Date, Lime and Raisin Chutney

A recipe from around 1960, it is probably much older.

Key Lime Chutney with Dates Raisins

Cooking Time: ½ hour 

Preparation Time: ½ hour 

Category: Condiment

 Cuisine: Indian  

Source: Harvey Day

 Ingredients

2 lbs. Key limes

2 ozs. salt

4 ozs. raisins, seedless

8 fl ozs cider or malt vinegar 

4 ozs. dates, seedless 

1 oz. ginger

1 oz. garlic 

½ oz. chiles, red, dried, seeded stemmed

½ oz. mustard seed 

4 oz. jaggery (brown sugar, but palm sugar preferred)

 Instructions

 Dates scorch easily. Do not leave the pot unstirred

  Quarter limes, not all the way through. Rub with salt, put them in the hot sun for 3 days. Remove the salt. Remove the seeds.Slice the ginger on a mandoline as thinly as possible. Same for the garlic. Put the ginger, garlic,vinegar, mustard seed, brown sugar, raisins, and dates in a stock pot. Seed and stem the chiles wearing latex gloves. Add the limes, torn apart into the pot. Bring to a simmer on the lowest possible heat and cook, uncovered 30 minutes. Remove from the heat, cool to room temperature. Grind the contents in a food processor or food chopper. Bottle. Refrigerate

.Notes This may improve with age.

Sweet Lime Chutney

Around 1995 I found a small cookbook titled: Curries of India by Harvey Day. Long out of print, this small book is a priceless collection of authentic Indian and Asia Minor recipes. I present just one here. The booklets were originally published separately but were combined into one binding. Each book kept it's original pagination.

CAVEAT: Dates burn easily. Do not leave the pot unattended. Stir like crazy. You are warned.

Curries of India
The Second Book of Curries (Book 2) by Harvey Day
Jaico Publishing House 125 Mahatma Gandhi Road
Bombay, 1
©1963
Fifth Impression 1978
India's Own Pocket Editions

Page 57

Sweet Lime Chutney

25 limes or lemons
2 oz salt
½ pint vinegar
¼ lb raisins
¼ lb dates
1 oz ginger, fresh
1 oz garlic - finely chopped
½ oz red chiles, dried
½ oz mustard seed
4 oz brown sugar

Divide the limes (or lemons) into quarters but do not separate the pieces. Rub the flesh with salt and expose the fruit to the sun for three days, turning daily, or put in a warm oven until dried off. Remove the seeds, grind the fruit in the vinegar and other ingredients, bring to a boil and simmer for half an hour. Allow to cool and bottle. Can be used at any time.

My notes: Key Limes if available. I believe that the pint refers to the British Pint, hence that is 18 fluid ounces, not the U.S. 16 of white vinegar. The limes called for would be an Indian variety which in the West we call a Key or Mexican lime. These are much smaller than the typical supermarket lime, known in the trade as a Bearss Lime. They should be had as yellow as possible. Key limes will ripen if kept in vegetable compartment of the refrigerator. They ripen quite slowly. The dates are pitted. I would use a moist date for this recipe, ex. Medjool. If you cannot find moist ones, use dry dates, but soak them in water, overnight.

Mr. Day's use of "finely chopped" may be confusing to some. Does he mean a large dice, etc.? I would aim for pieces about 2mm on a side or 1/16". Red chiles. Ahem. Mr. Day uses the Indian-English spelling of Chilli. I would suggest jaggery as it's now an available ingredient. In Harvey Day's day, they equipment used would be a vegetable chopper, pictured below. You should use your food processor.

Helpful Hints: Put the salted limes in a glass casserole and place in the sun in mid-July. (Northern Hemisphere, January in the Southern Hemisphere) Bring the casserole in the house overnight and set on a dry countertop, un-covered. During the day, rotate the fruits once in the morning and a second time in the early afternoon. But in any event, twice a day. The fruits' skin must reach dryness to prevent spoilage. I am going to use .1% of sodium benzoate in mine. I will put the sodium benzoate in the vinegar and allow it to dissolve before proceeding with the making.

Yeo's Malaysian Curry Powder and Chicken Curry

May 25, 2014 UPDATE

I love Yeo's products. I sent them an email address and some years later learned that hackers had stolen it and a password. This is unduly annoying. I continue to buy their products but never had as much as a "So Sorry" from them. If I had it to do over, I would not give them any information about myself.

Yeo's Malaysian Curry is different. Not that I've sampled a decent 1000 or so curries, I haven't. But I have collected or read a few hundred curry powder recipes and having seen the differences and similarities of them, I reiterate: Yeo's is different. It's ingredients, as listed on the package are no different than many ingredients common to all curry powders, yet, it is different.

I write about this, as it is one of the recurring recipes I like to make. Especially in cooler weather. Beer would be better with this dish than wine.

1 1/2 lbs. chicken breast, cubed (after boning or boneless)
2 onions, core removed, cut in slices, from top to bottom
2 tbs. vegetable oil (avoid olive oil)
1 tbs. curry powder
14 oz. can coconut milk (see note below)
3-4 russet potatoes
1/2 tsp. salt
1 lime

Heat the oil in a 3 quart pot, about 5 minutes. In the meanwhile, slice the onions. When sliced, add them to the hot oil. Raise heat to medium and stir to break the onion into slices about 30 seconds. In the meanwhile, cube the chicken into 1/2" to 3/4" pieces. When the onions start to brown, after 8 to 10 minutes, add the curry powder and stir to incorporate.  Add the salt, stir once or twice. Add the chicken, potatoes and then the coconut milk and water to barely cover. Bring to a boil, lower the heat to the lowest simmer. Cover and simmer 25 minutes longer. Serve with plain rice and lime wedges.

Coconut milk or (sometimes called) coconut cream is somewhat thick. It is not coconut water. It comes in cans of 14 or 15 ozs. Use the whole can and add enough water to barely cover the meat and potatoes.

50 grams of Yeo's cost $1.25 (US $) in Nov. 2012.