A self-confessed fussy eater, 28-year-old Paalan was so impressed by the home-made preserves when he was finally persuaded to test them, that he designed packaging, bought a domain name and asked his mum to start cooking on an industrial scale.
Fortunately, Neetu was keen to share her old family recipes with a wider audience.
‘Just after we came out of lockdown we had a barbecue and my mum brought out some of her chutneys,’ Paalan said. ‘I’ve always been a fussy eater and I was quite apprehensive because it’s not something I would normally eat.
‘My friends tasted it and liked it and told me I should try it. I was shocked how good it was. I don’t know how she does it. I think mum was pleasantly surprised when I went away and bought the domain name and designed the labels for the jars.’
Now Paalan is on a mission to show the versatility of chutneys. ‘They are not just poppadom passengers, they are so versatile’ he insists. ‘I like the chili chutney with fried eggs in the morning, and the date and tamarind goes really well on a bacon butty. I also use the pineapple chutney to make spicy beans on toast. I use them with cheese and crackers, burgers, pizzas... almost everything I eat.
‘There are a lot of chutneys on the market but most of them are overly sweet and don’t have any real depth of flavour. There’s so much flavour in mum’s chutneys. You can tell it’s homemade with love – it's full of flavour, there’s no preservatives. They are recipes mum has grown up with and experimented with. ‘
The initial Mama Sood’s range includes four flavours – tamarind and date, apple, chili and pineapple – but Neetu, who lives in Prescot, has 22 chutney recipes altogether.
‘I have so many recipes and I experiment with ingredients,’ she says. ‘I want all the flavours to shine. I want people to be able to taste the ingredients.
‘I came to England in 1992 and finding Indian food then wasn’t easy. They weren’t many Asian food shops and I found the flavours here very different and it took me time to adapt. I missed the smells of food from India and would make pakoras and samosas but when he was growing up, Paalan liked to eat the food his friends ate, so he had a lot of chicken, beans and burgers.
‘Belonging to Brahmin, our family food consisted of very simple and easy-to-cook vegetarian dishes without onions or garlic. Homemade pickles or chutneys added a spicy kick to our daily meals. Passing on my heritage is very important and food is a part of that, I observed my grandma cooking and now my children pick it up from me.
‘Paalan has always eaten with his eyes and if he saw something he wasn’t familiar with or unsure of, he wouldn’t taste it, but he is much better now.
‘His friends tried my mango and chili chutney and liked it and asked if I had any more. I took the jars out and said “If you like it, I will sell you some”.
‘Paalan tried some and said “Mum, it’s nice”. A couple of months later, he told me he’d bought the domain name and designed labels. It was a bit overwhelming but I agreed and we started making.
‘It is time-consuming and It’s not easy to trace the ingredients – finding the right mangoes can be hard, for example. I spend two days a week making chutneys and that produces about 50 jars but we are now looking for another kitchen to use that would mean we could increase production.’
The chutneys are available at mamasoods.co.uk and Paalan and Neetu are now looking for retailers to stock their range.
