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Chapter 2: The Clarification
I turn to trusted sources to shed some light on the Great Chutney Mystery.
Source #1: My parents–whom I still believe know most of what there is to know about this world.
My parents: Chutneys are coconut-based. Thuvaiyals are not.
Me: Oh, so it has nothing to do with chutneys being fresh and thuvaiyals being cooked?
My parents: Right. But chutneys are ground, too. Thuvaiyals are not.
Me: Ok. Coconut vs. non-coconut; ground vs. not. So what are thuvaiyals exactly then?
My parents: Thuvaiyals are also a sort of chutney.
Me: <<blank stare>>
Source 2: The Maids–whom we consult routinely in India for all things from the weather reports to political-goings on.
Scene: Large vat of my very favorite burn-your-insides-out chilli pepper thokku (as I’ve always called it) is cooking away on the stove. I’ll soon cool and grind it roughly, and then return to the pan to cook down further.
Maids: Thuvaiyals are ground with roasted dals. Thokkus are cooked down until they are mushy. They are not ground.
Me: Oh! So I’m actually making a thuvaiyal, when I’ve always called it a thokku? But then what we call thakkali chutney — it is sometimes ground and sometimes not ground. What is it?
Maids: That’s just a chutney.
Me: So… what’s a chutney?
Maids: It’s a bit like a thuvaiyal. Sometimes we just grind half the thuvaiyal, not all of it.
Me: <<blank stare>>
Source 3: The Internet–which, research shows, is frequently used to verify what people are saying, and which is therefore a source of truth in its own right.
The beautiful Radhika at Just Homemade describes the thokku as a “relish“:
“[The thokku falls] in between Thogayal (chutney) and Oorugai (Pickle) in Tamil. A spicy condiment, it is a chutney devoid of coconut, sautéed in oil long enough to remove all moisture content to extend its shelf life. It is almost always tangy made with characteristic ingredients like tamarind or mango, fenugreek seeds and green chillies.”
Me: Yes! That’s it! The parts about characteristic ingredients and shelf-life make perfect sense.
But–hold on–what’s a relish again?
Google–>Wikipedia once more:
“A relish is a cooked, pickled, or chopped vegetable or fruit food item typically used as a condiment in particular to enhance a staple. It originated in India and has since become popular throughout the world. Examples are jams, chutneys, and the North American “relish,” a pickled cucumber jam eaten with hot dogs or hamburgers.” The post continues: “Relish probably came about from the need to preserve vegetables in the winter. In India (where the preparation originated from), this generally includes either vegetables, herbs or fruits.”
Me: <<trapped in another endless sweltering Pondicherry summer>> Originated in India?? Where we have these long hard winters and need preserved foods to see us through them? Take that, you hot-dog chowing, burger-consuming Americans! We Indians put the relish–I mean, thokku on your culinary icons!
[Aside 1: Reason #67 not to use Wikipedia for any serious research: You might end up believing that Indians use relish preserves to see them through long, hard winters.]
[Aside 2: There’s this joke about a product that several countries are to collaborate in creating. Each one makes an improvement and passes it to the next. When India passes the product on, nobody can figure out what was improved or changed. Until someone looked on the bottom: “Made in India” was imprinted on there. Wikipedia got that right.]
Next, a 2007 exchange between the inimitable Indira of Mahanandi, who was blogging recipes before the rest of us knew what a blog was all about, and Sudha leaving a comment on her post on “Tomato Pacchadi (Tomato Pickle)“:
Question: interesting that this tomato pickle/chutney is called “pachadi”. In Tamil, pachadi = raita (more or less) i.e. made with yogurt and eaten fresh. Is pachadi a common word for pickle in Telugu, and what’s the difference from thokku? thanks SS
Hi Sudha,
In Telugu – pacchadi applies to both yogurt and chilli based chutneys.
Thokku = Grind or pound in Telugu. The Sun-dried method, where the tomatoes placed under Sun and then ground with spices is traditionally called Tomato Thokku. […] I didn’t call my recipe thokku because there was no grinding of tomatoes in this simmering method.
Me: <<groan>>
In Tamil homes, thokku is cooked down into mushiness, and therefore not necessarily ground. Along with all else, Verne and I are destined then to talk past each other, then, for all our cross-linguistic lives.
Pass the pacchadi, dear. [Being Telugu, he hands me the Tomato relish–er, thokku. No, wait, he hands me the pickle].
Pass the pacchadi, dear. [Being Tamil, I hand him the raita].
If my parents, the maids, and such elegant masters of cookery and imagery as Radhika and Indira cannot definitively tie up the Great Chutney Mystery, to what source can anyone turn?
.
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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!
[…] journeying round the world from Wikipedia to websites and blogs, studying various relishes and condiments, she discovered that names are […]
[…] speak Tamil-English-plus whatever else; throw pizzas on one side and cook thokku and sambhar on the other; and because mixing and mashing is just not just the reality of our […]
[…] to chutney? Or, if you prefer, […]
[…] I most needed a creative outlet) and for everyone else who’s ever come home for dosas and chutney, company and conversation. It takes inspiration from Krish Ashok’s crazy-funny infographics, […]
[…] chutney of course has as little to do with the Indian dishes that inspired it as curry does. (Authenticity is not the point.) But it is threaded through English […]
[…] on streets for water (and vazhuku, or the young coconut flesh inside), fresh for ceremonial use or in the kitchen, dry pressed into oil (yup, that’s extra virgin for ya) or used in masala mixes and powders, […]
[…] root, depending on who is telling you what that stuff really is), sugar (of course), a coconut (of course!), some sesame seeds (usually), and a few almonds (leftover from what the boys didn’t use up […]
[…] Fact was, there were too many tomatoes, and bushels more coming in daily from the overgrown, exuberant, heedlessly growing garden. There were only two choices, if we couldn’t eat them fast enough: give them away (some where), or chutney. […]
[…] this preparation from snake gourd seeds is not a chutney, but a thuvaiyal (துவையல்), as it’s lightly cooked and incorporates roasted dals. (Sometimes […]
[…] powders are, exactly as the name indicates, all the flavors of a wet chutney in a dry powdered form. They’re intense combinations of tastes, hence the […]
[…] onions, or other spices, but all that is unnecessarily complex, and makes a simple chutney into a thokku really. I stick to the minimalist simplicity of my father’s cookery: ginger, tamarind, […]
[…] I should come to pickling — though I’ll insist this is not a post about chutnification (chutneys are not pickles, pickles are not chutneys; I’ve blogged enough already about this who…), not really even about Indian ways of pickling. I’m not even going to get into the histories […]
[…] I know Indian classificatory systems can be beguiling, and I’ve wrestled with them before (here on chutneys; here on amaranths) but they’re not unfathomable. One just has to roll up sleeves, be […]
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!
[…] sandwiches, becoming a sauce for samosas and pakodas, a topper for eggs, and on and on. In the classificatory schemes for Indian chutneys, this one is really more of a condiment which definitely confirms the “lickability” of […]
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!
[…] own names based on how we found them or how we think of them or what they’re analogous to. Chutneys and rasams and even rices are cases in point. And now this little teatime snack and roadside nibble […]
[…] typical for pickles. But all that is unnecessarily complex, and makes a simple chutney into a thokku really. I stick to the minimalist simplicity of my father’s cookery: ginger, tamarind, […]
[…] vinegar and water, reserved for soldiers and slaves. The British navy apparently used shrubs (and pickles) to ward off scurvy on sea voyages. Shrubs were thus thirst-quenching alternatives to alcohol, or a […]