Tomato & Sage the saviour Chutney

I love Sage.

I was just doing some reading about it and found out that Sage is also called S. salvatrix (sage the saviour) because it was used in a herbal-vinegar remedy to ward off plague. Plague or no plague, I think Sage deserves some popularity. The leaf is extremely strong in flavour. It has an almost peppermint bitterness to it when you bite into it. I personally prefer using the powder because I don't have to bite into the leaf. I love putting it in everything. I even put it into Indian curries when I am cooking onions or tomatoes. It goes into all my Italian experiments too.

But before I ramble on, today's find of the day: Vegan Fling by Melissa. I love the look of some of her recipes specially the Strawberry and Poppy Seed Salad and the Alfredo Pasta.

This chutney recipe makes a great dip too. You can put it in a wrap or have it with some pita. It will also make a great gazpacho or you could mix it with some vegan mayo.

I did not use any chilli in it, but you could add some red chilli powder or paprika.

You need:

4 tomatoes
3/4 tsp powdered sage
1/2 tsp powdered pepper
1/2 tsp salt

Remove the seeds from the tomatoes. Blend everything together.

If you would like it as a Gazpacho, add a little water and more salt.

Tweet

Pin It

Three Chutney recipes for the three days I missed!

I am back after a three day break from the big bad world of the WWW. I just needed to switch off the laptop, give my eyes a rest and find other ways to cool off the sunny October days. It was a welcome break because I'm refreshed and raring to go forward.

Because I have missed three days of Vegan MoFo where my theme this month is 'chutneys', I'm going to write about three easy peasy chutney recipes to make up for my absence.


Mixed Peel & Seed Chutney
This one my mom made with mixed peels and seeds of Beetroot and White Pumpkin and also the insides of a Snake Gourd. I have made a chutney with only pumpkin seed -Skeed Chutney. You can use any left over peels, seeds and fiber for this chutney.

Mixed Peel & Seed Chutney
1 cup mixed peels, skin and fiber
1 cup coconut
1/2 lime sized piece of tamarind
1/4 tsp asafoetida
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1-2 Red Chillies
2 tsp oil (optional)
Salt

Heat the oil if using and cook the skin, peels and fiber. Remove it and add it to the blender jar. Heat more oil and temper the mustard seeds, urad dal. Add the asafoetida and red chilli. Remove only the red chilli and add it along with Coconut, salt and tamarind to the blender jar. Blend till smooth. Add the tempered mustard seed and dal. Store in the refrigerator.

Horse gram Chutney
This is a not so common chutney made with a not so common dal. I haven't seen many people use Horse Gram. Wikipedia says it is common as cattle feed. Doesn't stop me from eating it! This chutney was made by my granny and is actually a very typically South Indian chutney.

Horse gram Chutney

1/2 cup horse gram
2-3 Red Chillis
1 tsp Urad Dal
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
Salt

Roast the horse gram till it splutters. Roast the red chilli, urad, hing. Powder the horse gram and them add the rest of the ingredients. Add little water and then grind to a smooth paste.


Cumin & Green Tomato Chutney
Green Tomatoes make great salads but they also make great chutneys. I love the flavour of green tomatoes in a chutney and I didn't do much to this one wanting to preserve the great flavour they give. Cumin was a perfect spice for this one because it cuts through the sourness and give a nice finish to the chutney.

Cumin & Green Tomato Chutney

4 green tomatoes
1 tsp Cumin seeds
1 mild green chilli
Salt
Juice of 1/2 a lime
Water

Cook the green tomatoes with a tablespoon of water and salt for about ten minutes till they are soft. Blend in till smooth.

Roast and powder the cumin seeds. I powdered them using a mortar and pestle.

Add the cumin seeds and mix well.

Tweet

Pin It

Raw Elephant's Foot Chutney

Did I scare you yet? This really is a chutney made with a quarter kilo of Elephant's Foot but it's a type of Yam not a poor elephant's foot. C'mon!

It's already day 12 of Vegan Mofo. We're almost halfway there. It takes a lot of planning to put up posts every single day I cannot imagine how much work it must be to put this event together for the whole month of October.

Today's find of the day is Veganise This!: Mel from Australia is going around the world in 20 days of Vegan Mofo this year with themed dinners from different countries every day. She's already covered so many countries. What a great theme and what a great way to learn new cuisines!

This week I have tried as much as possible to put up recipes of mostly raw chutneys. I am going to keep going with the raw flow but today is a little different. It's still a chutney and still is mostly raw. But today the main ingredient is something most people would not eat raw. This yam is a very commonly used tuber in India and is available throughout the year. But eating a tuber raw is not very common apart from a few exceptions like ginger, carrot and daikon. Not too many people eat this raw unless they make it into a chutney like this.

