Pineapple Chutney, Garlic and Red Basil with Spring Rolls

Imagine soft ripe pineapple dices in a sweet-sour juice accompanied by wonderful miso, herbs and fine garlic dices. Yeah, that’s what I thought. I love pineapple so much and wanted to experience its taste from a different angle. I guess pineapple made a new friend: garlic. Of course, we’re all friends here : ) but pineapple has a special friendship with garlic now. The pineapple is a very aromatic fruit by itself and I find that garlic completes and densifies the aroma profile of the pineapple so well. I experimented a little on serving it, and this is the result:

Serves 2. Preparation time: 10 min

INGREDIENTS

For the Pineapple Chutney

• 360g sweet pineapple
• 2 cloves of garlic
• juice of an orange (preferably sweet)
• 1 tsp miso (I used genmai)
• 1 tsp dried coriander leaves
• 1 tsp salt
• 8 leaves of red basil

You don’t necessarily need the following ingredients but they will make the chutney finer.

• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
• 2 pinches black pepper powder
• 2 pinches garlic powder
• 2 tsp condimento bianco
• 1/2 tsp tamari

For the Spring Rolls

• 4 sheets of rice paper
• vegetables, avocado, leaves, sprouts… whatever you like (I used thin paprika and avocado slices, parsley, steamed lupin bean sprouts and a sauce I made from tahini, orange juice and ginger)

METHOD

If you don’t have a sweet orange at hand sweeten the orange juice (I prefer coconut blossom sugar). Dice the pineapple and put the dices in a bowl. Then get your hands in there and mash the pineapple a little, so they get softer but basically remain dices. Add the salt. That will get a little more juice out of the pineapple. Now finely dice the garlic. Put 4 of the basil leaves on top of each other, roll them so they look like a cigar and finely cut it. You’ll get thin ribbons. Do the same with the other 4.
Now, cut the filling of the rolls and prepare the rice paper by putting them into warm water for a few seconds each. Place a sheet on a plate and put the filling a little beneath the middle of the rolls, fold the left and right side in, and roll it up. Do the same for the other three rolls.
Lastly, add every ingredient for the chutney into the bowl, and mix everything together.

NOTES

The flavour of the garlic dices presents itself rather late. By then, you almost can’t taste the pineapple anymore. It would be nice, though, if we tasted them together. Garlic powder, however, is different. We get a taste of the garlic powder pretty early, then the taste of the garlic dices presents itself – which is more intense and has a higher quality.
I added the vinegar to include a nice sourness into the profile and backed that up with tamari in order not to run short on umami while also adding enriching nuances in that direction. I hope that I’ll be able to create richer levels of sourness with fermented products, so I might come back to this recipe as I’m experimenting with fermentation.

Do you have any suggestions to improve this recipe? Would you add or leave out any ingredients? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.
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Thank you for reading and keep up the good food!

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