A little bit of stirring is all that is required to make a cool, tall glass of India’s favourite summer thanda – intensely refreshing, supremely beneficial Shikanji! Your Glass of Chill this summer!

 No one can get through the harsh Indian summer without gorging on cool, refreshing drinks. And anyone who’s been brought up in this heat will have memories of being admonished to come in from the heat and have some thanda “nimbu-paani” or Shikanji.

 Shikanji has been the summer cure-all for generations of mothers and grandmothers. Garmi lag gayi? Shikanji pilao! Stomach upset? Shikanji pilao! Feeling tired? Have Shikanji! Feeling nauseous? Have Shikanji!

 Ammiji’s kitchen always used to have a jug of masala Shikanji chilling in the fridge for anyone who came in from outdoors during the peak summer. She used to put a special, secret masala blend in her Shikanji that was not only superbly refreshing but incredibly addictive too. It is that secret masala that we have added to our mix for Ammiji’s Instant Shikanji. Because, as always, Ammiji knows best!

 Shikanji, the desi cousin of lemonade, is sold across the streets of India by hawkers who keep it cool in earthen pots. Fresh lemon and mint, rock salt and cumin, and loads of ice – that’s what makes for a tasty and reviving Shikanji. That is, until you try Ammiji’s Shikanji. Delicately spiced, mildly sweet – it will be your best friend this summer.

 Ammiji’s Shikanji contains dried lemon powder and spices like cumin, clove, pepper and the super-beneficial Myrobalan berries or Haritaki. It also contains a bit of dried mint for that refreshing flavour and a tiny bit of Naushadhar for its digestive properties as documented by Ayurveda. The salt we use is natural pink Himalayan salt, chock full of minerals. Together, these ingredients make a drink that’s not only refreshing but also good for keeping dehydration at bay and keeping the digestive system working optimally during the summers.

 So each time you feel tired, anxious, nauseous, queasy or just plain sick of the heat, take a leaf out of Ammiji’s playbook and stir up some instant coolness for yourself with Ammiji’s Instant Shikanji!

 Directions for use: Add 1 – 1 ½ tablespoons of Ammiji’s Instant Shikanji powder in a glass. Top it up with chilled water. Stir to dissolve. Add ice. Garnish with lemon slices or mint leaves if desired. Your thanda glass of chill is ready!

 Ingredients: Sugar, Powdered Lemon, Pink Himalayan Salt, Cumin, Black Pepper, Clove, Harad, Naushadhar, Dried Mint

 Weight: 250 gms

 Price: Rs 450 350

 Good For: 3 months

 Always use a clean, dry spoon. Store jar away from heat or direct sunlight.

Pure mango goodness in a glass – without the mess! Let the temperature take an instant nosedive with a chilled glass of Mango milkshake!

 We are all familiar with those mornings when leaving for a work is a blur of cooking food, packing tiffins, serving breakfast and ensuring that everything and everyone is set for the day. To simplify your routine a wee bit, Ammiji’s launches its Instant Milkshake Mix Collection. All the goodness of a homemade milkshake, made in a couple of easy steps. Because what could be more chill than starting off your day with a perfectly make milkshake or smoothie?

 For our Mango Milkshake Mix, we’ve taken pure dried mango sections and powdered them. No essence, no artificial flavors. So each time you add a scoop to your milkshake, you can be sure you’re getting the goodness of a mango milkshake, without the added bother and mess of chopping up a mango. After all, what’s an Indian summer morning if you don’t start it off with a chilled, tall glass of mango milkshake?

 Directions: Use about 1 tbsp for every 100 ml of milk. Add ice. Blend.

 Ingredients: Sugar, Dried Mango, Milk powder, Glucose, Cornflour

Weight: 250 gms

 Price: Rs 550 450

 Good for: 6 months

 Always use a clean, dry spoon. Store jar away from heat or direct sunlight.

Thick, chocolatey goodness, just a whir away. Add and blend for an instant cold chocolate shake!

