Apple, Honey & Ginger Chutney

It's the last day of Chutney Week, and I'm taking a break from the Great Cider Caper 2011 to post another favourite. This is a very sweet chutney, it's almost jam-like (without actually being jam), stuffed full of apples with a sharp bite of ginger & the mellow sweetness of honey. This is another large recipe, and a good way of using up an unexpected bagful of cooking apples from your in-laws (unless they get made into cider). I like cutting my crystallized ginger quite chunky, about the same size as the raisins (which are there to give the chutney body, as just apples makes it a bit too much like baby food for me), so you get little bursts of spice & texture. If you like it finer, then chop away!

Apple, Honey & Ginger Chutney

2kg apples
250g raisins (or sultanas. Or any dried fruit)
250g crystallised stem ginger (you can also use stem ginger in syrup, the syrup can also be used to substitute some of the honey too)
250g brown sugar
250g honey
600ml cider vinegar
1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 tsp salt
1tsp allspice (or ground mixed spice)

Peel, core & chop the apples. It'll take a while, so having the radio on makes it less of a slog (or learn Spanish with Michel Thomas, and spend all your time muttering 'loh noh ness-e-sEE-tow a oor-a'). Put everything in a pan & bring to the boil. Simmer until thick (40 minutes to an hour, depending on your apples), spoon into sterilized jars & leave for a month before eating.

Carrot & Chilli Chutney

Despite it being a bit of a rubbish year for parsnips here (I have maybe 5 in the whole garden that survived the dry spring) it's been an excellent year for carrots. This year I've grown White Satin (as the name suggests, it's a white carrot with good sweet flavour & lovely long roots), Yellowstone (a favourite of mine, with a lovely earthy flavour & good texture) & Kingston (an orange variety that stores well, and was used to make this chutney!). So I've had enough to do some preserving with (and hopefully even have a go at making some halva at some point!)

Carrot & Chilli Chutney

1. 3kg carrots
175g sugar
175ml white wine vinegar
juice & zest of 1 lemon
50g tomato puree (or 50ml if it's easier)
8 tbs yellow mustard seeds
8 tbs groundnut oil (or vegetable oil)
3 tbs tomato puree
3 tsp coriander seed
2 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp turmeric
1tsp chilli powder (cayenne if you're feeling brave)
1 tsp salt
4- 6 red chillies, finely chopped
thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, finely grated

Grate the carrot. better still, sucker someone else into grating the carrot (MikeyFox will always oblige if there's cider available whilst doing so). Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the mustard seeds & wait for them to start popping. Once they start cracking away add the other spices. After 2 minutes of stirring, and getting giddy with the smell of frying cumin, add the tomato puree, stir, then tip in the carrot & remaining ingredients. Mix well, reduce the heat & cover. Leave to simmer for 25-30 minutes, giving it the occasional prod to make sure nothing sticks or burns. If you feel like it needs more liquid, add a few spoons of vinegar. A splash of balsamic works surprisingly well. Spoon into sterilized jars & cover with a little more oil. Seal & stick in the back of a cupboard for a few weeks, preferably a month, before eating.

Delicious on toasted pitta bread or roti. Highly addictive.

Winter Ale Chutney

This is a bit of a blast from the past - my first ever chutney recipe! I came up with this waay back in 2005, when I inherited my Grandmothers preserving pan. I love this big old thing. I remember when my Nanan bought it from Harrods on a day trip to London in the early '80's, and every June we would spend a morning strawberry picking, and in the afternoon she would make strawberry jam in her mighty preserving pan.

Since it has been in my possession, no strawberry has met its unfortunate end within, my being of the opinion that cooking them or adding sugar is the cruellest thing you can do to a beautiful ripe strawberry. So it's been used to make chutney, the occasional relish, and even a few rare sweet things like damson cheese & apple butter (yes, recipes will be posted. Eventually!). As this is my first attempt, I used cup measurements rather than weighing things out, which I'm more likely to do now, but I really like the ease & simplicity of the cup of this, cup of that approach. You can substitute the dried fruit (and the spice bag) for whatever you have, or whatever you fancy. A honey beer goes well with dried pears & figs, a darker ale goes well with currants & sour cherries. There are lots of dried fruits out there, so let you imagination go nuts.

I've made this recipe many times, and try different beers each time. Real ale, especially brown ales & bitters, work best. Pale ale is too hoppy, and doesn't have that depth of flavour & bitterness that the chutney needs. A spiced ale works surprising well, and honey beer is really special. Basically, as long its a good, well-flavoured beer you'll be making something special! (This beer was made with Thorne Brewery Best Bitter, which is MikeyFox's brewery. I know it's good beer because he makes it!)

