Spice cupboard samosa chutney.

I was at Glyndebourne again this weekend, this time to see Vanessa. As I had only returned from Vietnam on Tuesday night I had anticipated jetlag and been excused from serious cooking. One of my friends had decided to make samosas for the picnic and we were discussing condiments. He wanted to cover the bases of sweet, cool and hot: mango chutney; yoghurt and mint; and... something else.

As I have got to the point of the summer holidays where I have more time than I know what to do with, I volunteered, with the proviso that I would then spend an afternoon blogging about it.

I love garlic and nigella seed chutney, and it goes fantastically well with Indian-inspired food, so I decided to use the combination as a starting point. I also needed the flavours in the chutney to complement those in the samosas. My friend used, and I quote: "chilli, cloves, cumin, cinnamon, coriander... and then ginger, just so that not everything begins with C."

As there would be plenty of sweetness on the plate coming from the mango, I decided to keep this chutney more savoury and skip the cloves and cinnamon. Rummaging through the cupboard I settled on nigella seeds, dried red chilli flakes, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, and powdered asafoetida (which contains turmeric). The bulk of the chutney was to be provided by fresh garlic and ginger.

I debated which kind of acid to use. An English chutney would typically contain vinegar, but I wasn't married to the idea. Referring to the acid flavour wheel in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat I decided to use fresh limes and tamarind; adding a vinegar later only if I thought it needed more acidity.

I began by dicing four bulbs of garlic and a piece of ginger around 8cm long into pieces of around 3-4mm. I cut the limes into circles around 2-3mm wide and sliced these into 16ths.

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I toasted all the seeds together in a dry frying pan. Normally I would pound cumin and coriander before toasting but I got slightly carried away pouring in the nigella seeds and forgot. I think this was fine for the cumin but the coriander retained a distinct crunch in the final chutney which it might have been better without.

When the seeds were toasted I removed them from the pan, added a small amount of rapeseed oil and fried the diced garlic and ginger with some salt until the garlic was just beginning to turn gold. I added the lime, a large spoonful of tamarind paste and all of the spices, and let the mixture cook for a couple of minutes. As I wanted everything to soften considerably I added water to create more steam.

At this point I tasted the mixture to adjust the flavours. It wasn't as spicy as I wanted, so I added more red chilli flakes. It was also very bitter, presumably from the limes (where I had included the pith) and the finely-diced garlic. I didn't want to remove the bitterness completely, but it definitely needed rebalancing.

I know of three ways to balance bitterness: sugar, salt and fat. There is a good article about it here. I didn't want the chutney to be "sweet" but I added some sugar to kick-start the process. Then I added seasalt, one large pinch at a time. The bitterness gradually mellowed as the salt did its work. As the chutney was to be served with deep-fried samosas I decided to keep it relatively bitter and let the final balance happen on the plate. There was some guesswork involved here as I didn't have any samosas to trial. I added a little more lime juice to lift the flavours overall.

When I was happy with the flavour I added more water and let the mixture simmer and reduce to a thick sauce. I spooned it into a jar and took it to the picnic the next day.

The samosas (which were excellent) provided a good foil for the remaining bitterness. I think it could have been considerably spicier than it was: distracted by the bitter flavour I lost focus on the heat. It may also have mellowed overnight. In terms of texture, the size of the garlic and ginger pieces worked well, but I think the limes would have better zested and squeezed, rather than sliced. I also think the ratio of garlic and ginger to seeds should have been higher for the sake of texture, although the flavour balance was good. As discussed above, the coriander seeds would have been better if they had been ground. The chutney had stiffened on cooling and I think next time I would treat it more like jam and stop the cooking when it is considerably wetter than I want the finished product.