Viva Lewes Issue #130 July 2017

RECIPE
Green chutney
A versatile ‘flavour bomb’, from Chloe
at Seven Sisters’ Spices
Green chutneys are such a common feature
in a lot of cuisines. You could almost classify
pesto as a green chutney, with the traditional
basil, pine nut and parmesan. In India
they can be made with all sorts of different
ingredients, but my Indian-influenced one
is made using 100g coriander, 50g peanuts,
½tsp turmeric, 2tsp ground coriander seeds,
three cloves crushed garlic, one green chilli
and the juice and zest of one lime. Place all
of the ingredients into a small food processor
and blitz to a coarse paste. You can freeze it,
or you can keep it in your fridge for about a
week to ten days.
The thing I love about this is that you can use
it as a curry paste, you can use it as a marinade,
you can mix it with yoghurt to make
a dressing – there’s just a million different
things you can do with it. You can use it as a
chutney, just as it is. It’s really versatile. It’s
also nice as a vegetarian option if you crumble
some feta in with it, because the lovely zing of
the coriander and lime goes really nicely with
the feta cheese. Sometimes I put fresh mint
leaves in as well. It really is just one of those
recipes that you can sort of wing around,
depending on your flavour preferences.
I think there are some ingredients which
people think they’d only ever buy from a shop
and they’d only ever use in one way. If you
start to take ownership of things like this and
just use them how you want, you can break
that limitation of thinking that a chutney
is just a chutney, or a paste is just a paste.
They’re all amalgamations of flavours that
you can just sort of riff off. If you know you
like the basic flavour you can just start to play
around with it.
That sort of thinking is increasingly quite a
big component of the workshops that I teach.
Yes, you’ve made a mango chutney, but you
can do this, this and this with it. It can be
quite labour-intensive in the first instance,
but then once you have a stock of these lovely,
quite complex flavour bombs in your fridge,
you can stick them in all sorts of things.
I’m teaching three different workshops at
the moment on a rotation: ‘The Alchemy of
Spice’, which looks at working with spices
in all their different manifestations - curries,
dal, flatbreads, spiced rice, chutneys; ‘Spiced
Salads and Sugar-free Treats’, which is about
fresh, raw and ‘clean’ eating; and ‘Pickles
and Condiments’, which very much focuses
on what I’ve just been talking about with the
green chutney.
This month I’ll be doing a cookery demonstration
in Inglis Hall’s new test kitchen.
They’re really keen to have people coming in
and just using it, so I’m hoping to teach some
courses in there and maybe do some stuff for
Octoberfeast too!
Interview by Rebecca Cunningham
Upcoming workshops are on Sat 8th, Mon 17th
and Sat 29th July, 10.30am-2.30pm, £45 per
person. sevensistersspices.com
77