Cold cooked meats, to taste. Try it with a pork pie or gala pie
…or a scotch egg.
Had that for lunch yesterday.
Lovely.
Came across a jar of Branston pickle. Maybe this thread shot across the Internet and algorithmed an inventory system into stocking one. So I bought it and tried it out, this time with real English farmhouse cheddar.
Again … meh. It’s fine. I’d eat it if given one, but it’s not something I would choose of my own volition.
English cheddar is always great, but the English pickle I can take or leave.
I’ve had quite a lot of people tell me that UK style chutney is not really anything like an Indian chutney (some of them were quite angry that we call it chutney in fact).
Branston is probably the most well known British style pickle, and it’s not a terrible product, but I think it’s a bit generic and it’s very easily surpassed by homemade pickles and some of the smaller more obscure local brands and varieties
Yeah, for the most part, it’s considerably different, but there are so many types of Indian/South Asian chutneys around that I would t be surprised if some are closer than others.
I prefer a more vinegar forward chutney. Branston was a little overly sweet for my taste.
Yeah, but how many of us have the time to go haring off to the Cotswolds, scouring every farmer’s market and roadside stand for the “Good Stuff?”
You’ve just described my retirement plan.
Yeah, English chutney isn’t chutney.
In Bengali cuisine in fact, chatni is not a condiment; it’s a pre-dessert dessert. It’s sort of a sweet and sour glop usually with bits of boiled fruits in it. You just stick your fingers in it, grab a gloppy soury-fruity mess and suck it up. Then you move on to the real super-sweet desserts, usually dairy-based.
Indeed, the word chatni literally means “something you lick (off your fingers).”
English chutney is often referred to as a pickle. Indian chutney isn’t a pickle, that is, something preserved to be stored and eaten over a long period. Chatni is meant to be eaten fresh. Achar is the Indian version of pickle.
I worked with a guy named Acharya. Any connection with achar?
What I tend to see here in my area, which is more Northern Indian (Gujarati and Punjabi) is green chutney made from coriander/cilantro and mint and tamarind chutney, typically served with all sorts of chaat. It’s more of a sauce than a chunky thing. With South Indians I also see coconut chutney, as well. (And occasionally I see some others). Are those all properly called chutneys, or are they something else?
No, they are unrelated.
Achar is from Persian آچار, meaning pickle.
Acharya is from Sanskrit आचार्य, meaning teacher.
They wouldn’t be called chatni in Bengali cuisine. I don’t know about other cuisines. Chat of those kinds isn’t part of Bengali cuisine.
Incidentally, chat is from the same root as chatni, to lick.
(I don’t use the “aa” to transliterate Bengali because in Bengali there is no distinction between short and long vowels. All vowels are by default long. And there is no reduction of unstressed vowels (“schwa”).)
I’m from Pakistan (Urdu speaking area) but of South Indian ancestry and a chutney was either a sweet & spicy relish (i.e. chunky) or a sweet & spicy sauce (smooth) made from a very wide array of fruits, vegetables or seafood.
Cool!
There was a dessert at an Indian restaurant I went to with coworkers with the unfortunate name of barfi. The Persian woman in the group said that meant ‘snow’ in Persian.
Yes, in Bengali also, ice or snow is boroph বরফ. The dessert item is বরফি borphi.
(Incidentally I’m not crazy about the idea of judging a word in X language as sounding “unfortunate” in Y language. Every language should be approached on its own terms.)
I apologize if I offended.
Thanks! (And you, too, Acsenray). I was wondering whether this was two different words folded into one in English, or whether both the relish and sauce kinds fell under the same heading.
India is as diverse as or maybe more diverse than the entirety of Europe. So words traveling across the subcontinent will be used in a variety of ways.