Tomatoes for Two

 Sujata Massey

It’s entirely possible to buy tomatoes in many parts of the world without being able to speak the language. In Spanish and German, it’s called a tomate. In Hindi, they say tamaatar, and in Gujarati, tamota. In Turkish, domades. 

 

There seems to be one theme emerging, but there’s a second linguistic direction followed by those who speak romance languages. The French named the tomato pomme d’amour (love apple). The aphrodisiac philosphy carries over to the name pomidor in Russian and pomodoro in Italian.

 

I was born in England so I used to say toe-mah-toe, but now that I’m in the US it’s toe-may-toe. Doesn’t sound as romantic, but I do believe tomatoes are the binder of happy meals and marriages. 

 

Last Sunday, my husband Tony and I agreed it would be a good idea to buy 30 pounds of Roma tomatoes at the farmers market in order to stock up for the fall and winter. 

I actually only needed about five pounds of tomatoes to make a highly spiced Indian tomato chutney.

On the other hand, Tony needed a huge amount. He wanted to make a few gallons of a pureed tomato, garlic and onion sauce that could be a base for many dishes. He’s been making this sauce for us for years and ensures a good store for most of the year by carefully pouring 2-cup quantities and freezing them. But now that he’s got his own vacuum-sealing equipment, he could do it in air-tight blocks to be stored in our large standing freezer (another recent husband purchase). 

 

I don’t know if you are getting the dynamic of our 31-year-marriage yet, but it involves what you might call differences of opinion.

 

Two people, two tomato-buying expeditions ensued. On a Friday, I bought 5 pounds of Roma tomatoes from a roadside farm stand. On Sunday, when we went to the Baltimore Farmers Market, where I found the only farmer selling bushels and larger of tomatoes, including Romas, which everyone knows are the preferred sauce-making tomato due to their lower level of water content. I paid for the beauties, and Tony lugged a 25-lb cardboard box packed with Romas to our car. When he got home, he located the cotton gloves he’d wear under vinyl gloves to protect his hands from slipper tomato juice, and he located the vacuum sealing machine and roll of heavy-duty freezer plastic. The knives came out, and operation tomato sauce was underway.

 

At the start of marriage in our twenties, I’d have been at Tony’s side helping him blanch a few hundred Roma tomatoes in lightly simmering water, and then deseed, as well as the eyewatering task of chopping onions. But Tony’s cooking style is longer and more perfectionist than mine, so I’ve leave him to cook some dishes undisturbed.

 

When his sauce was on its first simmer (yes, it gets cooked twice!) and all his rigamarole was in the dishwasher, I returned to the kitchen to start prepping. My recipe was a lot simpler, and I had many fewer tomatoes to chop. Still, I had to do some math to calculate the right amount of vinegar and sugar and garlic and ginger to use. Just slivering the fresh ginger and garlic took me an hour and a half. 

 

I am always looking for shortcuts, so I decided to try simmering my chutney in a slow cooker. After a night’s cooking on low, I was disappointed that the temperature was just a bit too low for the chutney to thicken. So, I poured the warm mixture of tomatoes, spices and vinegar into a ceramic-coated Dutch oven, and after I brought it to ha happy boil, I lowered the temperature to simmer and partially covered the pot.  About four hours later, the red chunks swimming in vinegar had reduced by half into a rich reddish brown, sticky concoction. I added just a tiny bit more sugar and salt to taste, and the chutney was ready to cool in the fridge.

 

At the end of our tomato weekend, the kitchen smelled of vinegar and garlic, and we were happily exhausted. Both tomato recipes are listed on my website. Tony’s sauce is European, and my chutney is Indian, but we are united as a couple who will share these savory tastes over the upcoming six months. 

 

Here’s what one can do with a simple tomato-onion-garlic sauce:

Add Italian herbs and make a marinara sauce

Add ground meat and make it a ragu

Add cumin and chilies and other ingredients to make a Middle Eastern, Mexican or Indian gravy to blanket a baked dish or curry

Add milk or cream to make cream of tomato soup

 

 

Here are some ways to use a tomato chutney:

Serve it as an accompaniment to a classic Indian meal

Add it to a cheese, vegetable or chicken sandwich

Serve it with grilled meat or fish

Peel hardboiled eggs, split them, and put a dash of chutney down the middle

 

Bon Appetit!