Winter Ale Chutney

2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup beer (there will be some left, so you'd better drink it!)
1 cup dates, chopped
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
1 cup raisins
1 onion, chopped
4 apples, peeled, deseeded & chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp each of peppercorns & cloves, tied up in a piece of muslin
juice of 1 lemon

Put the dried fruit in a bowl & add the beer. Leave to stand for 20 minutes, so the fruit can get nicely soft & sozzled.
Put the vinegar & sugar in a large pan & bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Tip in the dried fruits & beer & add the remaining ingredients. Stir & simmer for around an hour, or until the mixture is thick & glossy. Fish out the muslin bag of spices (or it could be a nasty mouthful for someone!). Spoon into sterilized jars & tuck away in a cupboard for a month before eating. If well stored, it will last until the next Ice Age*. You may be battling giant radioactive serpents, Cthulhu & his Excessively Limbed KinThings may have eaten next Tuesday, but you'll still have chutney!

For those interested, the Happy Squid T-shirt is from the lovely Kate Beaton, who is right up there with Blackadder & Horrible Histories when it comes to making history disgustingly amusing.

*Honestly. I'm still eating chutney from 2006 & I'm fine *twitch*

Red Hot Relish (Aka Mike Salsa)

This year I created a long raised bed for growing tomatoes in (nicknamed 'Tomato Mile', as it's very long. About 17 meters) and filled it with varieties from Eastern Europe & North America that wouldn't sulk & die in our, ahem, robust North Lincolnshire climate. The names make me smile - Stupice, Latah, Blodkompfchen, Galina, Czech's Excellent Yellow... so I'm awash with tomatoes at the moment. I'm making passata, sauces & ketchup mainly, but MikeyFox requested a spicy tomato relish, and who am I to refuse?

Alas, he has been reading too much Raymond Chandler, so decided Mike Salsa would be a perfect name for a detective. A wisecracking, hard-drinking salsa that could either punch you on the nose or read you his poetry.

Red Hot Relish
(aka Mike Salsa, detective)

800g tomatoes
400g red onions, sliced
3 red peppers (bell), deseeded & halved
3 - 4 red chillies, thinly sliced
2 tbs pickled jalapenos, chopped
200g sugar
200ml red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin seed

Arrange the tomatoes & peppers on a tray & roast under a hot grill until blistered. leave to cool & peel off the skins (they should slip off fairly easily). Put the sugar & vinegar in a pan & bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the rest of the ingredients & simmer until you have a thick, jammy consistency. This will take anything from 20 minutes to and hour & a half, depending on how wet your tomatoes are. Spoon into sterilised jars & store for 2 weeks before eating.
Goes brilliantly with guilty pleasures like Tex-Mex, chips, burgers, sausages & battered onion rings.

Tomatillo Salsa

I love growing tomatillos (also known as tomate verde - green tomato in Spanish, even though they're not actually tomatoes, though they are very green), a staple ingredient of Mexican cooking. They are a member of the Solanaceae family along with tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines & chilli's (right up there with the curcubits when it comes to awesome things worth having) and various plants that will kill you or give you the screaming ab-dabs. They are ridiculously easy to grow, and don't need any fussing over. They make smashing sauces & salsas, both raw & cooked. And don't go listening to thundering idiots telling you to substitute tomatillo for green tomato or gooseberries in recipes. They are talking shite. If you have space for a few pots, or a square meter or so of sunny garden, get some seeds (or ask me for some if you can't find any) & grow your own. They're beautiful to look at, with sunny yellow flowers, and will keep cropping right up to the first frosts. Anyway, enough with the enthusing, I'll do a vegetable blog post on how to grow them.

So here's a recipe for a preserved version of the classic Tomatillo salsa, traditionally a dish made with raw or boiled tomatillo, rejiggered into a cooked chutney. It also uses serrano peppers (another thing I had a go at growing this year. I can really recommend them, they're easygoing plants that don't mind a bit of neglect, and happily take care of themselves in a corner of the polytunnel or sunny spot in the garden), which are very hot, but the heat doesn't linger on the palate, giving you intense little bursts of heat. Fresh is best, put pickled works really well to. If you don't have serrano peppers, jalapeno is a good substitute, either fresh or pickled. Or you can use green chilli.

Tomatillo Salsa

900g tomatillo
450g onions, chopped
4 fresh serrano peppers
200g sugar
200ml white wine vinegar
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp salt
large handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Arrange the tomatillos on a baking tray & roast under a hot grill until the skin starts to blister. Put the vinegar & sugar in a pan & bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the onions, roasted tomatillos & salt. Simmer until you have a thick, glossy mixture. Add the juice of a lime & the coriander (don't be shy with the coriander - the more the merrier!). Spoon into sterilised jars & try to resist temptation for a month.
Goes well with tostadas, chalupas, tortillas, tacos, nachos and anything that needs a dollop of something fresh & spicy!

Mediterranean Pickle

This was my first year of growing aubergines in the little polytunnel. I grew Listarda de Gandia, a very pretty purple variety with white stripes, early ripening & very reliable (you can see it in the picture on the right, along with the tomatoes, green peppers & courgettes that went into the recipe. How pretty are they?!)
I also grew Diamond, a Ukrainian variety with clusters of long, intense purple fruits, and Orlando (the unnervingly long, curly purple things skulking under the courgette in the picture)I will be growing both varieties again next year! (and maybe one or two more!)