 We are all familiar with those mornings when leaving for a work is a blur of cooking food, packing tiffins, serving breakfast and ensuring that everything and everyone is set for the day. To simplify your routine a wee bit, Ammiji’s launches its Instant Milkshake Mix Collection. All the goodness of a homemade milkshake, made in a couple of easy steps. Because what could be more chill than starting off your day with a perfectly make milkshake or smoothie?

 Ammiji’s Chocolate Milkshake Mix has dutch-processed cocoa powder, giving it a luxurious mouthfeel and a rich chocolatey taste. It also has a subtle hint of vanilla. Add it to milk or yoghurt, throw in some ice, blend, and you’ll have a super cool and super yum chocolate milkshake to cool you down this summer!

 Directions: Use about 1 tbsp for every 100 ml of milk. Add ice. Blend.

 Ingredients: Sugar, Milk powder, Cocoa powder, Glucose, Cornflour, Vanilla Extract

 Weight: 250 gms

 Price: Rs 550 450

 Good for: 6 months

Always use a clean, dry spoon. Store jar away from heat or direct sunlight.

Plain vanilla has a new definition. Cool down your summer with some homemade milky goodness…

We are all familiar with those mornings when leaving for a work is a blur of cooking food, packing tiffins, serving breakfast and ensuring that everything and everyone is set for the day. To simplify your routine a wee bit, Ammiji’s launches its Instant Milkshake Mix Collection. All the goodness of a homemade milkshake, made in a couple of easy steps. Because what could be more chill than starting off your day with a perfectly make milkshake or smoothie?

 Ammiji’s Vanilla Milkshake Mix has pure vanilla extract. The fragrance will uplift you at the same time as the taste enthralls you! Just stir it into some milk, add ice, blend or use a frother, and a tall glass of thick vanilla goodness is ready! Add it to your smoothies for that extra flavor too.

 Directions: Use about 1 tbsp for every 100 ml of milk. Add ice. Blend.

 Ingredients: Sugar, Milk powder, Glucose, Vanilla extract, Cornflour

 Weight: 250 gms

 Price: Rs 450 350

Good for: 6 months

Always use a clean, dry spoon. Store jar away from heat or direct sunlight.

Back in January 2021, Ammiji’s health saw a sudden decline. That was the first time we saw her look slightly defeated. On one of our visits to her, while we sat in her verandah on a cold and sunny winter afternoon, she suddenly popped the question we were not prepared for, “So when are you doing my phaalsa chutney? After I die?”

That led to a promise, and here’s fulfilling that promise…

Phalsaas are those short-lived little morsels of happiness that bless us with their presence for about a month every year in North India, and then they disappear, leaving us craving for that tangy, crunchy, titillating feel in our mouth. Tiny little berries that range from a dull pick to a deep purple in colour, they are best had dusted with some rock salt. We’ve already made a sherbet out of them, and this year, because of the promise, we’ve cooked them into Ammiji’s favorite chutney.

This recipe is classic Ammiji. It’s simple, it uses minimal ingredients, it has a slightly spicy kick and it’s fragrant. The end result is a chutney that has layers of flavour and the subtle hint of the spices we use in our garam masala.

This chutney brings back memories of baskets of phalsaas, fresh from the orchard. We’d eat some (ok, a lot) and the rest would be purloined by Ammiji to make her phaalsa sherbet and chutney. According to her, these were precious little berries and they had to be preserved in some form or the other so we could enjoy them for a longer time.

So here’s Ammiji’s favorite chutney, in her classic recipe, with her loving blessings.

Goes well with any meal. Best had with ajwain paranthas. Or better still, by the spoonful!

Ingredients: Phalsaa berries, organic raw cane sugar, Rock salt, Ammiji’s garam masala, brown cardamom.

Caution: These berries contain tiny seeds that may be a choking hazard for small children.

Weight: 200 gm

Refrigerate upon opening. Keep refrigerated for longer shelf life.

