. Nothing synthetic, nothing hydrogentated - in fact nothing that wouldn't be there if you'd made it yourself.

Opening the jar releases a wonderful hot spicy aroma, and looking into the jar confirms this is a natural product with the mustard seeds and pieces of tomato skin clearly visible.

I  decided to try it with breadsticks - after all, that's what you're always offered on tasting stands isn't it? I suppose they have a neutral flavour, but at home we tend to eat pickles and  chutneys either with curries or with cold meats and  cheeses,  so maybe if a tasting stand offered us baskets of mini poppadums and cubes of Cheddar we'd have a better idea about how the products would taste in everyday use. Anyway, I digress...... here's my own  tasting plate. I didn't have any poppadums in the house so I used some of the delicious  cocktail sized crispbreads from Peters Yard.

The pickle was delicious, absolutely packed with flavour. Definitely one for with a curry rather than cheese though. And although I love hot spicy foods, I found it to be as hot as I would like to go - the mustard oil left a pleasant afterburn on the lips and tongue that might cross the line between pleasure and pain if it was any hotter. If you are a fan of Indian pickles such as hot lime pickle, you will LOVE Lovepickle!