Rather than chomp them all (mostly in a Spanish style ragout with roasted tomatoes & chickpeas - om nom nom!), I decided to make some pickle, so I could continue to appreciate them in the cold winter months.

Mediterranean Pickle

450g onions, chopped
900g tomatoes
1 aubergine, thickly sliced
450g courgette, sliced
1 yellow pepper, halved & deseeded
1 green pepper, halved & deseeded
300ml red wine vinegar
300g sugar
4 cloves garlic
1 tbs paprika
1 tbs salt
1 sprig each of rosemary & thyme, tied into a bundle with 2 bay leaves

Place the tomatoes, peppers, aubergines & courgettes on a large tray & roast under a hot grill until the skins blister. Leave to cool, and remove the skins from the peppers & tomatoes. Chop the roasted vegetables into even sized pieces, as coarse or as fine as you like (I like them chunky). The aubergines can disappear into this chutney, so if you want aubergine chunks in it, set them to one side, to stir in at the end of cooking. Heat the vinegar in a large pan. Add the sugar & stir until it's dissolved. Add the salt, paprika & herb bundle. Add the onions & garlic, then the roasted veg. Stir gently, so everything doesn't get too mashed up (or stir vigorously if mashed up is your kind of thing) & simmer until the mixture is thick & glossy. This can take as little as 20 minutes, or over an hour, depending on how wet the vegetables are. Remove the herb bundle & spoon into sterilised jars. Leave for at least a month, preferably two.

Goes beautifully well with pasta, sharp salty cheeses, grilled tofu & burgers.

Chutney Week - Beetroot & Mustard Pickle

It's that time of year again. I've been spending every spare minute in the kitchen, making pickles, chutneys, salsas, sauces, ketchup's & cheeses (not the dairy kind, the molten, skin-stripping, fruit & sugar kind). So that must make it Chutney week! So I'll be posting a chutney, pickle or relish every day for the next 7 days.
Also a reminder, not that you need it.

Sterilise! Be it boiling water from the kettle, 20 minutes in a hot oven, the steam setting on a dishwasher or gamma radiation. make sure your jars are clean, dry and as sterile as you can get them. Your chutney will last longer, and a cheese toastie won't give you the dread lurgies.

To get things started, here's a favourite of mine, Beetroot & Mustard pickle. It's a bit different from my usual pickles, as there is oil in it, so it is similar to the Indian style of pickles where oil is used to protect the vegetables from exposure to air, rather than a thick sauce of sugar & vinegar. So when you open it, if you're a more restrained individual than myself, and the jar will sit in your fridge for more than 3 or 4 days, pour a little oil on the surface before resealing when you've used it, and it will store for ages. It's also quite hot, and yes, the recipe does say 12 tbs of mustard seed!

Beetroot & Mustard Pickle

1kg beetroot (I used yellow beetroot, but you can use red if you prefer)
175g sugar
150ml white wine vinegar
juice & zest of 1 lemon
12 tbs black mustard seeds
8 tbs groundnut oil (or vegetable oil)
3 tbs tomato puree
3 tsp coriander seed
2 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
4 or 5 chillies, finely chopped (6 if you like it hot!)
thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, finely grated

Grate the beetroot. It will take forever. You will curse my name. It will be worth it, I promise. Toss the beetroot in the vinegar, lemon juice & zest & set to one side. Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the mustard seeds & listen. Once they start popping add the other spices. After 2 minutes of stirring, and getting giddy with the smell of frying cumin, add the beetroot & remaining ingredients. Mix well, reduce the heat & cover. Leave to simmer for 25-30 minutes. It will look like there's not enough liquid, but trust me, it's fine.
Spoon into sterilized jars & cover with a little more oil. Seal & stick in the back of a cupboard for a few weeks, preferably a month, before eating.

Om nom nom!

Curried Vegetable Relish

It's definitely autumn here in the flatlands. There's a chill in the air, and I'm starting to ogle shawl patterns on Ravelry*. There's also the frantic rush to get veg from the garden harvested, processed & tucked away safely for winter. Yeah, that's a bit of a clue.
So along with roasting tomatoes & tomatillos for making sauces & pasatta, podding beans for drying, bagging up potatoes & processing beans, beet leaves, chard & courgettes for freezing, I'm also making pickles!

So here's a nice little recipe that's good for using up whatever veg you have an excess of. I used courgettes, carrots, cauliflower & peas, but you can use runner beans, sweetcorn, turnips, beetroot, radishes, aubergines - anything really! The recipe uses Garam Masala, which is a mixture of ground spices. You can buy it ready blended, but you can also make your own. My blend has cumin, cinnamon, fenugreek, black pepper, turmeric & ludicrous amounts of coriander seed. No chilli for a change, as this is a warm, pungent sort of blend, rather than a hot & spicy one. Though you can add chillis too, if you fancy.

