There aren’t a whole lot of raw Indian dishes. Mostly you want to cook foods (except fruit) for a long, long time. Take spinach, for example. In India you cook the buh-jesus out of spinach until it absorbs all the spices you can throw at it. The only thing you really eat raw in India are some of the relishes and accompaniments. At an Indian buffet you maybe get an iceberg lettuce salad, but if you fill up on that over naan and rogan josh you’re mad.
So when I was looking for a side dish and refreshing palate-cleanser to go with my chaat and toor dal, and I stumbled upon the Peshawari Red Pepper Chutney recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s latest cookbook “At Home with Madhur Jaffrey”, I was surprised.
Peshawari Red Pepper Chutney with Toor Dal and Chaat Potatoes
I also love that you just throw everything in a blender and you’re done. It reminded me of my forays into “raw” cooking. Or un-cooking. I, of course, adjusted the recipe just a tiny bit, and for once disagreed with an important part of the recipe. The original calls for just 1/2 of a large bell pepper, but when I blended it all up the whole thing was way, way, way too acidic. So I diluted with more sweet pepper. You could also just cut back a lot on the lime (or lemon) but that’s less fun, and you end up with too much of the other spices in the mix. Even with an extra 1 1/2 peppers, I didn’t need to adjust the rest of the recipe.
Red Pepper Chutney
2 red peppers (or orange), seeded and hacked into about 6 pieces each
30 mint leaves (I had frozen.The recipe says 20-30, so if you like mint, go with more)
2 tbsp lime juice (this is a LOT of lime. The original recipe says lemon but I think lime is more interesting)
a little cayenne
even less salt (yes I’m a mad woman. I use more cayenne than salt)
a grind of pepper if you want
1 tbsp almonds (or walnuts. I just tossed in about 5 soaked and dehydrated almonds from my freezer. I think just about any kind of nut would work. Maybe not peanut…but maybe still)
a little chopped dill or cilantro or parsley (or something green and herb-like) to garnish
Instructions:
Blend. Adjust seasonings to taste. Done.
I love the simplicity of raw…
Madhur Jaffrey says this freezes well. So anytime you want a puckering scoop of hot sweetness you can take it out of your freezer. I recommend freezing in ice cube trays overnight and then transferring to a freezer bag so you’re not hacking away at a big chunk of the chutney every time you want just a little. Also, she says the original recipe calls for fresh red chili peppers found on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (in Peshawari) but they’re hard to find here so she uses the sweet peppers and cayenne. Probably the small amount of red pepper called for is because you would never use two entire hot chili peppers. My relatively bland version of the chutney became more of a side dish and less of a chutney. I could eat this by the sweet 1/2 cup. The same is not true of chili peppers, though all my pickling and love of heat may lead you to believe otherwise…
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