What is chaat? Chaat is a savory snack, that is served anytime of the day, at the stalls on the roads. It is one of the most popular street foods in Mumbai, and you will see young and old, eating all the delicious dishes that come under the umbrella of chaat. The word chaat means to lick or tasty(chatpata) and the word does justice to this dish! There are so many types of chaat and every post after this post will be for different types of chaat that exist, and how these chutneys are used in each of the chaat dishes. All the chaat in Mumbai consists of 3 essential chutneys : 1) Cilantro Chutney 2) Date-Tamarind Chutney 3) Garlic Chutney .
This post is dedicated to the 3 chutneys without which chaat would not exist! 🙂 Cilantro chutney consists of cilantro, roasted cumin seeds, garlic, salt, tad bit sugar, green chillies and lemon juice. Some people add mint to this chutney. I add it sometimes, and sometimes I don’t, mood dependent and per availability. This chutney adds the spicy, sour and fresh taste to the chaat. The date-tamarind chutney consists of dates as the main ingredient, accompanied by dried tamarind, salt and jaggery( rawest form of sugar), red chilli powder. This chutney adds the sweet and sour element to the chaat. Finally we have the garlic chutney that consists of kashmiri red chilies, garlic, red chilli powder and salt. This adds the garlicky and spicy flavor to the chaat. All 3 chutneys are required to make the perfect chaat.
All 3 are pretty easy and straight forward to make, and can be made within 1 1/2 hours. I usually freeze the date-tamarind chutney in small bottles, and thaw one bottle at a time when required. The entire stash can last me upto 6 months! The green cilantro chutney can be frozen as well for upto a month in an ice cube tray and thawed when required. I keep the date-tamarind chutney quite thick and when required, I thin it out with some water. The garlic chutney will not go bad as all the ingredients act as preservatives.
The beauty of these chutneys is that if you make paneer tikka or make chikken tikka or any kind of meat tikka, you can use these chutneys with those meals as well. My father loves to eat his everyday home food with the green chutney. It gives a vibrant, fresh, spicy flavoring to the food. I hope you get a chance to try these chutneys! They are so good to taste and go with a vast variety of foods!
In other news, I am excited about the weather cooling down a bit, and I have a quite a few fun fallish recipes up my sleeve! I do require time to make them though 🙂 and I hope I can cover all of them in the next few weeks. Time flies by so quick.
Also, if you have been following my Instagram, I have been part of an awesome collaboration between Bake from Scratch and The FeedFeed, for a Holiday Cookie Issue that is coming out in the first week of October! I could not be more excited as this is my first time in print! I have 4 of my cookie recipes printed in the magazine along with beautiful pictures! Also, this issue covers 67 recipes in all from 27 awesome bakers, and I am so proud to be one of the 27. All of them have done a fabulous job and I cannot wait to dig into making these recipes! So exciting! Please do not forget to pre-order your copy from the link! You will NOT regret it and will thank me later! 🙂
Another exciting venture that I had been working on over the summer, was with Sunset Magazine to create videos for the fall with my recipes! This was a very exciting project, and I felt so honored and humbled to be working with the very talented food team and the video team in their test kitchen! Definitely one of the best experiences I have had so far, and one that I will remember for a very long time! We worked on creating 5 videos, and one of them is already available to view here. Go make the fall focaccias cause I know they will be a huge hit at your next party! 🙂
Until then, Cheers!
XO
Amisha
Ingredients
- Date-Tamarind Chutney:
- (makes about 45 oz)
- 2 heapful cups pitted medjool dates (available at any persian or indian store or Costco)
- 1 cup de-seeded dried tamarind (Available at Indian stores)
- ½ cup jaggery (raw sugar or you could use brown sugar as a substitute or you can omit it as well)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon red chilli powder
- 6 cups of water
- Cilantro Chutney:
- (makes about 10 oz)
- 5-6 cups of fresh cilantro(washed)
- 3 green chillies(make sure you can handle the heat if spicy or reduce the number of green chillies to 1)
- 2 large garlic cloves
- 2 teaspoons roasted cumin seeds
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- ¼ cup water
- Garlic Chutney:
- 8-10 dried red Kashmiri chillies(remove the seeds from all the chillies)
- 10 garlic cloves
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 heapful teaspoon red chilli powder
- ¼ cup water
Instructions
- Date-Tamarind Chutney:
- In a large pot, on medium to high heat, add in all the ingredients, and let it boil and soften for about 40 minutes. Keep stirring occasionally. Switch off the gas after 40 minutes. Blend in 2 batches, in a high speed blender. Keep a medium holed sieve over a large bowl, and strain the puree in 2 batches. The strained puree will be thick.
- Pour it gently into small bottles and freeze for later use. It will last in the fridge for upto 10 days.
- When removing from the freezer, let it thaw in the fridge a day before using it, or you could leave it out for 6-8 hours to let it thaw. When using it, dilute with water for a lighter consistency for chaat.
- Cilantro Chutney:
- In a high speed blender, add in all the ingredients and blend at a high speed for a minute until all is well combined. Pour it into a bottle. The cilantro chutney will stay in the fridge for a week. You can store it in the freezer, in smaller containers for upto 2 months.
- Garlic Chutney:
- In a high speed blender, add in all the ingredients and blend at a high speed for a minute until all is well combined. Pour it into a bottle. The garlic chutney will stay in the fridge for a long time, since it has all the natural preservatives.
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