Curried Vegetable Relish

225g courgettes
225g carrots
225g cauliflower
225g peas
225g onion
400ml white wine vinegar
170g sugar
1tsp yellow mustard seed
1tsp ground ginger
2tsp garam masala
1tbs salt
1tsp cornflour

Chop the vegetables, as coarse or as fine as you like (I like my pickles chunky). Pile into a colander & scatter with the salt. Cover & leave overnight. The salt will draw the moisture out of the veggies, so they'll still have a bit of bite to them.
Next day, rinse the veg & drain. Blend the cornflour with a little of the vinegarin a small bowl & set aside. Put the remaining vinegar, sugar & spices into a large pan & bring to a boil. Add the cornflour mixture & boil 3-4 minutes, until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat & stir in the vegetables. Pack into warm, sterilised jars & try not to touch for a month.

Goes well with cheese, vegetable fritters, veggie burgers & hot dogs. Yum!

*Turning leaves are all well and good, but nothing says autumn to me quite like the twitching of the crochet hook!

Courgette & Tomato Chutney

MikeyFox & I went to the allotment on Sunday to harvest our onion patch (I've spent years trying to grow onions, and been disappointed with the results. In March I handed MikeyFox a bag of onion sets & told him to try - we harvested boxes and boxes of huge, perfect onions. Jammy sod!) and plant some leeks. One of the committee members sidled up to me & shyly asked if I could donate some chutney to the open day at the end of the month (I seem to have got myself a reputation of the Chutney Maker. Can't imagine why).
So since I haven't posted a chutney recipe in a while, and they're a great way of using up excess courgettes, here's a recipe for a favourite of MikeyFox, King of the Alliums.

Courgette & Tomato Chutney

1 kg courgettes (the seedy middles removed if they're quite large), diced
1kg tomatoes (red, green or yellow, whatever you have an excess of!), chopped
500g onions, chopped
500g brown sugar (you might want to use white sugar if you're using yellow courgettes)
400ml white wine vinegar
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
4-6 red chillis (or green for green tomatoes etc), more for a hot relish, less for a mild one.
1 ts salt
1 tsp oregano

Put the sugar & vinegar in a large pan. Bring to a boil & stir until the sugar is dissolved. If you don't like tomatoes skins in your relish, place the tomatoes in a large bowl & cover with boiling water. Leave for 10 seconds, then drain & plunge into cold water. Slip the skins off, and chop as usual. Add the remaining ingredients & simmer, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon, for 1 hour, or until thickened & glossy (this can take up to 2 hours, depending on how wet the courgettes & tomatoes are). Spoon into clean sterilised jars & leave for 1 month before opening (having said that, we opened one jar straight away and thought it was delicious!)

This chutney is actually more like a tomato relish. It's great on burgers, sausages & fried egg sandwiches. If you like it spicy, add some chopped pickled jalapenos to the recipe too!

The First On In The Last One Gone

Woo-hoo, it's chutney recipe number 7! I almost managed a whole week of blogging. How exciting! Future posts will be about something else now, promise.

Since this is my last chutney blog for a while, it only seems appropriate that it should be the first chutney I ever made. So this is a recipe & conjured up shortly after moving to the House at the Top of the Bloody Great Hill, which had two overgrown apple trees in the garden (one had fruit, flowers & leaves on it at the same time every spring. I know enough about mythology to proclaim it The Tree Of No Eating*). The name is a little misleading, as the chilli just gives the chutney a little warmth, though if you want to add more chillis, go for it!

Chilli Apple Chutney

1kg (about 5) apples, peeled, cored & roughly chopped
200g raisins
500g brown sugar
500ml cider vinegar
2 red chillies, finely chopped
50g crystallized ginger (or you can use stem ginger), chopped
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
A few grates of fresh nutmeg
1 tsp salt

Throw everything into a large pan. Bring to the boil & then simmer for about an hour until the mixture thickens.

Not everyone is as into cinnamon as I am, so you could substitute the cinnamon & allspice for black mustard seed, mixed spice or 5 spice powder.

*In mythology posessing a bough bearing fruit, flowers & leaves grants access to the underworld. And I've seen enough Bruce Campbell films to know what that kind of thing leads to...

A Day Late & A Dollar Short

I meant to post this recipe yesterday, but went to Hull instead, so lots of staring at the Humber estuary & tidal barrier, getting over excited at the sight of derelict dry docks & eating far too much delicious food at the Green Ginger Cafe a freakin' adorable Vegetarian place in a narrow street in Hull called The Land of Green Ginger* at the bottom of Whitefriargate. If you are ever in Hull, check it out! The Aubergine Parmesan is delicious!

Anyway. Chutney.