Chholey are to Amritsar, what Dal Makhni is to Delhi. Every corner has an eatery that will serve kulcha-chholey, matthi-chholey or their own version of the traditional, masala-spiked Amritsari chholey. In Amritsar, when a woman is not in the mood to cook, she’ll just order in some chholey to go with roti or rice and serve up a delightful meal. When guests are over, it’s chholey that are put on the table first. Then it’s only understandable that Amritsaris have perfected the art of cooking chholey.

Ammiji has her own recipes for chholey. There’s the curry that goes well with rice, or the dry, spicy version she makes to go with halwa-puri. Or there’s this semi-dry version that can be had with kulchas, matthis, rotis or even rice – and that version is our particular favorite. Dunk a plain kulcha in, top it with some chutney and raw onions, and you’re in foodie heaven. Or heap the chholey onto a crisp, thin matthi and there, heaven again. This recipe calls for a ground masala, which Ammiji makes herself. After much bantering, we got her to divulge the details of the masala, and here it is!

This masala will add spice to your chholey, and a whole lot of tang; and flavours, layers of flavours, that will make you lick your bowl clean.

How to Use: Boil chholey. Don’t keep too much water since this masala is best in a semi-wet, lipta hua gravy. You can add the masala directly to the boiled chholey and let it simmer for a while. Or if you want to make it Ammiji’s way, make a tadka of onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger, and add the masala to that before adding to the chholey. Let us know which way you prefer!

Add 1 tablespoon for about 100 gms of uncooked chickpeas.

Ingredients: Corainder, Cumin, Dry Mango, Caraway, Dry Ginger, Cinnamon, Cloves, Nutmeg, Black pepper, Fenugreek, Hing, Salt.

Contains no onion or garlic. This masala is ground at home, using premium spices. Contains salt, so check before adding more.

Weight: 200 gms

Store in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight.

Good for: 6 months.

The famous Amritsari wadiyan, hand-made at home. Sun-dried dumplings of fiery goodness that add a subtly delicious flavor to any curry or pulao.

Who hasn’t heard about Amritsari papad wadiyan? Any tourist worth her or his salt will pick up a pack or two from the ubiquitous papad shops that surround the Golden Temple. These papad and wadiyan, though delicious, are mass produced under questionable hygiene conditions. Ammiji visited these shops only if it were an emergency and if she had run out of her own homemade papad wadiyan. Even now, when her arthritic fingers will not let her roll out papad or shape the wadiyan properly, she will sit on a chair in her verandah, and get these made by her helper under her eagle-eyed supervision.

These papad and wadiyan come to you from Amritsar, made under Ammiji’s supervision, from ingredients that are hand-picked by her. They are made from premium urad dal and use the choicest spices.
Amritsari wadiyan are famous around the world. Put them in a simple potato curry and they take on the shape of a gourmet dish. Add them to a plain pulao, and the rice obtains a kick it never had. Pair them with any kind of string beans as a dry dish, and you’ll have a side dish that’ll hog center stage. Wadiyan are that spicy part of traditional Amritsari cuisine that the rest of the world has yet to emulate. And Ammiji’s wadiyan are definitely the best you can get. Dumplings made from ground urad dal and spices and then sun dried under Ammiji’s supervision, according to the recipe that was passed down to her from her mother-in-law. We kid you not, these are that particular bomb of flavor that will leave you wanting more even as you marvel at the spice level.

Weight: 250gms

Include a delicious dose of health in your daily meals. This pickle harnesses the massive power of garlic in tiny, delicious and intensely addictive bites.

 Who hasn’t heard about the multifarious benefits of garlic? From curing colds to increasing longevity, garlic and the compounds present in it have been credited with myriad health benefits by civilizations through the ages. Maybe that is why this aromatic is revered and included in almost every cuisine around the world.

 And of course, Ammiji is all for the wisdom passed down through generations! While ginger is her favourite remedy for anything that ails you, garlic is her steady way of ensuring that nothing ever ails you. And her garlic pickle is our way of ensuring that you get a regular dose of good health!

