Curry leaf chutney was a great way for us to use up a bounty of curry leaves we harvested from my wifes curry leaves plant. Curry leaves are quintessential to indian cooking and especially used pervasively in south indian cooking. The curry leaves don’t necessarily have to do a lot with curry powder although some curry powder blends may include them.
Curry leaves are dark green in color and usually added to hot oil with other tempering spices like mustard and asafoetida to create a flavored oil tempering. Their strong flavor is warming and pungent. If you rub the leaves in your hands you can immediately smell them. They have a bitter component and very subtle citrus component. Generally one requires maybe a stem of leaves when cooking a meal. However we had almost four cups of curry leaves.
Hence to make use of such large supply we decided to make curry leaf chutney powder. Such chutney powders are made of various kinds and used as sides or dry seasoning to pair or top south indian entrees like dosa and idli and uttapams. Usually my grandmother used to make it coarse by pounding it in a large mortar and pestle. However the dark green color of my wifes harvest and imagining it as a chutney powder reminded me of matcha. So i decided to dry the leaves via light roasting while trying to maintain their color when making the chutney powder. I was hoping to make a very fine powder which i could dust on various dishes. On further thought i also came to the realization that the flavor profile of this chutney powder would also have a lot of umami component.
When making the curry leaf chutney powder traditionally it uses chana dal, urad dal and slightly dried tamarind. The bitter component of curry leaves does need some sour flavor to balance the taste. Tamarind makes it slightly moist so instead i deviated and used dried pomegranate seeds and they seemed to work out just perfect. When grinding the powder i ground it very fine using coffee grinder and then also strained it using the mesh sieve of a sugar duster. The result was a very fine pwder a lovely paler but enticing green in color.
Since curry leaf chutney powder pairs with south indian entrees in a heartbeat we immediately topped a couple of entrees with a dusting. It tasted great with the thing we tried.
We first put it on a pair of medu / urad wada. It is a donut shaped savory fritter made from ground urid dal lentils. It looked deceptively like a donut dusted with matcha powder.
We similary topped it on some idlis and they added an earthy feel to the dish.
Then when we made some sandwiches next day and when we reached for the chips we of ourse had to try a dusting on the chips as well and we are happy to report that it works quite well.
Also we decided to use this across cultures and since we had the umami flavor of curry leaf chutney powder at the back of our minds we decided to try something rooted in japanese cooking. Naturally we were thinking something rice flour based and hence mochi was apparent as a candidate. Mochi are cakes made from pounded sticky rice. They are available at asian stores and almost look like small bars of hotel soaps. They are cooked by putting them on indirect heat of a grill or can even be microwaved. They puff up like a little baloon and form a crispy crust. We decided to cut the cake into small pieces and heat them on our range with a seperator. This way we got puffed crusty pop-em sized mochi. All we did was then to dust them with our curry leaf chutney powder.
Traditional mochi is wrapped in dried seaweed sheet and this flavor with curry leaf chutney was in that sense similar and packed with umami.
Curry Leaf Chutney Powder
- Total Time: 15 mins
- Yield: 0.75 cups 1x
Description
A great way to use surplus curry leaves. Dust it on medu vada, idli, chips or even mochi!
Ingredients
- 4 tsp chana dal
- 4 tsp urad dal
- 2 black peppercorns
- 2 tsp dried pomegranate seeds
- 4 cup curry leaves
- 1 tsp salt
- 0.5 tsp sugar
Instructions
- Roast chana dal,urad dal and black peppercorns seperately till fragrant and mildly colored
- Roast curry leaves on low heat in a big pan stirring constantly till they start getting drier while keeping color
- Add leaves to a sheet pan and add to oven pre heated to 170 F for 10 minutes to dry further (if you get lot of sun you can sun dry them)
- Grind all ingredients to a fine powder with addition of salt and sugar in a spice or coffee grinder
- Strain using a mesh strainer to obtain a very fine powder
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
