By Oliver D. Schmidt, owner of Grashoff's bistro and delicatessen

Chutneys come from Indian cuisine

Chutneys are an extremely practical invention, as they season rice dishes and curries in a variety of ways. The delicious seasoning sauces have their origin in the very diverse and varied Indian cuisine. There are at least as many recipes for chutneys as there are people who prepare them. At its core, it is a matter of seasoning pastes or seasoning sauces, which can go more in the direction of sweet and sour, hot and fruity, rather pasty or chunky and creamy - depending on how you want to give your rice dish or curry a special and personal touch .

What is a chutney anyway?

A chutney is usually based on fruit or vegetables. In southern India, a paste made from ground coconut is also often used as a base. The desired texture is sometimes that of a jam, especially when the base is fruit.

Basically, if you have chosen a fruit, vegetable or coconut paste as the basis for your chutney, you have to bring it to the desired basic texture by cooking, chopping or pureeing. Here it starts: In order to give the mango chutney its later texture and to counteract the sweet aroma of the mango, onions are first roasted until colourless, various spices and ginger are added, this is cooked and supplemented with finely chopped apples and similar ones mangoes The sweetness of the mangoes, the acidity of the apples, the aromas of the spices and the spiciness of the onions result in a successful interplay. If the texture is suitable for mixing with rice or a curry, then it is correct.

The combinations of ingredients make the difference: sweet fruits complement each other perfectly with hotter spices

If you swap the mango for a plum or the onion for milder-tasting vegetables like okra, you get a different, if not completely different, result.

It is therefore important to know which dish you would like to enrich with the chutney.

As always, there is a special appeal when opposites are combined: sweet fruits and hotter spices complement each other perfectly, or velvety vegetable pastes with crunchy, roasted nuts. As you can see, there are no limits to creativity here.

The secret of Grashoff's sweet and spicy chicken curry recipe

At Grashoff, for example, we use a mixture of hot, crunchy and sweet for our "sweet-spicy poultry curry" and distribute the contrasts across the various components. The spiciness is the tandoori masala , which essentially consists of chilies, cumin and coriander seeds. Dissolved in a little water, it makes a wonderful marinade in which you can soak and marinate medallions of poulard breast for a certain amount of time. The chicken breast is cooked under the grill over a low heat so that it remains very tender and juicy on the one hand and the tandoori masala cannot burn through too much heat, because then it would only taste bitter. This delicious spice was originally intended for the tandoor oven, where it is often mixed with yoghurt and applied to the food before use and never comes into direct contact with heat.

For the crunchy component, we combine planed-roasted flaked almonds, roasted-salted cashews and sultanas with basmati rice, which has been cooked in a rice cooker with butter, Kaneel and cardamom pods. If you use a Persian rice cooker, you can even have the rice cook with a very delightful crispy crust.

The sweet component in this recipe is the chutney.