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Balareddipalli, Chutneys, Heirloom Recipes, Vegan  /  June 23, 2023

Balareddipalle Chinturumindi

by Deepa
Jump to Recipe

It had taken us impossibly long to get there. 27 years and, as though in punishing harmony with that number, 7 nauseating hours from Hosur, cutting through the heart of Bangalore’s impossibly thick traffic, all in the dull grey of a receding cyclone whose drizzle would not let up along the way. Not even for a moment.

Like that, easier to sum up the 7 hours than the 27 years, which had been long enough to crumble one part of the ancestral old house clearly not built to last, while the other had mostly remained intact, with just one portion needing reinforced propping.

All images of the then-still-intact house from 1995, the very last being a view from the Palegar fort–to which I hiked in a sari, as new brides marrying into the village couldn’t be seen wearing anything other.

All that long while ago, we’d spent a night on the paatha-maadi, the old terrace, some seven of us (that number again) arranged in a line, us the newlyweds. That was a clear night, moon-bright enough to sense a dog coming up to a spot in a corner, chased away by someone who awoke to this intruder. This night was still-rainy, so it was spent in a room that had once been a granary–that was built to last, in the early decades of the 20th century. The dogs were locked out this time, but a mouse woke me with nibbles on my toes; it had come to the granary of course, where all things stored were food. Naturally. I barely noticed, though: the travails of travel had done me in.

The clear-day view from the paatha maadi, 1995 & a different cloudy-day view from under the ippa chettu, 2022.

Then came “the birth of the simple light,” as Dylan Thomas once wrote of his own stays as a child at Fern Hill in Carmarthenshire in Southern Wales, and we found our ways “out of the whinnying green stable/ On to the fields of praise”–those Welsh scenes and longings about as far and close, as incongruous and identical to how we dreamed of our childhood landscapes, too.

Past the ippa chettu (what I know as the iluppai maram, Madhuca longfolia), walking though a maze of tangedu shrubs (what I know as avaaram, Tanner’s Cassia), which a grandfather had once done a rollicking trade in; up to the overflowing cheruvu (tank) bordered by vavili shrubs (what I know as nocci, Vitex negundo) into which the dogs were happily pushed and not so happily extracted. How much we laughed and rejoiced in the fullness that the rain had brought, though it made the fields over-wet. They sucked us in, nearly knee-deep and threatened to keep our chappals stuck and buried, and perhaps us, too, mudbound. We’d not have minded though, like that being planted where we had already grown.

Home was bare stone surfaces, clear water, no more mud, and a breakfast of atukula uppma (what I know as aval uppma, a spiced flat rice preparation) and this chutney everyone referred to as chinturumindi or chinturubindi, depending on how anyone enunciated or heard the sounds, which I thought I didn’t know until a later dissection: chinta [tamarind] + ooru [literally, to soak; alluding to pickling] + pindi [powder or powdered, alluding to dals/spices that have been powdered]. Technically, what I know as a thuvaiyal, a chutney by any other name but always one that uses grown dals for both flavor and texture, although this version relied rather heavily on just jeera and tamarind and was unlike any chutney I’d thus far known. A sort of cross between a classic gojju and a classic chaat chutney.

The husband would speak of (and long for) something he called just a “thick dal,” and now I realized that was nothing other than a pappu urumindi: a dal chutney, if you like. Had it been made of raw toor dal (just roasted and ground), it would have been a kandi-pachadi, literally a toor dal chutney. But pappurumindi is made from cooked toor/tuvar, to which is then added a spice mix that includes other dals, whose effect is thickening. I’ll get a recipe for that up, next. [Here it is: pappurumindi.]

It is something, finding the category into which a quotidian experience or memory fits; there is so much relief in that sort of “a-haa!” sense-finding, the coherence of things an irreplaceable assurance over idiosyncratic randomness.

Like this, a world not mine became mine by analogy and extension, association and identification, taste and relish, and hardly only because I married into it.

Balareddipalle Chinturbindi

A gojju-like tamarind chutney that’s another from-the-village special, but it's not the kind of chutney that goes on chaat (who eats chaats in our villages down south?) or even pakodas, more like with a meal. We had it with beaten rice uppma for breakfast one morning, and I can well imagine it as part of a regular dal-vegetable-chapati lunch. Make it sweeter or make it spicier it’s up to you!
Print Recipe

Ingredients
  

  • Peanut oil, to fry and temper

For the chutney

  • 1 heaped tablespoon of jeera
  • 20 dry red chillies
  • A handful of sambar onions, peeled and chopped
  • A lemon-sized ball of dry tamarind
  • A handful of finely chopped coriander leaves
  • Powdered jaggery, to taste

For the tempering:

  • ¼ teaspoon chana dal
  • ¼ teaspoon urad dal
  • ½ teaspoon mustard seeds
  • A few sprigs of curry leaves
  • 4-5 sambar onions, sliced
  • ¼ teaspoon turmeric

Instructions
 

Prepare the chutney:

  • Make sure the tamarind is free of fibres and seeds. Soak it in water, using just enough to cover the dry fruit and soften.
  • Heat a scant teaspoon of oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan, and drop in the jeera and the red chillies. Toast until fragrant but not browning. Remove and transfer to the jar of a blender and powder. Don’t worry if the mixture is coarse at this stage.
  • In same pan, add more oil (enough to fry all but 2 tablespoons of the remaining onions), then add the chopped onions and fry until barely browning. Reserve the last of the onions for the finishing, later.
  • Follow with the tamarind along with the soaking water, mixing well to incorporate.
  • Add salt to taste, and transfer the mixture to the blender jar with the chillies and jeera. Blend into a fine-ish paste, and return to the same cooking pan.

Tempering:

  • In a smaller seasoning pan, heat oil until it is almost smoking, then drop in the dals and roast until golden. Follow with the mustard seeds until they crackle and pop.
  • Now add the curry leaves and the sliced onions. Fry until the onions are translucent.
  • Add the turmeric powder, mix well, and immediately pour over the prepared chutney.
  • Finish with the chopped coriander leaves which will wilt with the heat; mix well to incorporate.
  • This chutney will keep well for a few days without refrigeration, but if it is to be used over a longer period, it’s best to refrigerate from the start.

Post navigation

Little boxes, little boxes
Pappurumindi, or a dal chutney

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2 comments

  • Pappurumindi, or a dal chutney – Pâticheri
    June 25, 2023

    […] a chutney by any other name in many parts of Andhra. I encountered it first in the form of the chinturubindi or tamarind chutney of my mother-in-law’s ancestral village near Bagepalli a few hours north […]

    Reply
  • Umatha’s Kheema Meatballs & Soup – Pâticheri
    January 10, 2024

    […] and legendary cooks whose treasured recipes I’ve started documenting here under the “Balareddipalle” tag. And much of that involves meat. Not much caring for the physical sensations that fear […]

    Reply

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