Pear & Pecan Chutney

500g Pears, peeled, cored & chopped
500g Apples, also peeled, cored & chopped (it helps to have a big bowl of water with a splash of vinegar or squeeze of lemon juice in it to drop the apple pieces in while you chop**)
250g pecans, chopped (you can use walnuts or hazelnuts instead. I just have a thing for pecans)
250g shallots, chopped (there are lots of tricks out there to keep your eyes from watering while chopping onions. None of them really work)
250g raisins
25g ginger, grated
250g light brown sugar
300ml cider vinegar
1 tsp black peppercorns, crushed
1 tsp salt
1 tbs molasses (optional)

Pitch all the ingredients (except the Molasses of Debateable Usage) into a large pan. Bring to the boil. Once the sugar has dissolved, reduce the heat & simmer for about an hour, an hour & a half, maybe longer, until you have some thick, rich, fruity goo (you should be able to pull your spoon across the bottom of the pan and see a ribbon of pan bottom for a few seconds). Pear chutney can look a bit beige & depressing, so adding a heaped tbs of molasses will make it a little darker & glossier, without having an effect on the overall flavour. Spoon into clean, sterilised jars, and screw the lids on firmly. Label with something suitable & put in a cupboard & try not to think about it for a few months.
Goes well with cheese (especially cheese toasties), pies & poppadums. A heaped spoonful stirred into tagines & stews is something pretty special too.

*Most awesome street name ever!

**Cut apples turn brown when exposed to air, which can affect the texture, and generally make it all a bit ick. Dunking the cut pieces in acidulated water (fancy term for water with a bit of vinegar or citrus juice in it) prevents such ickyness.

Fig & Apple Chutney

I'm doing my best to avoid any puns on this one, and am making a point of having absolutely no ginger in this recipe*.
Sometimes life would be a lot less disturbing without Wikipedia. And people just kept to eating veg.

Moving swiftly on, fresh figs are in season about now, so make the most of it while you can. If you ever get tired of halving them, giving them a quick blast under the grill & serving with a creamy goats cheese (or a drizzle of honey & some yoghurt) then you could always give this a try.

Fig & Apple Chutney

600g figs (about 10. If you bought fresh figs with good intentions, but ended up eating them, dried figs work well too)
1 onion, chopped
500g apples, peeled, decored & chopped
400g demerara sugar
500ml white wine vinegar
150g sultanas
75g dried apricots, chopped
1 tbs yellow mustard seed
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom seeds
1 tsp salt

You know the routine by now. Dump everything in a pan. Boil. Simmer for an hour, maybe a little more, until it's all thick & chutney-like. Spoon into sterilised jars, label & leave for a few months before eating.
A few variations...
200ml dry white white wine. It will take a little longer to thicken, but will be delicious.

50g sun dried tomatoes, blitzed in a blender, will give it a bit of richness. You could probably get away with a splash of red wine in there too.

Replace the mustard seeds, cinnamon & cardamom with chilli flakes, black pepper & the juice & zest of a lemon

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, consider yourself lucky! And I'm never ever using the term 'ginger up' again. Brr!

Can You Feel The Beet?

Of all the veg I grow, beetroot is my favourite. I love their sweet earthiness and the vivid leaves, which are a real treat to cook with that you rarely experience with shop bought beetroot* (the young leaves add a lovely earthiness to salad, the older leaves can be cooked like spinach or chard. Well, they are chard. Kind of.). This year I've been experimenting with growing different varieties of beetroot. I've grown more varieties of the classic, round ruby variety than I can keep up with! But of the other varieties out there this year I tried Blankoma white (not that impressive, to be honest), the candy striped Chioggia (best sliced thinly & eaten raw, as cooking turns the red & white stripes into uniform pink), Cylindra (a red barrel rooted variety, one of this years favourites), Burpee's Golden (a round yellow variety that tastes slightly sweeter than the red & the leaves are delicious) & Yellow Cylindrical beetroot (the other favourite of the year! Tender leaves and creamy white flesh). It was the Yellow Cylindrical variety that I used to make this recipe (no stains, woo!)

Beetroot Relish (as opposed to pickled beetroot)

500g beetroots, any colour or shape (I used golden cylinder beets, which are almost identical to the red ones, but without the dreaded staining)
400g red onions, chopped
100g sugar
200ml red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
Black pepper
25g grated horseradish (optional. You could use 25g grated fresh ginger instead. Or the juice and zest of an orange)

Roast the beetroot in an oven at 180C for about an hour, or until cooked. Leave to cool & rub off the skins (they’ll slip off easily. If not, a sharp knife will help them along). Grate or chop as small as you can stand & put into a pan with the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil & simmer, stirring regularly, for about 30 minutes, or until thickened. Spoon into clean, sterilised jars

*Presumably due to them wilting fairly quickly after harvesting.

Ploughmans Pickle (lucky Ploughman!)

Harvest time is pretty much over here in North Lincolnshire. The fields that were full of wheat & barley so recently are now brown & bare (though soon there will be a haze of green as the winter wheat starts sprouting).
I've always had a soft spot for the Ploughmans lunch* (a cold meal of bread, cheese, pickle and maybe an apple or a pickled onion), though North Lincolnshire Ploughmen seem to run on a diet of Fosters & Red Bull.

Moving swiftly on, here's a recipe for a Branston-style pickle, and a bit of a change for me, as I usually make fruit-based chutneys**, but the garden is crammed full of veg right now, so it seems like the best time to give it a try!

