From: sbhattac@sales.GBA.NYU.EDU (Shankar Bhattacharyya)
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking
Subject: Re: Info. wanted:  Chutneys
Date: 16 Apr 92 21:05:51 GMT
Organization: NYU Stern School of Business

There have been a few requests, so :

Here are recipes for a pair of dessert chutneys, with some preliminary
verbiage. These are not related to the condiment chutneys used as dips for
pakoras and such.

I have posted them before, so if you have a case of deja vu, you'll know
why. There has been minor editing, to reflect stuff I've learnt since then.

Indian sweets are served as snacks more often than as desserts.
Dessert is served in more formal situations, ranging from the family
special occasion to the formal banquet. When chutneys are served, they are
served up towards the end of the meal, followed by yogurt, and then the
dessert proper. That is how it is in my part of India, anyway.

Most meals do not include any kind of dessert.

The basic technique is rather similar for a variety of chutneys. So the two
recipes I provide below are somewhat redundant. I could easily provide just
one, plus a small diff file. Anyway...

The basic spicing is done with panch phoron. This five spice mixture
contains approximately equal quantities of fennel, mustard, and cumin,
and rather less nigella, and even less fenugreek, all as seeds. For
chutneys I prefer a bias towards fennel and mustard, and away from
fenugreek. (For regular vegetable dishes I prefer a bias towards mustard,
with rather less fennel.)

The mustard should be the purple stuff one gets in the South Asian stores.
Don't get heavy-handed with the cumin. That guarantees the "all Indian food
tastes the same" nonsense, much as if you were to flavour all Italian food
with just oregano.

Black jeera = kalonji = nigella, although I don't know what it has to
do with cumin.

For either recipe, estimated time : about 30 real person-minutes, about
1 hr by the clock. If you are really efficient, you could cut it down to
about 15 person-minutes. Allow extra time to refrigerate the product.

The units are American. Quantities are not critical.

1 teaspoon = 5 ml, 1 tablespoon = 15 ml, 1 cup = 237 ml, 1 lb = 454 g,
within precision sufficient for any kitchen needs.


TOMATO CHUTNEY:

Materials:
  ghee or oil            1 to 1.5 tsp
  panch phoron           generous pinch
  finely minced ginger   1.5 tsp  (strongly recommend a very sharp knife)
  tomatoes               2 lb
  dried hot red pepper   1
  raisins                3 tbsp
  sugar                  0.5 cup to 0.75 cup
  salt                   0.5 tsp
  water                  0.25 cup
  lemon juice            1.5 tbsp

For an elegant preparation, peel and seed the tomatoes. For a more
everyday preparation, do not. If you do peel and seed them, recover the
juices by straining off the seeds and set the juices aside. Allow extra
time to do this. I usually get some unfortunate slave to do this, so it
is not real time, anyway. I hope none of my friends see this, or I will
have recalcitrant slaves the next time round.

Ideally, slice the tomatoes into thin wedges. Alternatively, chop
coarsely. When I am lazy, I just drop them in the food processor and abuse
them for a few seconds. They should *not* get homogenized, just chopped
up.

Heat the oil, add the panch phoron. Stir fry for a few seconds.

Add the tomatoes, ginger and red pepper, and cook at high heat for 2 min.
Note that some spattering may occur when you add the tomatoes to the hot
oil.

Add any reserved juices, water, sugar, and salt. Cover, and cook gently
for 10-15 min, or until the tomatoes are tender. Add the raisins somewhere
along the way, depending on how cooked you like your raisins.

Uncover, and heat at high heat to thicken the chutney. A gauze cover may be
useful, since this will bubble and pop like thich pasta sauce while you
are boiling it down.

Remove from heat.  Add lemon juice. Refrigerate and serve, either by
itself, or with puris. Failing puris (which are a fair bit of work), nan,
which you can buy, or warmed pita bread, at a pinch.

Puris go especially well with thick implementations, served as a snack. My
judgment is that those implementations need a bit more sugar.

Yield: 3 cups, serves six people.

Comments:

The tomatoes need to be of good quality. Many of the tomatoes one sees in
American supermarkets simply don't have enough flavour. Poor tomatoes
cannot be overcome. Maybe one should start with tomato seeds and a seed
tray.

The final product should have just a hint of pepper. And it should be mildly
tangy, but not seriously sour.

The consistency of the refrigerated product should be such that it pours,
with just a suggestion of gelling. If it is intended as a snack, it can
be thicker.

**************************************************************************

ALOO BUKHARA CHUTNEY:

A major source of aloo bukhara used to be Afghanistan. Not really
surprising, really, for something with "Bukhara" in its name. The war
disrupted Afghanistan rather a lot, of course, and I don't know where it
comes from now.

The aloo bukhara is, as far as I know, identically equal to the plum.
Nita Goyal, at Stanford, tells me that this is so. She has tried this with
fresh plums, and reports that the product is right. My sister, who knows
such things, also agrees. Prunes, I am told, are identically equal to dried
plums.

However, prunes, as bought in the US, are not quite like the aloo bukhara
I'm used to. They are too sweet. I find it useful to throw in a bunch of
apricots to cut the sweetness. There are some other differences in the
taste, but it is close.

Of course, the chutney is usually made from the dried fruit, and since in
my part of the world it is dried without benefit of sulfites, it is not
much like the prunes one gets in the US. Perhaps that is the entire
difference.

If possible, use unsulfited fruit. The product tastes more like what I
remember.  Also, at least a few people are seriously sensitive to
sulfites. I'm not, but I don't like the taste.

South Asian stores sometimes carry aloo bukhara.

I will use "aloo bukhara", since it is entirely unambiguous to me.

Materials:

  water                   16 fl oz
  aloo bukhara            8 oz, dried, preferably unsulfited
  oil or ghee             1 - 1.5 tsp
  panch phoron            generous pinch
  finely minced ginger    0.75 tsp
  chopped dates           4 oz.
  salt                    generous pinch
  molasses                2 tbsp (optional; or just increase the sugar a bit)
  brown sugar             0.25 cup, perhaps less (see comments)
  raisins                 0.25 cup
  lemon juice, if necessary, to taste

Bring the water to a boil. Add the aloo bukhara, simmer for about 3 min.
Separate from the water and allow to cool. Set the water aside.

If the aloo bukhara are small, leave them whole. Otherwise, cut them in half.
In my judgment the texture is far superior if they are left whole.

Heat the oil, add panch phoron, stir fry for a few seconds. Add the ginger,
stir fry for another few seconds. Add the dates, and continue cooking for
about a minute.

Mix in the aloo bukhara, salt, and the water in which the aloo bukhara
were blanched. Cover and simmer till the fruit is tender, and the sauce
has begun to thicken. I would estimate about 10-15 minutes.

If it shows no sign of thickening when the aloo bukhara have become tender,
declare victory and proceed. The fruit should not be allowed to
disintegrate.

Add the sugar, molasses and raisins, cook for another 2 minutes. If the
product is not tart enough, add some lemon juice. It should be fairly tart,
and only moderately sweet.

Remove from heat, allow to cool, refrigerate, serve. Preferably with
puris. I think this really needs puris, or, at any rate, it rates them.
Not that it is bad by itself. This is the most clearly magnificent of the
dessert chutneys.

Yield: about 3 cups.

Comments:

The aloo bukhara should be in a sauce which is thick enough to adhere to the
fruit, but not much thicker than that. Some people like it almost as
thick as preserves, but they obviously failed to learn proper values at
their respective mothers' knees.

Both of these chutneys are desserts. They are not condiments. Don't go
dipping pakoras in them. That would be sacrilege.


- Shankar
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking