Follow my blog for easy cooking

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Obstinate Taste buds and Tomato chutney

Taste buds have their own personalities. Mine are obstinate spoilt brats.
Parenting them has been an unending rocky ride and the headstrong little monsters are determined not to grow up.
At thirty seven they still insist on continuing their teenage affaire with chocolate and drool shamelessly at long legged French fries. Self control is a distant dream when they see pakodas and parathas and greed is the one truth in their lives when they see ice cream.
As their guardian, who is also answerable to various other parts of the body I often crumble with shame at their appalling behavior  I frequently recite my (now) well rehearsed apologies to my midriff that wordlessly expands another centimeter in response.

It is not often that I chance upon an opportunity to avenge the wrongs heaped upon me and my midriff, but when I do – I grab it with both hands.
 I still revel in the vicarious pleasure that was mine when I broke up my taste bud’s long standing romance with Pepsi.

About twenty years ago my taste buds were madly in love with Pepsi.
 Now I have nothing against Pepsi, but unsurprisingly as I acquired my licence to drink at eighteen - I aspired to graduate to the adult drink.  
My taste buds however still had a lot of growing up to do. With the first sip of alcohol they decided they were having none of it.
My friends with more submissive taste buds succumbed to the magic of the drink. They flew over potholed crowded roads, sang lustily in tuneless voices and danced in abandon despite two left feet. I watched sadly from the sidelines.  
A life devoid of such pleasures was what we were destined for - I regretfully told the other parts of my body. The honour of selflessly and gallantly sacrificing first our livers and then our lives would never be ours I sighed.
I resigned myself to being ruled by Pepsi.

But a coup was brewing that I didn’t know of. Several gastritis episodes later the other organs compelled me to launch an offensive.
They decided on my behalf that henceforth I would only drink water!
I still remember relishing every moment of the shocked dismay of my taste buds at that assault.

Twenty years later, the assault is still on.
My taste buds hate me, but the love from the rest of my body makes up for that.

Tomato chutney

My mom used to make this chutney almost every day when I was little. It was the one thing that made me look forward to meal times at a time when I was fortunate enough to be in the category of poor eaters

1.     Take five large tomatoes and chop them up roughly. The smaller the pieces the faster they cook but anyway if you dislike chopping (like me) just do whatever size you like.
2.     Take a 1cm piece of ginger and peel it. Peeling and chopping ginger is something I abhor and steadfastly avoid but this recipe leaves me no choice. Anyway since I don’t like chopping I crush the ginger in the mortar and pestle. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, give it a solid whack with your rolling pin (belan). That should do it.
3.     Now heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a karahi.
4.     Crumble one whole dry red chilli into the oil
5.     Add the ginger followed almost immediately by the chopped tomatoes. The ginger should fry a bit to give off its pungent taste but it should not get bunt so watch out.
6.     Cook the tomatoes stirring sometimes until they begin to disintegrate.
7.     Add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the tomatoes and mix.
8.     I like my chutney to be slightly watery so I add about half a cup of water to the tomatoes at this point. If you want a thick chutney don’t add water
9.     Cook the mixture for about five minutes by which time the whole thing should begin to look like a jam.
10.                        Cool and serve.

This chutney can be kept in the fridge for upto 5 days but it tastes so good, one invariably falls short of it. If you can keep yourself from counting calories, try eating this with fried papad. It is delicious. I save this indulgence for the Ashtami bhog on Durga puja.

9 comments:

  1. hahaha, you published a post after one year :D. i keep checking your blog once in a while to see if anything is happening here.

    brilliantly written post as usual!! absolutely loved reading this!

    and i love this tomato chutney. we have it almost everyday :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha and I am replying after another year. so sorry.

      I am truly honored that you visit my blog just to check if Ive posted anything.

      Actually it is wonderful people like you who keep erratic bloggers like me going - Thanks
      I'm glad you liked the post.

      You have tomato chutney everyday?? I am jealous!

      Delete
  2. Allow me to confess: I come looking for the top half your posts. And I lunge lustily, shamelessly on the luscious words and imagery. That was a brilliant piece on food obsessions and objects. Incidentally, and without having tried to digest the modus operandi, I love tomato chutney too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much Mr Pandey. Those are such generous compliments. They really made my day. Sorry I've taken so long to reply.

      Tomato chutney is super isn't it? This is the Bong version

      Delete
  3. I add panchphoran also to this recipe --and it tastes the same if Sugar free is used for diabetics

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes Rajni - my Mom does panchphoran sometimes. I have a hard time getting hold of it in Mumbai, but it certainly adds to the taste. I've never tried it with sugar free but its great news that it woks equally well that way. I'm sure a lot of readers will jump with joy at that. Thanks for visiting and sorry to have replied so late

      Delete
  4. Lovely,long awaited blog update...My tastebuds still dn't knw hw adult drinks taste,neither they knw hw chai tastes...kill me. Avoided pepsi knowingly n still do due to..yes...midriff issues... But i love chutney. N agree wth Rajni- paanchphoran n a bit of hara dhaniya also goes pretty well wth it.- Mini

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey Mini! It is really sweet of you to wait for my blog post. I cant tell you how good it feels to hear that. So sorry I couldn't reply earlier but I did relish the joy that your comment brought me all this while so thank you. You don't drink chai - my God! I love chai - especially with pakodi. Yes panch phoron works well.
    I've posted again. I hope you like the net post
    Look forward to hearing from you again

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi,
    I'd like to invite you to join the site Recipes.in where users can search through hundreds of thousands of recipes from Indian food sites and blogs.

    We noticed that you have a great number of tasty recipes on your blog and would like to suggest you have a look at our Top Food Blogs.

    If you want to add your food blog to the list and have your recipes indexed on Recipes.in all you have to do is follow the instructions here: http://www.recipes.in/add-your-food-blog.

    I hope you will join us, your recipes reach even more users and your food blog will be up there in the top!

    Warm regards,
    Magdalena - info@recipes.in

    ReplyDelete