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Chapter 5: How do you chutney?
Basic Coconut Chutney
Grind together:
- about 1/2 a grated coconut*
- 1-2 tablespoons jaggery [raw palm sugar]
- small lump of dried tamarind**
- 3-4 green chillies (or to taste)
- salt to taste
- just enough water to grind
Variation 1: handful of fresh dill
Variation 2: handful of fresh coriander+2 teaspoons fried gram dal [pottu kadalai]
Taste and adjust spice or sourness or saltiness
Spoon into a serving dish
Seasonings [talippu]:
Heat 1 Tablespoon oil till smoking
Quickly add:
- 1 teaspoon urad dal
- 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 1 dry red chilli, broken
- generous pinch hing [asafoetida]
- few curry leaves [if available]
When mustard seeds splutter, pour hot seasonings over the waiting chutney
Mix–and enjoy with dosas, plain hot rice, or on toast.
This chutney is best fresh, and keeps for only a day or two, refrigerated. Return to room temperature before eating.
*You can find a coconut scraper at any Indian grocers for about $10–along with all the other ingredients listed.
**Please promise never ever to use tamarind concentrate? It’s just not the same thing! Dried tamarind is worth all the effort it takes to find it.
Mixed pepper Thokku
This recipe deserves a post all its own, for it came from a very beloved aunt who’s not properly been introduced on Paticheri. For now, just the barebones recipe. Be warned, this thokku is not for the faint of heart!
- A hearty mix of spicy and sweet peppers: jalapenos, red/yellow/green peppers, banana peppers, poblanos, ripe red chillies–and whatever you can get your hands on. Any combination will do fine, as long as there’s a fair bit of spice in the mix. All should be well-chopped but not seeded. About 5-6 cups worth should do, give or take.
- In a large non-reactive pan, heat about a 1/2 cup oil to smoking point, then add the peppers in a go. Stir well so the oil coats the peppers.
- Keep your vent on! The pungent smells rising can be hard to take.
- Add a lime-sized lump of tamarind–pull it apart, so it can soften along with the peppers.
- When the peppers look like they’re softening, transfer to a food processor. Allow to cool a little, and whir a few times into a coarse paste. Return to the pan.
- Keep the flame on med-high and stir to prevent scorching.
- Add: 2-3 teaspoons of salt, and about a 1/2 cup of jaggery. The addition of jaggery will make the mixture a bit watery–this is normal. Keep stirring; the object is to get the mixture to cook down so that there is literally no moisture left to cook off. Taste–and adjust salt and sweet as necessary. You may also need to add a little oil, if you feel the mixture is sticking and prone to scorching.
- Once the oil begins to appear at the edges of the cooking thokku, turn off the flame; you’re done.
- Seasonings [talippu]:
- In a separate small frying pan, heat 2 tablespoons oil till smoking
- Quickly add: 1 teaspoon mustard seeds, generous pinch hing [asafoetida], few curry leaves [if available]
- When mustard seeds splutter, pour hot seasonings over the waiting thokku
- Mix well, and bottle
- This thokku should keep well, refrigerated, for 2 months
Thakkali Chutney/ Tomato Chutney
In a medium-sized pan, heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil to smoking point. Then add:
- 1/2 teaspoon onion seeds [kalonji]
- 1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
- 2 dry red chillies, broken
- generous pinch of hing [asafoetida]
When the mustard seeds splutter, follow quickly with
- 3 cloves garlic, miced
- 1/2 inch fresh ginger root, finely julienned
- 1-2 sprigs curry leaves
- 1 green chilli, slit
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
Stir briskly for a few seconds, and add: 5-6 large, ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
Reduce heat and bring to a simmer. Now add:
- 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder (or to taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
- 1 tablespoon powdered jaggery [raw palm sugar] or brown sugar
Mix again, and allow to cook until the chutney thickens, mashing tomatoes against the sides of the pan.
Optional: dry roast and powder 1 tablespoon sesame; sprinkle on top of the cooked chutney.
