Butter together

SPREAD THE LOVE

- Swetha Sivakumar

In 1998, my best friend's dad brought a jar of peanut butter to our college hostel. I had never seen anything like it. "What's in it?" I asked. Her dad, a jokester, claimed it was a family secret and challenged me to guess. I could only come up with peanuts and salt—which, I would later learn, is really all it takes.

Before we proceed to the marvels of the many nut butters I have discovered since, I'd like to mention that, for the purposes of this column, I will be using "nuts" in the culinary sense of the term, even though some of those mentioned below are seeds, drupes or legumes.

Back to the spreads, perhaps what intrigued me most, back then, was the difference between the peanut butter and our own peanut chutney.