Ploughmans Pickle

The recipe here is a guideline, use whatever veg you have in abundance. Swede, cauliflower & gherkins all go well in this. You can add a few handfuls of raisins too, if you fancy.

285g carrots, chopped
285g turnips, chopped
285g courgettes, chopped
225g onions, chopped
225g apples, chopped
150g dates
250g demerara sugar
500ml malt vinegar (I usually suggest cider or white wine vinegar, but pale vinegar can make pickles look a bit muddy and unappetising, where you ideally want it to be so dark & dense that light cannot escape it. Kind of like a black hole but with carrots)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp mustard seeds (you can bash them in a pestle & mortar, or leave them whole for a little bite)
2 tsp allspice, ground
1 tsp cayenne pepper

In the words of Dinosaur Jr – start choppin! Seriously, most of the time you’ll be spending on this is getting the veg all cup into ½ cm dice. It will take ages. You’ll regret ever taking up preserving, but it will all be worth it in the end, when you have all the neatly diced veg in a thick, rich, lip-prickling sauce. Promise.

Tip everything into a large pan & slowly bring to the boil. Reduce the heat & simmer until the veg is tender & the sauce has thickened. This can take anywhere between half an hour & two hours.

When it’s (finally) thickened up, spoon into clean, sterilised jars & seal. Then come up with a name for your pickle, label it & store it for 3 months (if you can wait that long). If there’s something left in the pan, scrape it up with a bit of crusty bread & blow on until it’s cool enough to gulp down without scalding yourself. Pickle hot from the pan is face-scrunchingly sharp, but worth every wincing mouthful.

*Despite sounding like something as bucolic and traditionally English as marmalade & casual racism, the Ploughmans was an advertising campaign conjured up by the Milk Marketing Board in the 1960's to make people buy more cheese.

**There is a lot of debate out there about the difference between a chutney and a pickle. As far as I can tell, a chutney is a sweeter, fruit-based preserve (but still with the addition of vinegar, otherwise it would just be jam) and pickles are vegetable-based and with a more pronounced vinegar flavour.

Pickles!

This year was my first attempt at growing curcubits (the sprawly, fruity, juicy plant family of gourds, melons, squash and other scrambling vines that will take over half the garden if you let 'em) other than courgettes. Turns out, if you can grow a courgette, you can grow the rest of 'em too! So I've found myself besieged by pumpkins, cucumbers & gherkins. And I chuffing love it! (if you fancy growing gherkins next year, I recommend Hokus, an easy to grow, high yielding outdoor trailing variety)

So in a change from the usual chutneys, here's a pickle!

Pickled Cucumber

1kg cucumbers (or gherkins)
1 tbs sugar (optional)
cider or white wine vinegar
salt
1 sprig of dill (optional. Unless you’re using gherkins, then it’s compulsory!)
1 tsp black peppercorns

With a sharp knife, cut the cucumber into painfully thin slices. I’m sure that there are food processor attachments that can do this sort of thing, but I have always taken the sharp-knife-and-backache approach. Arrange the slices in a colander (or the plastic inner mesh of a salad spinner), scattering with salt between the layers. This draws out moisture & helps vegetables remain crisp after pickling. Place the colander in a bowl, cover with a cloth & leave somewhere cool overnight.

The next day, take a moment to marvel at how much liquid has come out of the veg. Rinse thoroughly & pack into clean, sterilised jars. Add the sugar (if using) & dill to the jar & top with the vinegar. Seal & store in a cool, dry place for a few weeks. Once opened, keep it in the fridge.
What can you do with it? It's a really nice accompaniment to stir fries, goes well in veggie burgers, gives potato salad a nice bite & sour note & is surprisingly tasty in sandwiches.

This is one of those recipes that you can really play around with, all you need is to remember to slice them & salt them the night before. Need a few suggestions? Okay then…

Combine shallots, cauliflower florets & slices of carrot for a mixed pickle (add 1 tbs sugar to the vinegar for a sweet mixed pickle)

Slices of radish (or if you’re growing rat-tail radish, whole young pods) with fresh mint leaves or dill. Japanese daikon or mooli sliced or grated with ginger or chilli slices works really well too.

Cauliflower florets are a delicious, crisp pickle, and work really well with the addition of 1tbs of toasted coriander seed & 1 tsp toasted cumin seed (you can add a pinch of turmeric & yellow mustard powder for a bit of colour too!)

Celeriac, coarsely grated or thinly sliced, with 1 tbs yellow mustard seed and as much grated black pepper as you can stomach.

Florence Fennel, finely sliced with the zest & juice of a lemon and a couple of bay leaves makes a light, refreshing pickle.

Celery, finely sliced, makes a refreshing pickle.

Courgettes, deseeded & sliced, with whatever Mediterranean herbs you have lying around, is a good way of using up a glut.

Red cabbage & red onion, shredded, with plenty of black pepper.