It has an almost cooling feeling in your mouth and takes on the flavour of the condiments added to it. I had it with some Dosa for breakfast and it also was a side for lunch. Chutneys are very versatile so they can be paired with lots of things.

Raw Elephant's Foot / Yam Chutney

250gm/ 2 cups Yam - Washed, peeled and diced
1 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/2 tsp Urad Dal
1 or 2 red chillis
1/4 tsp asafoetida
1/2 lime sized ball of tamarind
juice of 1/2 a lime
salt
1/2 tsp Oil (optional)

Temper the mustard seeds, urad dal, asafoetida and red chillis in oil. Put the diced yam, red chillis, tamarind and salt in a blender and blend till smooth. Add the tempered mustard seeds, urad dal and asafoetida to this. Add in the lime juice. Mix well.

Store it in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Tweet

Pin It

Chilli Pineapple Mint Chutney

It's Vegan MoFo Day 11 and it's going good. People from all over the world are blogging about vegan food and I'm learning something new every single day. I learn about new ingredients and cuisines and this is making my mind go into over drive because suddenly I realize there are so many places I want to travel to and eat the local food there.

Growing up whenever we went to a restaurant we always ordered the cheese on skewers. They always came on toothpicks with a piece of pineapple and cherry with each skewer. I never really understood the combination but I liked it.

This chutney is something like that. I know pineapple and mint is a good combination, it sounds right. But adding spice to that might sound wrong, but it's not. This chutney is a great dip (for chips), goes well with Indian food too, I can imagine it inside a pita bread with some hummus and falafel and I can also imagine using it as a salad dressing or inside a nice hearty sandwich.

Let me interrupt you with today's find before I forget: Simply Go Vegan. It's blog in German and as the title suggest the recipes are simple but they look so good. The recipes for the German Potato bread and Merguez, a spicy north african sausage are things to look out for.

On that spicy note here is the recipe for the chutney.

You need:
2 cups of diced pineapple (I used fresh pineapple)
1 mild Green Chilli
1/2 cup of fresh mint leaves
a pinch of Salt

Blend together and chill before serving.

Tweet

Pin It

Vitamin C Chutney

If you ask any Indian what to eat to ensure Vitamin C in the diet, Aamla is surely going to figure in the list. This Indian Gooseberry  holds a very important place in the Indian heart (and hair). When it is in season, everyone laps it up making  pickles, chutneys or sun dries it to ensure a year long supply of Vitamin C. As kids, we used to buy small tiny sachets of dried and salted aamlas as an after school snack.

But I need to tell you my find of the day before that: Vegan Food Rocks. That cream of Broccoli soup looks so easy and awesome!

Now, if you have never tried an aamla, I'd like you to imagine biting into the sourest Sour Candy available and put aside the the sweetness of the sugar in the candy. It is sour and astringent but also has sweet and bitter undertones. My salivary glands are kicking it in as I type this. Apart from being an elixir, natural medicine-for-everything kind of fruit, it is also applied to hair to ensure good hair growth and I read somewhere that apparently Indians have the best hair on the planet. Well, all Indians except me at least.

This chutney is raw, vegan and oil free. It goes well with rotis and I'm sure some bread or dosa will be nice with it too.

You need:

4 aamlas or Indian Gooseberries
2 mild Green chillies
Salt

The Aamlas have tough flesh with a pit inside. Remove the pits and blend it with the green chillies and salt.

Enjoy your dose of sour, concentrated vitamin C!

Tweet

Pin It

A Moroccan twist on a Tapenade - Sumac & Cherry Tomato Chutney

I think it's time to take a break from the Indian cooking for Vegan MoFo day 8 and dive into different flavours this time. At home I usually cook Indian food about four times a week. But the rest of the time you will find me making Italian, Mediterranean or south east Asian food. If you open my fridge you will immediately know how crazy I am. It is about to burst but I still want to buy so many things to stuff in it.

Before I go any further, let's see who I found today: Chocolate and Beyond's Andrea from UK. I'm going to try making those 'Cheezy Jackets'.

How is this recipe a twist on a tapenade? For one it has no anchovies and secondly it has no olives. This chutney has all the flavour of a tapenade without the original ingredients. It is a beautiful red blob of yum. You will see why shortly.

I found an Indian variety of Cherry Tomatoes which I dried in the oven without any oil or salt. These tomatoes are oval in shape and pack a slightly more sour punch. To enhance the sourness, I added a few Mediterranean inspired ingredients like orange peel and preserved lime and to top it off some Wild Sumac.

