Chutneys: Finger-licking good

Rahul Verma

I am not sure if good fences make for good neighbours but I know for a fact that good chutneys do. Back in the 1980s, we had a neighbour whom we loved dearly. She had a lot of admirable traits but chief among these was the ability to rustle up delicious chutneys. She was from Andhra Pradesh, and the state has an incredible range of chutneys prepared with all kinds of ingredients, from tomatoes and eggplant to spinach and cucumber, all lashed with generous dollops of chillies.

Tomato-chilli chutney

Ingredients

• Urad dal ½ tsp
• Mustard seeds ½ tsp
• Onions (chopped) ½ cup
• Tomatoes (chopped) 1 cup
• Dried red chillies 4
• Grated coconut 1/4 cup
• Tamarind paste ½ tsp
• Asafoetida A pinch
• Salt To taste
• Oil As needed

Method

In a pan, heat the oil and add asafoetida, mustard seeds and urad dal. When the seeds splutter, add tomatoes, onions and chillies. Cook till the onions turn soft. Remove from stove. Add coconut, and then the tamarind paste and salt. Grind this with some warm water till you get a paste-like consistency. Serve with anything — from rice to paranthas and from idlis to vadas.

When we say chutney, we usually think of the coriander-mint chutney, popular across the country, especially in the North. When we think of South Indian chutneys, the coconut-and-mustard seeds concoction usually served with breakfast fare comes to mind. But South India has a huge array of chutneys, each one tastier and more innovative than the other. I was, many years ago, gifted a mouth-watering book, ‘Cooking at home with Pedatha: Vegetarian recipes from a traditional Andhra kitchen’. It lists various kinds of chutneys, and I go through it every now and then when I am thinking of food.

Take Pedatha’s carrot chutney, prepared with diced carrot that has been mixed with a tempering of mustard seeds, fenugreek, asafoetida and red chillies. Once ready, you add some lemon juice to it. Then, of course, there is the flaming hot gongura chutney — roselle leaves and tender stems are cooked on low flame in hot oil, tempered with mustard and fenugreek, and then flavoured with red chillies, green chillies, coriander leaves, curry leaves and asafoetida.

Not all chutneys are vegetarian, of course. You can have Kerala’s dried shrimp chutney, prepared with coarsely ground coconut. Kerala has a dry salted fish chutney, too, which is prepared with small dried fish, onions, grated coconut, ginger, green chillies, tamarind juice and curry leaves. Tamil Nadu’s thokku is a paste that can be cooked with various kinds of ingredients, including chicken.

What I like about chutneys is the fact that there are no hard and fast rules; you can prepare these with everything, and serve with anything that takes your fancy. Chutneys must have been one of the first items on our ancestors’ menu. You didn’t even need a fire to prepare these pastes.

Another of my favourite books, ‘The Bangala Table: Flavours and recipes from Chettinad’, mentions a dangar chutney, prepared with huge amounts of red chillies, urad dal, fenugreek, shallots, onions, jaggery, garlic, tomatoes and potato. ‘The Suriani Kitchen’, which has some delightful Kerala recipes, mentions a date and raisin chutney. For this, dates and raisins are soaked for two hours in vinegar, and ginger and garlic are tempered in hot oil with chilli powder. Then, everything is blended in a food processor.

Let’s not forget Karnataka. Its beetroot chutney is prepared with red chillies, gram dal, urad dal, coconut and tamarind and tempered with mustard, red chillies, curry leaves and asafoetida. Coorg is known for its white sesame chutney, and Mangaluru has its horsegram (kulthi) chutney — prepared with gram, grated coconut, chillies, garlic and tamarind.

One of my favourites is Pedatha’s cucumber chutney. For this, you have to peel and chop cucumbers into 1-inch-long pieces. Dry roast and grind sesame seeds coarsely. In a wok, heat some oil, add black gram, mustard seeds, chillies, curry leaves and asafoetida. Add chopped cucumber and stir for a minute. Add tamarind pulp, turmeric powder, sambar powder, the ground sesame and jaggery. Cook for a bit. You can’t go wrong with this sweet-and-sour chutney.

The word chutney is derived from a variation of chaatnaa — or licking your fingers. When it comes to chutneys, I lick my fingers, and the platter, clean.