During the modern plague-era a.k.a covid—era, there was a lot of stress on consuming Vitamin C the way we consume water. 

Apparently, immunity could be built in days or weeks and all the damage done by years of debauchery would magically vanish if you consume amla shots!

So I also became a Vitamin C fanatic and began including different varieties of vitamin C rich items in my diet.

I wondered that if I included amla (Indian gooseberry) in my diet in some way, then I’ll not need to include more sources as amla has the highest source of Vitamin C. I became happier with my delusion that I will somehow find ways to have amla everyday, preventing myself from ever catching Covid!

Oh how wrong I was!

I couldn’t have amla everyday and I eventually caught covid. 

These two events are not causally related.

The one thing these amla paglus or fanatics do not tell you is that that it is extremely challenging to work with. It needs to be ripe enough so that you can consume it. Even when it is ripe, it is extremely tangy – to the point that when you cut it with a knife, you have to be careful that its pesky tangy juice does not enter your nails. Otherwise the delicate skin under your nails will sting.

And cutting an amla is not an easy task. It is so small and hard that you have to use a sharp knife for such a small thingy and be careful to not dig into its seed. 

And consuming amla as it is, is far trickier than cutting it. The fruit having the highest Vitamin C content will be tangy but the texture is dry and soaks all the moisture from your palate. 

It is like you have consumed a glass of neat lemon juice and gone into a sand dune! 🤓

So after suffering through the “lemon juice sand dune” incident, I decided to prepare a chutney of amla to continue my consumption of amla because Momma didn’t raise a quitter!

So I decided to craft a garlic amla chutney to “capture the immunity granting sorcery of amla and garlic”.

And there we go with another cooking disaster!

See, I am extremely lazy person when it comes to plucking leaves. The thing with chutneys is that they taste better with coriander or mint leaves. But washing them thrice (or more) and plucking them a certain way to keep the softer stems is an extremely tiring and character-building activity that I refused to participate in.

And since this was my first time preparing chutney, I did not grind it enough. So the weirdly-shaped chunks of amla with weirdly-sliced garlic bits was my chutney.

I served the chutney with Sattu paratha. Needless to say, the parathas were polished off without the “chutney”.

I eventually finished the chutney by swallowing it everyday for the next 3-4 days. 

After that, I did not order amla on Big Basket till my mom started preparing this chutney and I learnt to make it palatable and edible.