Cilantro-Date Chutney

A quick culture/history refresher: Parsis are Zoroastrians who originally fled Persia after the Arab Conquest and settled on India's west coast (initially, Gujarat state: most now live in Mumbai). Well-known Parsis include Freddie Mercury of Queen (originally Farrokh Balsara), conductor Zubin Mehta, and Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, co-creator of the Implicit Association Test. Parsi cuisine is one of India's great sub-cuisines, possibly the most friendly to meat-eating Western cultures.

The recipe will work well with parsley, mint, or a combination.

Ms. King's "My Bombay Kitchen" (U.Cal. Press) is a very good book on Parsi cooking: Jeroo Mehta's "101 Parsi Dishes" (also in Kindle format) is even better. The two recipes Ms. Nosrat cites, however, are widespread throughout North and West India (Parsis adopted them from Gujarati cuisine). See indianhealthyrecipes.com/tamarind-chutney ("jaggery"=raw brown sugar; regular's OK) and vegrecipesofindia.com/coriander-chutney. Ms. Nosrat's fusion is interesting, though I like the two separate.

I could be wrong but it may be because a single garlic clove in the US is probably equal to 2-3 of the garlic cloves in India. Try 1/3 of what the recipe calls for and go up from there.

You can also soak the dates in little water for half an hour to one hour. It make blending them easier.

Great combination of flavors. Next time I'll reduce the garlic -- I do love garlic but it dominated in a way that didn't work out. Definitely agree that Thanksgiving could use some spice!

@jas - RE: size of garlic cloves - you're absolutely right; the garlic varieties grown in India have much smaller cloves than the colossal garlic you get at Costco; recipes written for Indian audiences will typically specify garlic by measures other than number of cloves. See, for example hebbarskitchen.com/dry-garlic-chutney-recipe-dry-garlic/ (When, after coming to the US, I first saw Marcella Hazan's recipes, which called for a solitary garlic clove, I thought she was nuts.)

Definitely consider 1 jalapeño over 2 especially if serving westerners - served this at thanksgiving with two peppers and my in laws could barely taste it it was so spicy. I love spice so I was happy to have this spicy treat all to myself - also makes an amazing topper to a breakfast sandwich for the ages!

Loved the flavors in this recipe. Bright with a mild sweetness from the dates, balanced by the acidity of the lime juice. It all comes together to support the cilantro and keep it the star. We participated in the holiday in a new way this year. Celebrating foods from other cultures instead of the usual turkey, cranberries, stuffing. We made Samosas from the book, "In Bibi's Kitchen". This chutney was the perfect compliment.