 Ammiji’s Garlic Pickle has fat cloves of desi garlic, pickled with mild spices. It’s not very spicy – Ammiji believed in letting the flavour and umami of garlic shine through in this pickle. It will go well with almost anything – from theplas to paranthas, and from dal-chawal to sabzi-roti. Just make sure that you eat it every single day, as Ammiji intended!

 Ingredients: Garlic, Salt, Red Chilli, Fenugreek seeds, Mustard seeds, Fennel seeds, Nigella seeds, Vinegar, Mustard Oil.

 Weight: 175 gm

 Price: Rs 400 300 (inclusive of taxes)

 Good for: 8 months

Refrigerate after opening. (This pickle contains no preservatives.)

Always use a clean, dry spoon while scooping out Ammiji’s delicious pickles!

Big, fat red chillies, stuffed to the gills with a delicious khatta-teekha achaari masala. Can there be anything better? 

If there’s one thing that Ammiji loves, it’s her chillies. Green ones, red ones, big ones, small ones, teekha ones, sweet ones – all chillies are equal in her eyes. So we’ve taken one of her favorite chillies and used her classic recipe of stuffed chilli pickle to make this traditional Banarasi pickle.

The pleasure of this pickle does not come with biting into it. It comes from slowly coaxing the masala out from the chilli with the help of a spoon, a parantha or your finger, and then mixing it into your food to achieve a heavenly combination. The magic of this pickle does not come from simply eating it. The magic comes from that whole sensory experience of smelling it, deciding upon how much masala you want with each bite, and when you want to break off a piece of the chilli. Our Banarasi Mirch Achaar is just an instrument – you decide how you create magic out of it!

Seasonal fresh red chillies are stuffed with the usual culprits – our pickling spices (mixed in a secret ratio) – to achieve a pickle that will take the place of pride on your dining table. Not only will you enjoy pairing this pickle with your food, but you’ll also enjoy using the excess masala in it in your recipes while cooking in the kitchen. ;)

Ingredients: Fresh Red Chillies, Salt, Black Salt, Red Chilli Powder, Nigella Seeds, Carom Seeds, Mustard Seeds, Fenugreek Seeds, Fennel, Cumin, Black Pepper, Asafoetida, Turmeric, Mustard Oil.

Weight: 300 gms

Price: Rs 400 350

Good for: 12 months

Store in a cool, dry place. Refrigerate for longer shelf life.

Fresh green chillies, pickled with jaggery. Is it sweet? Yes. Is it tangy? Of course. Is it spicy? Hell yeah! Warning: Insanely addictive.

Ammiji has this trick where she’ll add a pinch of jaggery to a dish at a particular stage of cooking. You can’t taste the jaggery but there’s this intriguing sweetness to any sabzi cooked by her. So when she first made this pickle, and called it GudMirchi, we thought she’d thrown her usual pinch of jaggery in. But boy, were we in for a surprise!

This sublime pickle is sweet. But it’s hella fiery too. Just when you feel the smoke starting to come out of your ears, you’ll be assailed by the umami sweetness of pure jaggery. And in between there’ll be tartness, saltiness and sheer, absolute wonder at the complexity of this pickle.

The jaggery used in this pickle is organic and the white vinegar is natural, in keeping with our tenets of using only the finest, most premium ingredients.

Coarsely chopped green chillies are cooked with ginger, garlic and spices before being drowned with a syrup of jaggery and vinegar. Khatta meetha is only one clichéd way to describe the end result!

Pair this achaar with paranthas, dal-chawal or mathris, and we promise you’ll be in heaven. (Psst, we also like the achaar with uttapams, but let’s keep that a secret.)

Ingredients: Green Chilli, Jaggery, Ginger, Garlic, Mustard Seeds, Fennel Seeds, Fenugreek seeds, Cumin, Vinegar, Mustard Oil

Net Weight: 175 gm

Good For: 12 months

Keep refrigerated for longer shelf life.