Fresh date fruit chutney

I was talking to my mother one day on the phone and she mentioned that fresh red and yellow date fruits are coming to the market these days. Yeah, we mostly talk about food :). I believe these dates do grow locally in the dry and hot areas of Gujarat. She told me they taste nice and sweet.
We believe in eating seasonally and locally whenever possible. And this was an exciting new ingredient to try. So I was keeping my eyes open for them. I found them at the Hypercity store near me. If you never noticed them before, like me, here's the Bigbasket link to red and yellow date fruits, so you can see how they look like. They are currently "out of stock" and I did not see them at my local vegetable vendor recently. Maybe their short season is coming to an end. :( I was hoping to buy them again to make more chutney.

chopped red date fruit

Back to the story, I came home with the dates. All excited to taste them. I washed one and put it in my mouth. Hmm...not sweet, too fibrous. Maybe this one is not as good. I tried two more. Almost the same. But it did scratch my tongue with all the fiber. I guess they were too raw.

Now I was wondering what will I do with these dates. Whenever you have doubts like this, you turn to Google. But this time, it was no help. I was on my own. My first thought was a pickle but we are not into pickles so that was immediately ruled out. The next idea was a chutney. So I had to come up with a recipe for date chutney. I knew I had to turn the dates into a paste and use vinegar to break down the fibrousness. I took it from there and came up with this recipe.

You can eat it on the side with your meals. You can eat it with parathas like a pickle. It is really tasty. Sweet-tangy taste is my favorite and this fits right into that category.
That day, I had it with my meal of kadhi, corn, spring onion, potato and capsicum sabzi.

fresh date chutney with corn-spring onion-potato sabzi

Fresh red date fruit chutney

Ingredients:

measurement	ingredient
500 gm	Fresh red date fruit
1 tbsp	chopped ginger
1	dry red chilli*
1/4 cup	apple cider vinegar*
2 tbsp	coconut oil*
1/2 cup	grated jaggery
1.5 to 2 tsp	salt*

Method

• Chop the red date fruits into pieces. Remove the pit/seed inside.
• Take the chopped dates, ginger, red chilli, and apple cider vinegar into a mixie jar and blend it to a paste. The vinegar will provide enough liquid to make a paste so water is not needed.
• Heat oil and add the blended paste, salt, and jaggery to it.
• Cook on low flame for about 15 minutes until it forms a thick paste and most of the water is evaporated.
• Cool and store in the fridge. It will be good for atleast a month.

Notes:

• This recipe could work with the fresh yellow date too. As long as the fruit is crisp and fibrous, this recipe should work with any kind of fruit. Although you will need to adjust the vinegar and jaggery according to the sweetness of the fruit.
• I eat close to zero spice. You might need to increase the number of red cillies to 3 or 4 instead of 1.
• I used unfiltered apple cider vinegar. If you are using distilled white vinegar, you might need less than 1/4 cup. I would start with 1/8th cup and taste and go up a tablespoon if needed.
• The exact amount of salt will be as per taste.
• I used virgin coconut oil but any kind of oil is ok to use.