Go Mango

Mango chutney is one of the most well known Indian style chutneys. The flavour is sweet, spicy & sour & can be chunky or a smooth puree (I like it chunky myself), and can be made with green (unripe) or ripe mangoes. It is usually served with poppadoms or puri (a delicious puffy fried pillow of unleavened bread).

Mango Chutney

750g Mango, devoid of skin & stone, and chopped into chunks
250ml white wine vinegar
400g sugar
50g raisins
1 chilli, finely chopped
Juice & rind of a lemon
30g ginger (a piece about the size of your thumb) grated
1 tsp each of salt, cumin seed, cardamom seed (or you can bruise the cardamom pods & drop them into the mix. Just don’t eat them when it comes to eating the chutney!), black peppercorns & nigella seed*
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

Tip all the ingredients into a pan & slowly bring to the boil. Simmer for an hour (maybe longer if you’re mangoes are really juicy), or until the spicy fruit goop has thickened enough to draw a spoon along the base of the pan, giving you a Moses parting the Dead Sea moment. But with raisins.

Spoon into sterilised glass jars & seal (this recipe with fill 3-4 regular sized jars. Obviously it will fill more if you’re using tiny jars, and less if using large jars). Spend far more time than is healthy coming up with a suitable label for your jar. After patiently waiting 3 months (or weeks), open & enjoy. And plan how you’ll tweak the recipe for the next batch!

Keri-no-Chhundo (Gujurati green mango preserve)

6 small green mangoes
2 tsp chilli flakes
5 cinnamon sticks
3 cardamom pods
5 cloves
7tbs oil
6tbs sugar
1 tsp salt

Peel & grate the mangoes (this will be messy!). Mix with the salt & put to one side
Heat the oil in a pan & add the cinnamon, cardamom & cloves. When they start to sizzle, and the kitchen smells like Christmas, add the mango. Cook on a low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture has thickened (this will take about half an hour). Stir in the sugar & chillis & remove from the heat. When the mixture has cooled, spoon into clean screw-top jars & keep in the fridge, where it should last 2 to 3 weeks.

*Or a spice mix of your own devising. Cumin, allspice & turmeric also work well together.

A Bit of a Pickle

Hello Blog!
Okay, so the more-blogging-thing isn't quite working, but I am trying. I'm not just lying on the sofa all day reading China Miéville (well, maybe a little bit). Time has mostly been spent redecorating living room & bathroom (what kind of idiot puts wallpaper in a bathroom anyway?), digging, planting & repotting, and battling the encroaching hoards of weeds, cats that insist on sleeping in the radishes & desperately trying to keep the Peas That Won't Stop Growing under some control (alas, there have been some tragedies. A patch of Eliza's* took umbrage to the Orca beans & lynched them. It was like that episode of Macguyver where the ants take over a plantation. Strong words and whacking with sticks got things under control, but I'm pretty sure that when the End of Days are upon us, it won't be Zombies that destroy us all, but legumes.)
Oh, and I've also been making chutney. Yay!


The Pineapple Chutney is inspired by a recipe in Monesha Bharadwaj's India's Vegetarian Cookery (one of my favourite cookery books, and one of the few I actually read the recipes in, rather than just look at the pictures & improvise) for fresh Pineapple chutney.

Pineapple Chutney
1 Pineapple, peeled & chopped into 1cm-ish dice
400ml white wine vinegar
225g demerera sugar
225g dates, chopped
225g raisins
2" piece of ginger, grated (don't worry about peeling it)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp dried flaked chillies
1 tsp panch phoron**
1 lemon (juice & zest)

Tip everything into a large pan & bring slowly to the boil, stirring regularly. It will take around an hour to an hour & a half to thicken up. Pour into sterilised jars & store somewhere cool & dark, and don't think about opening it for at least a month.
A hot, sweet chutney that goes well with cheese, curries and, when no one's looking, straight out of the jar with a spoon.

Right. Off to plant out some more pumpkins, and watch the fledgling barn swallows flitting about.

*Actually the Ezethas Krombeck Blau, but my shonky brain can't hold that many letters, so they're just 'The Eliza's' now

**A Bengali spice blend of equal parts cumin seed, fennel seed, fenugreek seed, black mustard seed & Nigella seed

Piccalilli

Piccalilli is a variety of pickle or relish that first appeared in the UK around the middle of the 18th Century, often going by the name of Piccalillo or Indian Pickle. It is a tangy, chunky pickle, made bright yellow with the addition of mustard & turmeric, and is an excellent accompaniment to bread & cheese, sandwiches & cold meats.

And it's very easy to make.

Since MikeyFox was stuck at home with a bad back, it seemed like a good time to introduce him to the noble art of preserving, so we made Piccalilli.

Piccalilli takes a bit of time & planning, and you'll need to get started the night before. You will need...

1 small cauliflower, broken into small florets (not too small, it's a chunky pickle after all)

1 courgette, split in half lengthways & chopped (any curcubit will do, though. Half a cucumber, deseeded & chopped is good. Or marrow, again deseeded & chopped*.)

