A  Bengali meal — especially during the Pujas — is never complete without a dollop of the traditional sweet-and-tart tomato chutney called tomator chatni. If you are eating khichuri, the chutney kind of runs into the ghee-flavoured rice-and-dal mix, and the outcome is something that I must say I quite enjoy.

But Bengal, I am afraid, is not on top of the class when we talk about chutneys. I think that distinction goes to Andhra Pradesh, which has chutney recipes that can fit into a cookbook the size of a telephone directory. Of course, the chutneys are mostly savoury, but they are so good that you can make a full meal out of them.

I discovered this several years ago, courtesy a neighbour from Andhra Pradesh. She fed us the most delicious chutneys — prepared with everything from onion, tomato and eggplant to ginger, garlic, raw mango and kari leaves.

“That’s true about Andhra chutneys — they can be prepared with almost everything,” says Praveen Anand, the executive chef of Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park. “With just eggplant you can prepare some 20 kinds of chutneys. And you have various kinds of chutneys prepared purely with peels,” he says.

I can believe that. Recently, I bought a book that I had been meaning to purchase for quite a while. The Essential Andhra Cookbook, written by Bilkees I. Latif, is a great repository of recipes from Andhra Pradesh and Telengana. And it has almost two dozen chutneys — including an interesting one prepared with curd.
 

One of my favourite chutney makers is chef Velumurugan P. of Dakshin, the south Indian restaurant at Sheraton New Delhi. His chutneys — such as the rich and nutty verusenaga pachchadi prepared with groundnuts, and the sharp pacchi mirapakai pachchadi with green chillies — are memorable.

The chef’s own favourite is the gongura chutney, prepared by sautéing and then grinding small onions, coconut, green chillies and gongura or rozelle leaves. “This goes well with idlis and dosas, or with pesarattu,” the chef says.

Another old book — called Cooking at Home with Pedatha, written by a friend’s aunt — lists some interesting chutneys, too. The onion pachchadi (ullipaya) is simply prepared with onion and tamarind pulp, and tempered with husked split black gram, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, red chillies, green chillies, coriander leaves, kari leaves and asafoetida. “Add a roasted tomato for a tasty variation,” Pedatha writes.

Since the people of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana love their chillies (according to one estimate, Andhra Pradesh produces almost 47 per cent of chillies in India), you’ll often find chutneys cooked with red chillies or green chillies — often both.

Chef Arun Kumar TR, formerly with Zambar and now working on his own, loves the Guntur chilli chutney for the special taste of the region’s chillies. “Chutneys in the south are all very similar. But Andhra and Telengana chutneys are sharper. Guntur chillies add flavour and pungency,” he says.

I like my chutneys a bit hot, too. The hot-and-bitter karivepaku or kari leaf chutney goes particularly well with curd rice, which is my comfort food these days. For this, Latif splutters mustard seeds in oil, and then lightly fries kari leaves in it. She then grinds this with green chillies, onion, ginger, garlic, salt, coconut and roasted sesame seeds, before squeezing some lime juice over it.

Of course, it goes without saying that the same chutneys are cooked differently by different people. Pedatha, for instance, adds thick tamarind pulp to her kari leaf chutney to give it a tangy taste, and jaggery to add a sweet touch.

Chef Anand believes that there is nothing as good as hot rice, ghee on top, and chutneys by the side. I think he has a point there.

Photographs by Jagan Negi
Courtesy: Sheraton New Delhi