The word Chutney has become synonymous with a hot and spicy taste, (and paste), which can be considered typically Indian. This word is quite common in nearly all the native vernacular dialects and tongues, especially when you are threatening a person to beat him up into chutney. The idea is quite clear, grinding someone so thoroughly and minutely until one cannot differentiate between the components which have gone into his configuration.
Chutney has been an integral part of Indian cuisine, for more than 5000 years and that is the reason why no Indian meal is supposed to be complete without chutney and pickles as a tasty digestive accompaniment. Indian food is naturally spicy, and it is made spicier with any sort of spicy chutney.
It was brought to England somewhere in the 17th and 18th century, and because it had such exotic ingredients in it like mango, spices, and vinegar, it soon became very popular with the English public. Chutney, especially mint chutney began to be eaten with meat dishes. Chutney also began to be cooked, like jam instead of being either raw. Some chutneys are cooked slowly in spices and vinegar, and then bottled, in the West. They are definitely not the authentic chutneys, but a variation of the general theme.
Chutney is normally made of any material in the kitchen, which can include tomatoes, mint, cucumber, onions, and tamarind along with freshly ground spices. The idea is to mix up all these ingredients so thoroughly that the resulting paste looks good to the eye, tastes good to the discerning palate and aids in the digestion of the heavy spicy Indian meal.
Chutney is normally made up of raw material, and that is the reason why it is very easy to grind some tomatoes and some onions with salt, pepper, red chilies, some fried cumin seeds, and some bishops weed to make up a delicious chutney.
After that, you have to add in a liquid like vinegar, in the north of India, and tamarind paste in the south of India, so that you get that acidic taste in the chutney. The end result is finger licking good, which means that you might be tempted to lick your fingers after dipping them into the chutney bowl, and well, you can consider yourself well on the way of “chat-na” (licking), chutney.
You can try your own chutney recipe by mixing tomatoes, herbs of any kind, spices of any kind, plenty of green chilies, and onions together. Add a bit of sugar if you want a sweet chutney. Add some vinegar if you want, that bit of tang. Chutney is not meant to be kept for long and has to be eaten fresh, a fresh batch of chutney being made up for every single meal, and finished during the duration of a meal. The idea is to have fresh spicy stuff, going straight to your alimentary canal, and showing its power there.
In the West, the original chutney recipe was adapted in a manner in which any sort of surplus fruit or even vegetables could be preserved for a long time. This meant chopping up the fruit, putting in some spices, vinegar and sugar, and cooking the fruit in the spices base until it could be preserved in bottles. So have you had your daily dose of chutney today?