Serve hot with rice, rotis, or with omelettes and eggs for breakfast.
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Reader Comments…
Absolutely wonderful essay on the mystery of “chutney”! “Chutney” displays the lovely tension between India’s almost Germanic love of naming and its studied cavalierness to the use of those names in practice. Combine that psycho-linguistic conflict with the ambiguities inherent in its internal diversity — and those created deliberately in chauvinistic displays of difference — and its small wonder that we all talk past each-other.
Loved it! :-D!
I would also add our particular quirks for the word Chutney/ Chammanthi.
Folks from South Malabar would use the tern ‘Sammanthi’. If it is a ‘thick-non-watery texture’ it would be ‘Unda-Sammanthi’. Not dry but acheiving that balance in moistness which gives ‘shape’. Whereas ”Thekkaru’ ( Southerners ) would use the term with “Ch’!!!! :-D!
And for the Pacchadi’s there is also an in between version, the ‘Parekku’/ ‘Parukku’. This version usually adds a pinch of mustard. In doing so, it highlights the freshness and the fact that it will not ‘keep’ for long. This will be an uncooked version without any tempering.
Whereas the Pacchadi can be with cooked or raw vegetables folded into the coconut based sammanthi. It also has tempering.
I LOVE the coconut graters! Both of them. And this discourse on chutney is fascinating and enlightening. And revealing. Language, understanding, history, and the amendment of them all by travel, colonisation, memory….
You’ll have to come shopping with me sometime on the East Coast road where traders make fortunes off our collective nostalgia. We’ll rummage and find you one of those old graters to sharpen and put into use again 🙂
Deal!
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I spent an entire hour late in the afternoon relishing your chutney series, Deepa! I was posting moringa leaves rasam on my blog and wanted to link to your blog for some rasam definitions, because for me you’re my rasam guru! And what were the odds that I ended up on your chutney essays! I just saw “How do you chutney”, and that was enough inclination for me to jump into the boat and sail into chutney land. I’ve forever been trying to unravel chutneys, and the more I’ve read, honestly the more confused I’ve been and still got more intrigued! Is it serendipity that writing one such essay has crossed my mind often? Blessed to know you. 🙂
Soooo nice to find you’ve been on here, Lopa! No surprise at all that the task of writing such an investigative and elucidatory essay on chutney crossed your mind, too — we’re interested in food categories, aren’t we? I wonder if you’d be interested in a collaboration on this. I mean, my own knowledge has widened and lord knows my pictures here need some updating… I was taking new photos of the same chutneys and having similar thoughts this weekend — now that’s more than serendipity, that’s the universe sending signs! xoxx
A collaboration sounds utterly fabulous!
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My parents migrated to Trinidad and Tobago during the latter part of the 19th century from what was then called the United Province (I think it’s now part of present-day Uttar Pradesh and spoke Bhojpuri…sad to say I can’t speak any of it). My mom made coconut chutney to go with khichari, during the ‘dry season’.
She first roasted the coconut in the chulha (clay oven) and then crushed, and ground it on the ‘Sill and Lorrha’ (not sure if that’s the right spelling but it’s the hand-grinding stone…I think it’s called an Ammikkallu in the South). She’d then the other ingredients: chilli peppers, garlic, onion, culantro, Cuban oregano, and salt, and mix it all together.
Yes, I know the silbatta (it goes by other names, too) and the amikkal, which are still used here though less and less (blenders are common). Your mum’s recipe sounds lovely, especially the cuban oregano/ karpooravalli addition if I got that right. That must have made it very distinctive. I shall have to try! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and share!
Thank you. I came across your blog quite by accident and am glad I did…the recipes are quite an eye-opener as, being so far from India, both in time and distance, the ingredients used in the cooking back home were very basic.
But there’s magic from those basic ingredients, as I’m sure you know well. After that of course the edible world and human creativity are vast, but what people often managed with simple daily things continues to strike me as remarkable!
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