You need:

1 cup sun-dried or oven-dried cherry tomatoes
1 tsp Sumac
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 a Preserved Lime
1 tsp chopped candied orange peel
2 tsp Olive Oil

Put everything in the blender and blend till smooth.

Store it in a jar topped with some olive oil.

Serve with Pita Bread or regular bread. Use it as a sandwich spread or in a salad dressing.

Tweet

Pin It

Beetroot Chutney/Dip - Iron Chef Challenge #1

It's that time of the week when Vegan MoFo gives you an ingredient and you have to come up with something totally new using it. This week they chose Beetroot. I still want to keep to my chutney theme so this presented a strange challenge. Now beetroot is great in a salad, it's great in a raita, but chutney? After breaking my head over it for a few hours I called up one of my telephonic sous chefs, my thati (grandmother). As it turned out we were heading to her place for lunch and she just thought she should cook a beetroot for me in case I wanted to make something with it.

When I went there, I was clueless. But she loves leading from the front and the pro in her eventually took over. All she needed was a start and when I said "beetroot raita" a light bulb went on in her head. Suddenly she knew what had to be done. She started giving me instructions and we came up with something so amazing and beautiful within the 5 minutes since I had uttered those two words. No sooner than we made what we made, it was gone. We had created a success!

So, fellow humans, let me present to you a Beetroot Chutney. A chutney so pretty you wouldn't want to eat it, but when you do, you wouldn't want to stop.

In the big, wrinkly, magical hands of my thati

You need:

1 Beetroot, cooked and peeled
1 Green Chilli
1/2 Cup Roasted Peanuts (with or without skin)
5 pieces of Whole cashews
1/2 a tsp of salt
Juice of 1 big Lime
Water

First powder the peanuts, cashew, salt and green chilli. Add in the beetroot and lime. Blend till smooth. Add a little water if required to make it a smoother consistency.

Dip your chips into it or have it as a side. Whatever you choose I'm sure you will love it!

What a pretty fuschia!

Tweet

Pin It

Pumpkin Chutney Part Deux

How do you know if you are cooking healthy?

From the amount of waste in your kitchen garbage bin.

If what you throw is more than what you eat, you are probably not doing something right. So how do you decide what to throw and what to eat? Ask a monkey! The lesser tools you use in your kitchen to "prep" your food, the lesser waste you generate. Stop peeling and start eating.

Before we go further, today's find is: Muffin Topped. Emily is making some delicious looking vegan Waffles all this month for Vegan MoFo. Makes me want to get a waffle maker!

On that quick note, here is a chutney I made with all the left over seeds, skin and fiber from yesterday's Pumpkin Chutney. You could follow the recipe exactly like that one and substitute the pumpkin chunks with the skin and seeds (hereafter known as 'skeed') or you could turn it up a notch. This chutney is slightly bitter from the sesame. But I love the bitterness of sesame and I will forgive it because it gives me so much calcium! This recipe is oil free too.

Pumpkin Skeed Sesame Chutney

You need:

1 cup of Pumpkin seeds, skin and fibre
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1 dried red chilli
1/2 tsp salt
Juice of 1  lime or lemon
water

Cook the pumpkin seeds, skin and fiber in 2 tsp of water in a covered pan for 6 to 8 minutes. Put it in a blender jar with the rest of the ingredients. Blend it till everything is incorporated well. This is not going to be a smooth chutney. It has small chunks of sesame and the pumpkin seed and I love that it adds a nice texture.

Alternatively you can powder everything else first and then add the cooked skeeds. Store it in the refrigerator.

Antique enamel in pastel blue goes so well with the Chutney, don't you think?

Tweet

Pin It

Coriander Mint Chutney aka Basic Green Chutney

I'm beginning the awesome Month of Vegan food with the simplest, most versatile green chutney. This chutney can be found in most homes and even on the streets of Bombay. It is used as a side with rotis, it can be added to a vegetable while cooking it, even to a pulav/pilaf, it is used as a sandwich spread in the famous Chutney Sandwich and is used in my favourite street food in Bombay- Paani Puri.

It is a dark green, chlorophyll laden, lump of goodness. It is usually the spicy chutney and served with a sweet chutney which I will put up soon. To this basic recipe, you can add fresh grated coconut or raw peanuts to give the chutney a thicker body and tone down the spice. Us Indians love our chutneys hot, so this one might be way too spicy if you are not used to the Indian level of spiciness. I have used the dark green chillies which are the spiciest. If you find a milder green chilli, you can use it. They are usually lighter in colour. You can also add raw onions and raw garlic to the mix to give it a nice depth of flavour. But I'm not a big fan of raw onions or garlic. There are quite a few people who don't like coriander but they usually don't mind it in this chutney form.

