There could be umpteenth number of cuisines you may have tasted, made myriad dishes, may be even excel in recalling the ingredients just by taste - in short you could be this ultimate connoisseur in gastronomy, but all said and done, I can guarantee that any dish which probably would always make you smile and warm all over would be the one with which you grew up! I would say this when it comes to this Onion chutney. I have tried trillion n gazillion varieties of Onion chutney (you would be surprised at how many varieties there are indeed!) but I always had some bone to pick with it. "Recipe is not proportionate", "Onions are not fresh", "Oh! today is one of those -all wrong - days" - Excuses! Excuses! but never satisfaction. Something was always amiss. And just recently I realized that there was nothing wrong with any of those recipes. In fact they were all great in their own way. What was missing was my mom's touch, the happiness of recalling those days when I used to voice out my "worries like no other being in this world(!!)" sitting in the counter top of our kitchen while my mom cooked and consoled, gossiping and sharing tales of the day and her soothing blend of ingredients filling my nostrils. aah! It was just my mom missing! Sitting out so far away, the least I could do was call her pronto and ask her for her recipe which brought me so much closer to her than she could possibly fathom. This is a v simple recipe but which I love love love ( did I say "love" enough!) and can never have enough. Now all I need is for someone to make some warm idlli's too ;-) This is more called a Thogayal than chutney which in South India is thicker than Chutney consistency and uses tamarind as one of its ingredients.
By Christy,v on Sep 15, 2018