Spicy chatni's
Why I Love This Recipe
In the Indian kitchen chatni is a freshly prepared, usually herbal, pungent and spicy paste that accompanies almost any type of curry.
Ingredients You'll Need
mint leaves
3-4 unseeded green chillies
rice vinegar
dark brown sugar
sea salt
coriander leaves
tamarind
cumin
Directions
Take a good handful of washed mint leaves and 3-4 unseeded green chillies and puree them in the blender with a quarter cup of rice vinegar and dark brown sugar and sea salt to taste (you should achieve a well-balanced sweet-sour-salty-hot-cool mixture.
Use only one or two chillies in the above recipe, add a handful of coriander leaves and stems, less vinegar and no sugar for a completely different, spicy but not hot, flavour.
Soak a golfball-sized piece of tamarind in half a cup of boiling water for 10 minutes. Sieve the thick dark brown pulp and stir in the chopped flesh of 10 dates, finely sliced green or red chillies to taste and a good amount of salt.
Vary any of the above recipes by flavouring them with a teaspoon or so of freshly roasted and ground cumin or coriander seeds, or a combination of both.