So here is the recipe for the most versatile chutney ever with a few ideas for its use listed below.

You need:

A Big bunch of the freshest coriander/ cilantro - washed and de-stemmed (about three cups)*
Half the amount of fresh mint leaves - washed and de-stemmed (about two cups)*
4 dark green chillies
1 inch piece of ginger
Juice of 1 lime
1tsp Salt or more
a pinch of black salt if you have some
Water

Optional ingredients:
1/2 medium sized red onion
2 cloves of garlic

OR
4 tbsp fresh, shredded coconut

OR
a handful of raw peanuts


*The reason the stems are removed is so that the chutney stays thick because the stems have quite a bit of water in them. Mint takes a bit of time to clean and remove each leaf from the stem, but thin coriander stems are okay to add. Just make sure you don't add any roots.

Add into a blender and blend away. (This has to be the shortest description ever!)

You might have to stop a few times to push the ingredients down towards the blades. Add a little water if required. Squeeze the lime at the end and mix well.

Store in the refrigerator for up to ten days or freeze it for a hundred years. :)

A few ideas to use this chutney:
Sandwiches are great ways to use this chutney. A popular chutney sandwich is made with two slices of bread with chutney and ketchup smothered on them. It goes well on bagels too.

On the streets of bombay, a toasted chutney sandwich is made using this chutney spread on bread with raw tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, boiled potatoes and beetroot. It is served with ketchup and a generous sprinkle of sev. Other street foods like Bhel puri, sev puri and paani puri use this chutney extensively.

This chutney can be served with dosas and samosas.

You could add this chutney to onions while cooking them to add more flavour to your vegetable, bean and grain dishes.

I've even used this chutney with some vegan mayo as a dip for chips and vegetable sticks.

It can be added to a salad of raw vegetables or even to a salad with root vegetables.

Sandwich one morning: Whole wheat rosemary and garlic bread with chutney and cucumbers.

Tweet

Pin It

Oil free Sorrel/Gongura Chutney

I've always been a rebel. Ever since I can remember I would want to take the off beaten path. I enjoy the thrill of a new challenge. I notice that I do that with my cooking too, right from the point of buying vegetables. I am always attracted to stuff I haven't seen in my mom's kitchen and I always pick it up just to try it out. The first time I picked up sorrel leaves I only knew I could make the famous gongura chutney with them. But as I delved deeper I realized sorrel is a very commonly used leafy green all throughout Europe and Africa. They use it in soups, salads, cakes and even as a drink. 

Sorrel is varitey of sour leafy greens that we usually get after the monsoon right up into winter. They could replace the tamarind in dals or add another dimension to the bitter Fenugreek/ Methi leaves. I just stuck to doing what I knew and that was the chutney. On another attempt I might try the soup. 

Since I cook oil-free 95% of the time, this recipe avoids the oil needed for tempering. It might not last as long as it should but fresh food is always tastier.

Ingredients:
One bunch of sorrel leaves, stalks removed and chopped
2-3 dried red chillies
1/2 teaspoon husked, split urad dal
Salt to taste
Water

Put about a tablespoon of water in a deep bottomed pan. When it begins to boil, add the sorrel leaves and salt. Cover with a lid. Keep checking on in. They will eventually wilt and change colour to an olive green.If there is too much water in the pan don't cover it. If they begin to stick to the bottom add a teaspoon of water at a time and stir it around. Once all the leaves are cooked take it off the stove. Let it cool for a while before you grind it to a paste.

In a small wok or a tempering spoon like the one on the left, add the split urad dal once it is hot. Keep shaking the wok/spoon until the dal is evenly brown. 

Remove it and in the same wok/spoon, roast the red chillies till they are slightly darker. 

You can grind the chillies with the sorrel if you like it spicy.

Add the dal and the chilli to the sorrel. Serve with some warm rice. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Tweet

Pin It

Mango Avocado Guacamole/ Chutney

It's mango season and also avocado season. How can you not mix them both?!

This is my mother's idea. Using a raw mango and a not fully ripe (yes, I am to blame for that I couldn't wait to cut open the damn avocado) avocado we made this dip / chutney. I got lucky here because if the avocado is not ripe enough it tastes like socks, not that I've tasted socks.

You need

1 RIPE Avocado

1 RAW Mango

1 Green Chilli

Salt

1/2 a tomato cut in to tiny pieces

1/2 an onion cut in to tine pieces (I avoided the onions)

Some Coriander to garnish

Put the avocado, mango and chilli in the blender. Blender in to a fine paste. Add the salt, tomato and coriander and give it a stir.

Done!

Serve with chips, in rolls, or eat it as is!

Tweet

Pin It