LEMON PICKLE / LIME PICKLE

My interest in pickling has no bounds. This is my MIL's way of pickling elumichangai oorugai. While a fresher, my husband taught this to me.

INGREDIENTS:
Lemon - 50
Sea salt (kal uppu)- 1 1/2 cups 
Turmeric powder - 4 tsp.
Red chillies (round variety) - 100 gms. OR
(long variety) - 75 gms.
Gingelly oil - 1 litre
Hing - 1 teaspoon
Mustard seeds - 2 tablespoons

METHOD:

Wash lemons and pat it dry with a clean towel. Cut 40 lemons to cubes. Squeeze juice from 10 lemons and keep aside.

In a clean dry bowl, put a layer of cut lemon and then a layer of salt and turmeric powder. Repeat this till all the lemons are finished. (If doing in small quantities, you can follow this step).

Add the juice of 10 lemons now.

Mix well. Transfer it to a sterile bottle and close the lid.

Mix well daily, using a dry spatula, for 5 days. After 5 days, the pickle will absorb all the salt and become soft.
Heat a kadai, add 1 ladle of oil and roast the chillies without burning it.

This is the important step. When cool, powder the chillies to a powder as shown below. It should be neither fine nor coarse.

Add this to the lemon

Heat the remaining oil, add mustard seeds and hing. Allow mustard seeds to splutter. Take it off the stove and when lukewarm, pour over it.

Mix well and when cool, transfer it to a sterile bottle or clean jar (jaadi). Make sure that there is oil above an inch of the pickle. This can be preserved even for a year.
NOTE:(More salt can be added if the lime is too sour).