Flavor patrol
Irene Sax
Posted: May 22, 2008
Woodstock, New York—If Maya Kaimal is right, Americans will soon be as familiar with fresh Indian chutneys as we are with salsas. She's betting on it by creating a line of the brightly flavored condiments—cilantro, fig, mango, and coconut—that are as essential to an Indian meal as ketchup and mustard are to an American table.
"Indians like to have a lot of different tastes on one plate," says Kaimal, the dark-eyed model-thin daughter of an Indian father and an American mother. "With rice and many curries, plus pickles and chutneys, they have an infinite number of flavor combinations in a meal."
Americans, she acknowledges, will probably use chutneys to add excitement to a plate, much as we do with salsa or ketchup. "Just a spoonful can totally transform something plain like scrambled eggs or a piece of chicken," she says. I can testify that the bright ginger-spiked coconut chutney does wonders for plain pork chops, while the Alphonso mango chutney would go well with tuna steaks or scallops and the fig with roasted lamb or pork. You could spread cilantro chutney on a steak sandwich or simply use the coconut chutney as a dip with chips, as Indian restaurants do with pappadams.
Kaimal started Maya Kaimal Fine Indian Foods with a line of refrigerated "simmer sauces." A consumer buys a container of tamarind curry or tikka masala sauce, takes it home and heats it with a protein such as chicken or shrimp, or a vegetable such as chickpeas and cauliflower. These were so successful that she decided to add chutneys to the line. Selling both sauces and chutneys that are fresh, not frozen or jarred, was important to Kaimal, who wanted to capture the vibrant flavors of homemade food in India, where chutneys are made fresh daily.
When she started developing the recipes, she had help from a surprising source. Her mother was a good cook, but an American cook, so Kaimal's father, an atmospheric physicist, decided to re-create the food he grew up with in Kerala, in southern India, using the scientific method. "He had a nice palate, but more than that he was a scientist who believed that there was no point in doing an experiment unless you could repeat it. So for my whole life he was tinkering in the kitchen, painstakingly writing down every adjustment, exactly like the scientist he was." In 1996, when she wrote her first book, Curried Favors: Family Recipes from South India, she started with the recipes her father had tested and retested. Now he's become her ally as she produces sauces and chutneys in upstate New York.
For a glimpse of Kaimal and her father at work, look at http://thepeoplewhofeedus.com/?p=89. And to order the chutneys (which are made both in 8-ounce containers for home cooks and larger sizes for foodservice, call 845-679-6900 or go to www.mayakaimal.com.
