R089Kerala Kitchen Salad
Raw vegetables the way a Kerala kitchen cuts them
Recipes › Salads, Pachadis, Chutneys, Podis and Pickles
R094
Tomato Chutney
Thakkali chammanthi, cooked down until it is nearly a jam
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringCoconut oil cut to 6 g for four servings, and the body built from 60 g of shallots reduced slowly plus 300 g of tomato cooked down hard. What used to come from oil now comes from water leaving the pan.
Tomato is a late arrival in Kerala — it is a reliable marker that a "traditional" recipe is younger than it claims — but it earned its place, because a tomato chutney does something coconut chutney cannot. It is savoury rather than rich, it carries glutamate, and glutamate is the reason a spoonful of it makes a low-salt meal taste finished. Cook it further than feels necessary. The moment to stop is when a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a track that fills in slowly.
Before you start: Slice the shallots before you light the flame; 60 g takes 4 minutes and the pan will not wait.
Tomato Chutney
Active 25 minutes Total 30 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓6 g (1¼ tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓6 g (about 4) dried red chillies, broken
- ✓60 g (about 6) shallots, thinly sliced
- ✓5 g (about 15 leaves) curry leaves
- ✓300 g (3 medium) tomatoes, roughly chopped
- ✓8 g (1½ tsp, packed) tamarind, soaked in 30 ml warm water
- ✓30 g (⅓ cup) fresh grated coconut
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) salt
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Heavy 20 cm pan; mixie or blender, optional. Substitute: leave it unblended for a coarse chutney closer to a thokku; the flavour is the same and the texture is rougher.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 78 kcal |
| Protein | 1 g |
| Fibre | 3 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 7 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 10 g |
| Sugars | 4 g |
| Fat | 5 g |
| Saturated fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 200 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Heat the coconut oil in the pan until a mustard seed dropped in sizzles at once. Add the mustard and wait until it pops steadily, 30–40 seconds.
- Add the dried chilli and fry 20–30 seconds, until it darkens by a shade and smells toasted rather than raw.
- Add the shallots and curry leaves and cook over a low flame, stirring every minute, until the shallots have collapsed and turned the colour of weak tea, . This is where the body of the chutney comes from and it cannot be hurried on a higher flame.
- Add the tomatoes and the salt and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally and mashing with the back of the spoon, until the tomatoes have gone completely and the mass is glossy and dark with a thin rim of oil at the edge, . A spoon dragged through it should leave a track that fills in slowly.
- Add the tamarind water and the grated coconut and cook a further , until it smells sweet and no longer sharply of raw tamarind.
- Cool for and blend to a coarse purée, or leave it as it is. Taste, and correct with tamarind rather than salt.
Why this worksSlow shallot reduction and hard tomato reduction both concentrate glutamate, and glutamate at the levels a cooked-down tomato reaches will hold the perception of saltiness in a recipe with far less sodium than usual — the same effect trained panels found when umami enhancement maintained perceived saltiness in dishes with 40% of the salt removed. The tamarind then supplies acid, which raises it further.
Sourcing note
Out of tomato season, 300 g of good tinned chopped tomatoes beats poor fresh ones and needs about 5 minutes less cooking; check the label for added salt, because some brands carry 200 mg of sodium per 100 g and that alone would double this recipe's figure. Kashmiri dried chillies give the colour without much heat; ordinary hot dried chillies at 6 g will make this fierce, so use 3 g of those plus 3 g of Kashmiri.
If you are watching…
Blood pressure: 200 mg per serving, entirely from the 2 g of added salt. This is the one chutney in the chapter that will taste properly seasoned at 1 g of salt — about 100 mg a serving — because the reduced tomato is doing the work.
Blood sugar: 7 g of net carbohydrate. A negligible glycaemic contribution, and it makes plain rice more interesting, which is worth more than it sounds.
Cholesterol: 4 g of saturated fat, three-quarters of it from the 30 g of fresh coconut. Halve the coconut and it falls to about 2.5 g.
Swap it
Sesame (gingelly) oil for the coconut oil → saturated fat falls from about 4 g to about 3.3 g per serving. Consequence: nuttier and less recognisably Kerala; sesame is 16% saturated against coconut oil's 91%. (Allergen: this swap introduces sesame.)
No coconut → Consequence: a sharper, cleaner chutney at about 65 kcal and 2 g of saturated fat, and it keeps two days longer.
Add 15 g of roasted gram dal at step 6 → Consequence: thicker, more protein, less bright.
Scale it
At eight servings use a 28 cm pan or the tomatoes will steam rather than reduce, and add 6–8 minutes to step 4.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Better on day two, once the shallot sweetness has settled into the tomato. Fridge 5 days in a covered non-metal container with a film of oil on the surface. Freeze 3 months in 70 g portions. Reheat gently or serve at room temperature.
Leftovers
Two tablespoons make the base of a quick fish curry with a piece of kudampuli and 100 ml of water. It is also the best thing to spread inside a dosa, and stirred into hot rice with a teaspoon of M06 it becomes a meal on its own.
Troubleshooting
Sharp and raw: step 4 was cut short. It needs to look darker than seems right.
Bitter: the dried chilli or the mustard burned in the first minute.
Watery: the tomatoes were very juicy. Keep reducing; there is no other fix.
Serve with
R008 Ragi Dosa · R009 Oats and Matta Dosa · R004 Puttu · R012 Kanji with a Pulse · R022 Millet Upma
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