Chutney is also a verb

Chut-ney (chuht-nee) -

noun, a sauce or relish of East Indian origin, often compounded of both sweet and sour ingredients, such as fruits and herbs, with spices and other seasoning.

verb, the act of turning a large bag full of produce into a small jar full of tangy goo by means of excessive chopping and simmering.

-Random House Dictionary and NTSCBlog.com

This last week was our first company cookout of the year. I was originally going to do some kind of Thai grill-fest, but frankly I didn't have the guts to go there and instead I wussed out and made some Caribbean food. You know - jerk chicken, grilled shrimp, grilled vegetable skewers, black beans, etc.

Now I know this is pretty tame stuff around these parts, so I decided to prepare some kind of killer topping for my otherwise normal grill fare. Until very recently, my condiment-making experience has been confined to the occasional salsa or the random ham-fisted effort to create barbecue sauce from scratch.

However, as a semi-serious cook and foodie I owe it to myself to prepare a batch of the snootiest of condiments - chutney. And if that wasn't highbrow enough I even made mango chutney. Ha-ha! This is the kind of grill mojo that's only classy enough for Bobby Flay, Ina Garten, Mike Chiarello and the like. It's the kind of stuff that you serve to your turtleneck-wearing friends over a glass of pinot noir (not that I have anything against turtlenecks or wine).

In case you didn't get my revised definition, it's pretty shocking how most chutney recipes bend space and time by cramming 20 lbs. of groceries into an amazingly small jar. I followed this recipe from Epicurious.com, except that I doubled the simmering time to 40 minutes because it wasn't getting thicker and because Jenny and I were busy watching The Amazing Race.

The whole recipe is 48 points, but if you smother a piece of chicken with 5 cups of chutney, you're asking for it. A 2-3 tablespoon serving is about 2 points.

Anyway, in the end my meal ended up getting a little confused, culturally. I mean jerk chicken and grilled shrimp scream Caribbean, while the cinnamon, nutmeg and curry powder in the chutney are more Indian sub-continent.

In the end, none of the feasters seemed to care. It just works, and the sweet and spicy flavors dripping over hot grilled jerk chicken made me forget how itchy my turtleneck was. Now if I could just find my wine...

Update 3/8/07 - This photo was entered in this month's Does My Blog Look Good in This photography contest!