besan mirchi ki chutney (chilli gramflour relish - HOT)

Hola,

My father hails from Hatod, a small village on the outskirts of Indore (where I grew up). While growing up, we used to go to Hatod pretty much every other week to meet my grandmother, cousins and uncle. During festive seasons, we used to stay there for weeks, as Indians celebrate festivals at the eldest surviving member of the clan.

It also reminds me of a hilarious anecdote from uni years. We went to the village on my dad's birthday to get blessings from grandma and it got a bit late while coming back. A physics lecture had started at 2:00pm and I entered the rather small lecture room of capacity 100 at 2:25. The lecturer, Mr. Ghatpande, nice fella, went crazy - "Who the hell do you think you are :@, strutting into the class late while everyone else is on time!!!". I pulled out an innocent face (yes, i have one of those for emergency situations) and replied politely, "sorry sir, i am coming from Hatod and the traffic was real bad".

Now, for that entire semester, Mr. G assumed that I come from Hatod *everyday*, while my house was in front of the uni. In fact, he thought that I bicycled all the way from Hatod as I mostly rode my bike from home. I distinctively remembered him mentioning to me once that Laal Bahadur Shastri (India's 3rd PM) also used to walk some 10 ks and swin across a river to reach school. Needless to say, I did not correct him. A couple of other guys got into trouble because of that; "look at him (pointing to me) and look at yourself - shameful!"(the evil application of comparisons :D).

But like all good things, this too, had to come to an end. I walked into the office of Dr. Saxena, our dean, and Mr. G was there, who started showering praises on me, "look at him, sir, this kid is a model student, riding his bike (he saw me on my bicycle a couple of times) 25 kms from Hatod every single day!". Unfortunately, Dr Saxena knew that it wasn't the case and smirked, "Sir! This rascal doesn't come from Hatod, he lives 600 meters from the uni*" .... Things were never the same for me again :(

* for those of you who understand hindi, what Dr. Saxena actually said was, "Arre sir, yeh kamina hatod se nahin aata, college ke saamne rehta hai!" (he had a weird of showing that he cared :D)

anyways, back to post topic - mirchi besan ki chutney - so what happened in Hatod was that since we didn't have a fridge, we didn't make loads of food, just enough for the meal; optimization algorithms are so freakin' popular in Indian Village - Dijkstra - INDIAN! (See Goodness Gracious Me to make sense of this joke). So what happens if gluttons like yours truly get hungry at midnight. We had pickles and everything but this particular chutney was AWESOME! I used to spread it on a chapati, make a roll and have it as a snack. If you like it hot, try this out - mmmmmm :p

Ingredients (to make enough for a week for 4 people like me :D):

Gram flour - 2 heaped tablespoon
Chillies chopped into rings - 50 grams or 20 in quantity
Lemon - One whole or 6 tablespoon bottled lemon juice
Salt - to taste (1 tablespoon for me)
Mustard seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon
Turmeric - 1 teaspoon
Oil - 50 ml

Note that for this recipe, heat is kept high throughout the process.

Heat the oil and when hot, add the mustard seeds, followed by cumin seeds. add the chopped chilli and turmeric. After 15 seconds add the gram flour and stir continuously to avoid formation of lumps. After 1 minute, add salt, stir, add lemon juice, stir and take off the heat immediately...... Great, now I am hungry!

Hare dhaniye / dhanie ki chutney (green coriander chutney)

At dinner gatherings, most of the homes in India will get the party started with samosa and other home made savoury starters (chicken tikka is very popular amongst north Indians). The best dip for these (democratically selected) is green coriander chutney or "hare dhaniye ki chutney". Every region has a variation of the same. In Maharashtra, adding roasted peanuts/ groundnuts is popular while in central India, where I grew up, mint is the prefered addition. I am posting a very simple recipe of this delightfully refreshing dip as I like it :)

Ingredients (to make about 200 - 250grams)

Coriander leaves (please don't be lazy and include any stems, whatsoever) - 150grams
(cleaning the coroiander takes a while but if you use neighbours, friends and family and non-paid labour, it can significantly reduce the time, and your popularity with it :D)
mint (optional) 30 grams
Garlic - 8 cloves (you can even eliminate it if you have post-dinner plans)
Ginger - about 30 grams
green chillis - I like about 10 hot ones (but you can reduce them to 3-4 if you don't like it too hot)
lemon/ lime (lemon is preferred) - 2
sugar - 3 tablespoons
salt - 1 tablespoon
olive oil (my own addition to increase life and add to flavor) - 5 tablespoons

clean the coriander well, we don't want any stems. Divide the coriander in 5 equal parts. In a blender, a good blender (you need a good blender, else the process is hell), add the garlic cloves, green chillis, sliced ginger (since it's harder to blend ginger), 20 ml water, mint, olive oil, and one part of coriander. Blend till it's a smooth paste, and repeat the process with other parts of coriander. When you put the last batch, also put the salt and sugar. Take out in the storage container and squeeze in the lemon, mix well. Enjoy on sandwiches, with samosas, cheese and crackers, mathris (yummm - will try to post it's recipe soon). Hope you like it as much as I do (but not as much as Menno does who eats it like a normal veggie and we have to stop him :D)

Take care and stay healthy,
Gaurav