(Tracy A Woodward/ THE WASHINGTON POST ) - Oliver (L), Clare (C) and Nevill Turner (R) at their home in Washington, VA on August 2, 2011. The Turner family are the owners of The Virginia Chutney Company.
As a kid growing up in Northern Virginia, Oliver Turner could never get a classmate to swap for the lunches his British-born mother packed for him. No kid raised on peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread would think about trading in the tried-and-true for cheddar on brown bread, especially when the cheese was slathered with something too exotic to be recognized.
“It blew the deal when they saw the huge chunks of chutney,” Turner says, ruefully.
Several decades later, chutney’s niche appeal doesn’t pose quite as much of a challenge for Turner and his parents, who are building a family business around the stuff in Washington, Va. Shoppers at Whole Foods, the biggest retailer that carries their Virginia Chutney Co. products, don’t tend to be the Wonder bread type, after all.
The company has made great strides in its seven years of operation. The business sold its first jar of chutney at the Fun Shop in Middleburg and initially focused on smaller gift stores.
In early 2007, it got its big break when the then-new Whole Foods in Alexandria began to stock the products. Virginia Chutney’s line of mango, green tomato and a half-dozen other varieties is now carried in 128 Whole Foods stores in the Mid-Atlantic and on the West Coast, as well as such specialty cheese shops as Cowgirl Creamery in the District and Murray’s in New York.
But with ketchup, mustard and salsa commanding most of the nation’s condiment attention, chutney can still be a hard sell. For starters, chutney aficionados don’t always agree about the definition: Is chutney a relish, a sauce or something else?
“I say it’s like a savory jam that’s always made with fruit and vinegar and onions,” says Clare Turner, Oliver’s mother. “But there are tons of Indian ones that aren’t made like that at all.”
Even at Whole Foods, shoppers didn’t always know about pairing chutney with cheese and mostly associated it with Indian curry. Consumers in the South, where chutneys are a staple, responded more favorably when Clare Turner served samples.
“I found that fascinating, as I got the idea of making chutney when I did my degree in anthropology and was studying food ways and the diverse food culture of the South,” she says.
I was among those who’d never paid much attention to chutney other than to reach for a dab of Major Grey’s, a sweet mango chutney, to tame the fire of Indian food. But in the United Kingdom, chutney is a sweet-and-savory standard that’s put out with cheese or a roast or almost any dish that might benefit from a little extra zing.
“I think the food in England used to be so awful, they put chutney on everything,” Clare says.
Actually, the Brits “discovered” chutney during the colonial period in India and brought the concept back home, where recipes incorporated local fruits and accommodated sweeter tastes, says her son. But the most famous Brit associated with chutney — Major Grey — wasn’t even a real person.
“Major Grey was an apocryphal character created to reflect the interplay between English and Indian food cultures,” Oliver says.
The Post Most: LifestyleMost-viewed stories,videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Recipe Finder
Plan dinner, try new foods or explore cuisines with Recipe Finder, a database of recipes tested by The Washington Post.
DC Restaurant Finder
By Tom Sietsema Rating
See how critic Tom Sietsema rated D.C. restaurants in the Going Out Guide.
Best Bets Dining Lists
Free Range on Food is a forum for discussion of all things culinary.
_1337038921.jpg)
Loading...
Comments