Indian Chutney for an American Summer

Sujata Massey

In the height of summer, a heap of imperfectly gorgeous tomatoes rest on my kitchen island. They beseech me to touch them and make something great. The obvious thing would be to make a lush sauce—but it’s 90 degrees outside, and I’m not in the mood for cozy Italian pasta.

No. These tomatoes are calling out their wish to become a chutney.

“Chatni” is a classic accompaniment to a South Asian meal containing rice, meat and vegetable dishes, and breads. In a typical chatni, fruits and vegetables such as tomato or mango are slow-cooked with spices and ginger, various forms of chilies and the solid brown sugar called jaggery. Jaggery comes from palm sap or sugar cane and is sold in Asian grocery stores. Sometimes garlic and onion are part of the mix. Before the British, mustard and other oils were used to help keep the chutneys from spoiling. The ingredient of vinegar in chutneys comes from Britain, but is now part of some Indian chutney recipes.


Yogurt-based sauces also are known as chutneys; most famously the coriander-mint chutney served at almost every Indian restaurant, and the creamy, sweet and spicy coconut chutney essential to South Indian dosa.

When the British tasted chatni, they loved it. They anglicized the spelling to ‘chutney’ and found ways, after they went back to Britain, to make new chutneys with fruits like apples, plums and rhubarb and the preservative vinegar. A few months ago, I had a great experience making rhubarb chutney. They also created “Major Grey’s Mango Chutney,” a style of sweet and sticky chutney containing raisins, vinegar and a bit of tamarind that is an ingredient in many an American chicken salad. In my family, it is the standard slather over a cheddar cheese sandwich--or grilled cheese.

Sweet mango chutney is the starter chutney for children who are cautious about foreign tastes. Growing up, I had a big spoonful of sweet mango chutney with almost every home cooked Indian meal. I can’t imagine eating biryani without some mango chutney mixed in. These days, Indian food companies such as Patak’s make these Anglo-style mango chutneys with chilies included, if you like.

Back to the homemade tomato chutney. My recipe is inspired by a traditional one found in The Calcutta-Cookbook, A Treasury of Recipes from Pavement to Palace by Minakshie “Kewpie” Das Gupta, Bunny Gupta and Jaya Chaliha. Kewpie was a legendary Bengali home cook and cookbook writer. After Kewpie's passing, her family opened a jewelbox of a café in her honor within their historic home at 2 Elgin Road. Kewpie's is a must for lunch, if you are visiting South Kolkata. And the cookbook details how to make "Colonel's Sweet and Hot Mango Chutney," which is surely more delicious than the commercial version. 

Kewpie's placemats have charming vintage-inspired drawings of Calcutta life

During my frequent lunches at Kewpie’s in the late 1990s, I enjoyed food served on banana leaves and old-fashioned terra cotta plates. There would always be several extraordinary fresh chutneys served. Not to mention spicy pickles--but vegetable pickle is a story for another column!

My tomato chutney, which does not include raisins or too much chili firepower, is great on sandwiches, burgers, alongside grilled meat and fish. You can mix in 1/3 cup of it with eggplant that’s been roasted and mashed. You wind up with something very much like the famous dish Baigan Bharta, but with 75% less work.

Chutney's jammy consistency, when it's ready

The farmer’s market sells larger bunches of herbs than can be eaten in a week—so again, the answer is chutney. I make my cilantro-mint chutney with Greek yogurt for extra protein. It’s a natural with crispy treats like samosas, pakoras or with grilled fish. This green chutney is a great marinade for chicken pieces to be baked or grilled.

Here are my tomato, cilantro-mint and rhubarb chutney recipes. Please note that these chutneys are designed to be refrigerated in glass jars or bowls with lids. They are not shelf-stable.

I'm winding up my culinary adventures to return to my real work: writing a novel. It strikes me, though, that concocting a chutney is a bit like writing a mystery. There are so many interchangeable small parts: fruits and vegetables, spices, and preserving vinegars or oils. When I write, I pull together many pieces: characters, plots and sub-plots, settings, conflicts, motivations. I contemplate when I've got too much of one thing or am missing an important element. My book's components are adjusted as it grows toward a finished state.

But while it takes a year for me to write a book, a chutney rarely simmers more than thirty minutes.  This makes it a small but gratifying accomplishment.