Mamta: I'm out of Patak's hot mango chutney, so I thought I'd do my own. I printed out your Hor Mango Picle (Gupta Family Style) recipe. I've bought a mango, but I'm not sure what a pickling mango is.
Also, what's the difference, if any, between a pickle and a chutney,
Phil
Hello Phil
From an Indian point of view, pickles are the ones that are made in oil, often mustard oil, and have a lot of spices. They generally are not sweet.
Chutneys are when ingredients are cooked in vinegar, with spices and sugar. If you are looking for Patak?s mango chutney replacement, you can try;
I have adjusted the titles a bit, to make them easier to follow.
Pickling mangoes are more tart then eating mangoes, but any raw mangoes can be used. Neither of these recipes use ripe mangoes.
Just one more thing, if you make a fresh chutney, as in green mango and mint/coriander chutney, we spell it as Chatni. The cooked in vinegar, Western style ones are Chutneys or sweet pickles, generally. I know it is confusing!
I could be wrong but these days aren't "pickles" and "chutneys" more or less used to mean the same sort of cooked sweet/savoury/sour/spice "jams"...
I would think that a pickle in its orginal context would be just that, something pickled without any heat etc (pickled onions, pickled cabbage etc)...
Steve
Pickling usually refers to preserving in oil and or vinegar and or brine; infact the term derives from the Dutch "pekel" for brine. In Hindi (and other languages), pickles are called "achar".
Chutney, comes into English from the Hindi "chatni" which means something that makes one lick one's lips! In India, the term often refers to fresh condiments including sauces. But in English, it's mostly for preserves rather than fresh condiments and is used for a wider category than pickles and most commonly refers to vegetables preserved with spices as well as sugar and vinegar, though fruits are also included, especially dried ones.
Then you've got jams and ketchups and sauces.
The recipe that Indians refer to as tamarind chutney (idly chatni) I tend to call a ketchup for it's consistency, for example!
Confusing?! :)
I couldn't have put it better myself Kav :-). Only one error, it is Imli chutney, not Idli chutney. Idli is a rice and lentil, steamed dumpling from south India and Imli is Tamarind.
Steve, Indian pickles almost always have hot spices and are almost always made in oil, not in brine. In India, pickles and chutneys are two different set of things. I know that different words meaning different things in different parts of the world can cause a lot of confusion :-(.
Ha, I actually said imli out loud but typed idli, don't know why, I hate idlis.
Thanks, folks.
Er... I'm rather confused!
Mamta: I've just read through your father's mango chutney recipe. It speaks of mango that was probably locally harvested, and of much drying in the sun: very authentic, and evocative of the environment he must have lived in. No trace of supermarkets there!
I was much taken by the suggestion that an axe be used: I've never seen that in a recipe before. Great stuff!
I think I might use the mango to do our Korean beef and mango dish, and then attempt the mango pickle/chutney in the hot Mediterrean summer (olive harvest nearly done here, by the way).
Phil
Hello Phil
I have many fond memories of him making pickles, chutneys and jams, with all of us helping, the whole family and the servants. That mango chutney was one of my favourites. For years, my mum used to save a jar for me and every time I went to India, I used to bring it back with me. Mangoes have a hard stone in the centre, which is impossible to cut with a knife. This stone, minus its inner, bitter pip, is a special part of that particular mango pickle. When you eat it, you kind of ?bite the pickle flesh off the stone, yum! So, to get this stone in the pickle, whole mango had to be cut along with the stone. In those days, there were no modern, super sharp choppers, so an axe was the usual implement of choice.
No, there were no supermarkets. My parents used to go to the bi-weekly vegetable market in a nearby villages, something like this one; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f70_ZO7L_Ks and bought all their vegetables and some fruit there, topping it up with stuff bought with the vegetable shops on wheels; http://photos1.blogger.com/img/251/2180/640/IMG_1063.jpg .
I think you are wise to delay making pickle until summer, it will mature better and less likely to go mouldy.There were no out of season things available then. All mango pickles were made in early summer, before mangoes ripened.
When we were very young, my father used to work in sugar factories (he was a sugar chemist), which were always located in rural areas to have easy access to sugar cane. We always had huge gardens with the houses allocated to him wherever he went. He grew all his own vegetables and many fruits. Those were lovely days :-)!
Do you pickle your own olives and use oil made from your own olives?
Mamta
Hello again, Mamta
What lovely memories! I hope my kids will have good culinary memories of me and my wife: I'll be leaving them lots of printouts of recipes from your website, and training them up in how to cook.
Those markets look great, and I bet it was all local produce in your father's day, perhaps even now, in India.
I try to support the local market culture here in the South of France, bit it's not all local stuff, alas. I'm all for local, and thus seasonal, veg, and seafood. Some of it is labelled as being from a specific local town or village, which is good, I think. Even local onions can carry the name and address of the grower.
Does the stone impart a flavour to the pickle? Is that a bit like bone and meat?
I'll let you know how I get on with that hot mango chutney in the summer months.
Phil
Hello Phil
If you look at this picture http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y-NZH_9FnmA/TAYLrX21JtI/AAAAAAAAARg/GHJY3L1mqew/s1600/DSC03500.JPG, you will get some idea of how mango looked after cutting up. The soft, inner 'pip' part of the stone is gone, but the fibrous shell of the remains. When you eat it, you bte the flesh off the fibrous shell.