2 carrots, peeled & chopped

2 onions, finely chopped

50g fine sea salt

Place all your chopped veggies in a colander or a large bowl & cover with the salt. Give everything a stir, cover & leave in a cool place overnight (or 24 hours if possible). The salt will draw out moisture from the veggies (so if you are using a colander, place it in a bowl), so when they are cooked, they will remain firm & crunchy. Yum.

The next day, marvel at how much water has come out of the veg. Then discard. Sorry, salty veggie water. Give your veggies a quick rinse with cold water & pat dry.

If you don't have a big preserving pan, any large stainless steel pan will work fine. Into the pan goes

500ml cider vinegar or white wine vinegar

250g sugar

2 tsp yellow mustard powder

1 tsp turmeric (to make it Yellow!)

1/2 tsp each of ground ginger, cumin seeds, yellow mustard seeds, chilli flakes & grated nutmeg.

Stir over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat & bring to the boil. Add the vegetables, and some fresh ground pepper (as much or as little as you want). Bring to the boil & then reduce the heat & simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes.

While the Piccalilli is simmering, you'll need to do one more thing. You'll need

2 tbs cornflour

Place in a small bowl & add a little of the cooking liquid from the pan & stir until you have a smooth paste. This is to thicken up the piccalilli liquid. So at the end of the 10 minutes of simmering, remove the pan from the heat & add the cornflour paste. Stir & return to the heat, bring it to the boil & simmer for 5 minutes. The liquid will thicken up & coat the still-crunchy vegetables.

Spoon into warm, sterilised jars & seal. If you can bear to leave it be for a month, all the flavours will mellow & mature, and it will be delicious. If you can't, that's okay too. It will still be delicious.

Om Nom Nom!

*It's nothing personal, seedy bits. You're just soggy and tasteless is all.

Chutney

Back when I was a cub, every summer my Mum & I would go out to our local pick-your-own farm, with it's endless fields of strawberries & raspberries (and the occasional row of mysterious hybrid something-berry*), and pick our own body weights in soft fruits, which would be taken home and turned into jam. Jam, jam, bloody jam. No eating strawberries raw for us, it had to be boiled up with preserving sugar & poured into jars. Or doused in sugar & left in the fridge overnight to go soft & pulpy. Brrr.

So when I eventually inherited my Nans giant preserving pan (where many a succulent red fruit met its grisly end), I vowed never to make a single blob of jam in it. No, it was to be reclaimed, redeemed & turned to a higher purpose.

Yes, dear reader, it would be used to make chutney.

Ahh, chutney. Friend of cheese, saviour of the boring sandwich, secret ingredient of shepherds pie or pumpkin tagine. And the nicest thing to do with cheese on toast (though spreading the toast with marmite before adding the cheese is also very tasty).

As I've mentioned before, few things make me happier than spending an afternoon pottering about in the kitchen making something tasty. And I had all these Pumpkins...**

So better make some Pumpkin Chutney then!

700g pumpkin (any variety will do, really), peeled, deseeded & chopped into equal sized pieces.

700g apples, peeled, cored & chopped into equal sized pieces (I used half cooking apples from my father-in-laws impossibly high-yielding little tree, and half coxes, as all my apples had gone to the Great Cider Making Caper)

1 large onion, peeled & diced

250g demerera sugar (or any brown sugar)

450ml white wine vinegar (or cider vinegar, or even malt vinegar, though that would be like taking the delicate flavour of your pumpkin, wrapping it around a housebrick & smacking yourself in the face with it (which is entirely understandable sometimes)
250g raisins
1tsp salt
1tbs chilli flakes
1" ginger, peeled & chopped

Pile all of that into your preserving pan. I know it doesn't look like there's enough vinegar in there, but there is. Promise.
In a piece of muslin (though I used a reusable teabag here. A crazy little invention from Whittards) tie up 1tsp peppercorns, 1 cinnamon stick (you can break it up if you need to) & 6 or 7 cloves. Chuck into the preserving pan & bring everything slowly to the boil. This will occupy you for the next hour or two, so I recommend a Micah P. Hinson CD while you work. Broken Family Band will also work, chutney likes being sung to.

Stir occasionally, and when it reaches a boil reduce to a simmer & give it the odd stir to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom or burns (unlikely to happen at the start, but after an hour it'll get thick & tricksy). After about an hour & a half (maybe more, maybe less) it will have thickened up, and you can draw your spoon across the bottom and see the base of the pan briefly, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Only it's a chutney sea.

You have Chutney! Spoon into clean, sterilised jars & seal. Waste half an hour on Google images looking for a good picture to go on the label, then store in a cool, dark place for a couple of months to mature (though you'll probably have a jar that's only half full. That can be used straight away. Future jars will be better & more matured, but it will still be tasty.
Om Nom Nom!

*Where I was disheartened to discover that the Loganberry didn't give you X-Men powers, and was just a fancy word for 'bigger Raspberry'. Hmpf.

**Some people smoke. Some people run up huge credit card debts buying shoes. I buy pumpkins. Could be worse.