#jaggery

Cranberry chutney

Sweet, tart, jammy cranberries evolve into the subtle aromatics of cumin, mustard, and bay leaf before rounding off into a smooth, even chili heat in this Anglo-Indian-style chutney. It's excellent in place of cranberry sauce on all kinds of roasts, meat pies, flatbreads, sandwiches, and charcuterie boards.

The cooked fruit-and-vinegar chutneys made by English cooks during the British colonization of India were inspired by the fresh and pickled Indian condiments that English traders and soldiers—including those in the East India Company's military arm—had acquired a taste for, but substituted locally familiar produce and cooking methods for Indian ones. "Indian" recipes began appearing in English cookbooks in the mid-18th century, inspiring and fulfilling a desire for the exotic and, effectively, advertising colonial goods. The domestic kitchen thus became a productive site for the creation and negotiation of colonial ideology: the average English housekeeper could feel a sense of ownership over India and its cultural and material products, and a sense of connection to the colonial endeavor desite physical distance.

This sauce, centered around a tart fruit that is simmered with sugar and savory aromatics and spices, is similar in composition to an Anglo-Indian chutney, but some Indian pantry staples that British recipes tend to substitute or remove (such as jaggery, bay leaf, and mustard oil) have been imported back in. The result is a pungent, spicy, deeply sweet, slightly sour topping that's good at cutting through rich, fatty, or starchy foods.

Recipe under the cut!

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Prawn Patia

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

10 curry leaves

1 small onion, finely chopped (about 1 cup)

2 small green chilis (such as Thai bird) chopped fine

½ cup tomato purée

1 Tbsp. ginger garlic paste 

1½ tsp. red chili powder (cayenne powder)

½ tsp. turmeric powder

1 tsp. cumin powder

½ tsp. granulated sugar or grated jaggery

1½ Tbsp. vinegar (preferably palm vinegar)

2 Tbsp. water

kosher salt

1 cup medium shelled, deveined shrimp

1 Tbsp. chopped cilantro leaves

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Gently put in the curry leaves and step aside as they pop. Stir for 20 seconds. Add the chopped onions and stir until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the green chilies and stir for another minute. Add the tomato puree and keep stirring until oil separates from the onion tomato mix, about 5 minutes. Add the ginger-garlic past, red chili, turmeric, and cumin, and keep stirring until mixture is fragrant, about 5 minutes, taking care to ensure the mixture doesn't stick to the bottom.

Okay so, random post: I love panela, also known as gur, jaggery and a million other names across both latin america and asia. Why is that? Well, there are multiple reasons, first of which is that it's fucking awesome.

Like, you're telling me that there's this pill paste thing that's made of fucking sugarcane juice, is sweet asf while not being as harmful to your health? Count me in! Plus, it's literally so good, you can make coffee with it, or the most banger hot chocolate you've ever had, or even fucking lemonade which tastes amazing!

There's also the process, it's literally just soakig, boiling, molding and then drying sugarcane! And nothing is lost in the process! The paste thingy is the jaggery itself, the remaining juices, also called melaza, is used as a sweetener that even people with diabetes can use cuz it's 100% natural and also animal supplement (yeah, you heard me right! Animal supplement!), and the sugarcane fiber goes into the furnace as fuel! Nothing is wasted!.

On top of that, it's a point of connection across continents, it's common in both latin america and some parts of asia! It's so cool that we had the same idea even being an ocean apart, and if it's something that the indias brought here or something, then that's just to show that it's become such a staple in the culture over here that it's ingrained in the very soul of the subcontinent! (Like, literally the two biggest producers and consumers of jaggery in the world are India and Colombia, an asian and a latin american country) It feels like we're connected, even across an ocean and half a continent, even across the centuries, millenia even, of history, we still have the same tastes.

Also, spice buddies! We grow spices and get colonized for it! We're practically cousins!

Sending good vibes to all my desi and latino mates wherever you are, we're all together in this to some degree