Tomato Shorshe Chutney Recipe 

The aridity of the mustard meshed perfectly with the sweetness of tomato in Tomato Shorshe Chutney. And it lived up to the mantle of being a chutney.

Tomatoes are in my top 3 veggies, alongside potato and I don’t know what else. And it’s probably my favorite looking vegetable, period. They’re lush orbs wearing a coat of vibrant red with a green top hat. Name another more fashionable vegetable, I’ll be waiting.

I do not envy whoever has to pick tomatoes from their plants, I could never pluck out these bejeweling bright red spheres from their exuberant green vines. And luckily I don’t have to, I can go to a bazaar, or shop, or street van and just buy it with money. Moreover, you can get it all year around now.

Tomatoes are not native to this region, and were brought to the subcontinent in the 16th century during the reign of the Mughal Empire. And the internet told me that whoever brought it was just like me! They too were fascinated by the beauty of tomatoes. So the vegetable started its life in the subcontinent as a decorative plant.

Okay a small side note, I have been calling tomatoes a vegetable and most of you might not see a problem with it. But for some it might be raising an eyebrow because tomato is actually a fruit, botanically speaking. Since tomatoes ripen from flowers and have seeds inside, they are fruits. And that probably explains why they’re so fun, unlike other vegetables.

Now I already mentioned that tomatoes are not native. So our climate is not the best suited for farming these beautiful jewels of nature. A decade or more back tomatoes were only available during the winter season in Bangladesh. But now, God bless science, tomatoes are available all year along.

Enough extra facts, now let’s talk about actually cooking tomatoes. The most fun part of it is, you don’t even have to cook tomatoes. Just slice them up and eat them raw, add them in your salad, add them between the buns of your burger, add them to your salsa, or put them in any of the other dishes that I cannot even name.

Or maybe raw tomatoes are not your thing, you want a bit more out of it. You have the option of frying them, roasting them, steaming them, making soup, adding them to your curry, or maybe you can make chutney with them.

And finally now, to talk about today’s dish, chutney. Tomato Sorshe Chutney or Tomato Mustard Chutney to be exact. Keen readers might have noticed that I have been only gushing over tomatoes, and uttered not a single word about mustard. Well the reason is simple, mustard is not fun to me.

Tomatoes are a gift of nature, if they had hands they would probably give you a hug. But if mustard had hands, it would probably punch you in the nose. Actually scratch that because mustard punches you in the nose even without hands.

Unsurprisingly the acrid tasting spice originated in this region and has been a part of our cuisine for longer. The dishes range from the delicious Sorshe Ilish to the even more pungent Kashundi (a kind of mustard sauce popular in Bangladesh). But that is not enough to sway me into team yellow.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate mustard as a spice, as much as the spices available in our special spice boxes. The punch it has goes great with different snacks, and even bhaat-shobji (boiled rice and vegetables). The aridity is sometimes exactly what a dish needs. But I am just a soft boy who would take the hug over the punch any day.

So in this chutney we are mixing a hug with a punch. Sure sounds like a mess. In theory the sweet and sourness of the tomato should not go well with the harshness of mustard. But I have been cooking for just two weeks, what do I know?

But guess what, Israt Jahan Apu, someone who’s passionate about cooking and has been doing it for much much longer, had the same doubt. She also wondered how mustard and tomato would go together.

So, unlike me, she did not leave it to be just a thought. She busted out a pan to boil those yellow devils. And then she whipped out her knife and chopped some tomatoes and dropped them in team yellow. Then she fetched the spices and watched as team red and team yellow cooked.

And what the two teams created surprised her. We thought the two teams would fight it out, not make peace and create a dish that compliments both the hug and the punch.

The aridity of the mustard meshed perfectly with the sweetness of tomato in Tomato Shorshe Chutney. And it lived up to the mantle of being a chutney.