what a beauty, never seen one as big as that before

This little adventure started when Dan’s cousin Maura and her lovely Mum, Auntie Sheila, gave us a large and fully ripened marrow (Cucurbita pepo) when we visited at Christmas 2009. Most marrows seen on sale in the UK are bright green and look like supersized courgettes, but if you let the marrow reach a good size on the vine and then keep it somewhere cool and out of direct sunlight after picking, it will continue to ripen and turn a handsome orange colour.

I should also say that this recipe is probably one for the ‘home made chutney’ enthusiast. I love the taste and aroma of what it makes; but there’s a lot of work, and a lot of ingredients, for a limited number of jars.

David’s Marrow & Ginger Chutney

6 dessert apples, 900g unprepped weight
2 medium sized cooking apples, 450g unprepped weight
4 lemons
1.7kg of ripe marrow, unprepped weight
500ml white vinegar or white wine vinegar
400g diced onion
4x 5ml measuring spoons ground ginger
2x 5ml measuring spoons ground white pepper
1x 5ml measuring spoon cayenne pepper
2x 5ml measuring spoons ground mace
1x 5ml measuring spoon ground cinnamon
2x 5ml measuring spoons finely ground salt
6 pieces of stem ginger, drained of syrup and finely chopped
900g granulated white sugar

Roughly chop the apples and lemons, without peeling, but remove any bruised or damaged bits. Place in a heavy pan with 2 litres of water, and bring to the boil; cook for 90-120 minutes. This is to produce a pectin-rich stock for the chutney (the lemons help to release the pectin contained in the apples). Drain, reserving the 1.15 litres or so of liquid, but discarding the pulp.

Peel and de-seed the marrow, and place in your pan with the white vinegar and diced onion, and the spices and seasonings (but not the stem ginger or sugar). If your pan has measurements marked up the inside, it should read about 3.4 litres. Bring to the boil, and reduce by one-third. Then add the stem ginger and sugar and reduce again, to approximately 2-2.25 litres, taking the temperature as close as you can to 103-104C.

Meanwhile, make sure your jam jars are washed and clean, and sterilise them by putting them in an oven at 140C for at least 10 minutes. Then fill your jars with the hot chutney (should make four 450g jars or 5 400g jars) and cover immediately.

If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney.

a good chutney is a...well, a good thing

As the year went on, we had a bumper crop of fresh herbs, red chillis and green jalapeno peppers, small ‘continental style’ gherkin-like cucumbers, all sorts of salad leaves, french beans, dwarf french beans, and runner beans galore. But most of all, tomatoes – cherry, beefsteak, plum and yellow to begin with, and a couple of ‘heritage’ varieties cropping later in the season.

Realising that we had far more beans and tomatoes than we could possibly eat, I turned to one of my favourite cookbooks, Leith’s Cookery Bible.

I’ve had this book since I think 1991 and I have to say, it’s been one of my most-used and most reliable ‘helpers’. I’ve made soups, starters, pates, puddings, main courses and now chutney, using this book either as an inspiration or by sticking religiously to the recipes it contains. I still think, for a general-purpose cookbook, this is one of the best investments you can make.

So it was to Leith’s that I turned for my first chutney inspiration. I tweaked and twiddled their Green Tomato & Apple Chutney recipe to suit the ripe red tomatoes from our garden, was delighted with the results, and then from that, developed a recipe to use the glut of small yellow tomatoes, from plants which we bought as ‘Sun Baby’ but which from their ‘plum’ shape I reckon must be the ‘Sun Belle’ variant.

So let’s start with those two recipes, and a few pictures to go with the yellow tomato version.

David’s Red Tomato Chutney (with thanks to Leith’s Cookery Bible)

1.3kg red tomatoes, quartered
225g cooking apple, peeled, cored and finely diced
225g dessert apple, peeled, cored and finely diced
1 large red pepper, deseeded and diced
2 large onions, peeled and diced
1 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
½ tsp ground mace
1 tsp ground white pepper
1x 15ml measuring spoon sweet paprika
550ml white malt vinegar
400g golden caster sugar

Put everything but the sugar into a large, heavy-bottomed pan, and cook gently until the volume is reduced by more than half, and the contents of the pan look fairly dry. Then add the sugar (at which point the mixture will go much more liquid), and cook again until thickened.

Sterilise your jam jars in the oven at 120-140ºC for 15 minutes; I put them all into a large roasting tin, for easier handling. Then remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes, standing on a heatproof surface or wooden block.

Pour the hot chutney into the jars, filling to just above the ‘shoulder’.  If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney. Label when cold; try to leave the chutney to mature for a week or two before eating it!

David’s Yellow Tomato Chutney

1.65kg yellow tomatoes, quartered
280g (unpeeled weight) cooking apple, peeled, cored and diced
280g (unpeeled weight) dessert apple, peeled, cored and diced
625g yellow peppers, deseeded and diced (3 peppers)
560g unpeeled weight onion, peeled and diced (2 large onions)
1 tsp salt
90g fresh root ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tsp ground mace
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp turmeric
3 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp yellow mustard seeds, ‘popped’ with the cumin in 1 tbsp sunflower oil
650ml white malt vinegar
4 dried red chillies, chopped
500g golden caster sugar

Proceed pretty much as above, cooking everything but the sugar until the contents of your pan have reduced by at least half – with the larger quantity involved here, I found it easier to start with the tomatoes, apples, peppers and most of the vinegar in one pan, and the onions and spices in another, mixing them together when they had reduced enough to be combined.

When the mixture has cooked down and looks quite dry, add the sugar and cook again until it thickens. Pour or spoon the hot chutney into the sterilised jam jars and cover as above, with either acid- and vinegar-proof lids or cellophane covers.

french bean & tomato relish

The thing that has surprised me most with this year’s first steps in growing vegetables has been just how many beans you get from a few plants tucked in amongst the flowers. First to crop were the dwarf beans, then the runner beans kicked in (and have been amazingly productive, even climbing over the fence into next door’s garden and supplying our lovely neighbour with a few beans). We thought our french beans were a failure, but in fact they were just later coming into production than everything else, and are now also cropping well.

So having tamed our tomatoes, the beans had to have my attention next. I searched the internet but almost every recipe I came up with was basically the same rather dull-looking old WI recipe, trotted out under different names but all apparently designed to produce a thin, mustardy, vinegary ‘piccalilli’-style of preserve, which wasn’t what I wanted.

So I decided to create my own, almost ‘sweet & sour’ French Bean & Tomato Relish. It’s a softer set than the chutney I was making, and I feel that it makes the most of the beans themselves and will be a great accompaniment to British cheeses or cold meats.

David’s French Bean & Tomato Relish

1kg french beans, topped, tailed and cut into 2.5cm pieces
1.3kg red tomatoes, quartered
2 medium onions (400g unpeeled weight)
1 tsp salt
100g unpeeled weight fresh ginger root, finely chopped
8 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tsp ground white pepper
seeds of 15 cardamom pods
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp fenugreek seeds
3 dried red chillies
500ml white malt vinegar

575g soft dark or Demerara sugar
25g cornflour, slaked with a very little water

Chop the tomatoes and onions and put in a large heavy pan. Add everything but the beans, sugar and cornflour and stew for 1-1½ hours until much reduced. Meanwhile, drop the beans into boiling water and cook until just tender; drain, and throw into a large quantity of iced cold water, to halt the cooking. When quite cold, drain again. Add the sugar to the reduced tomato mixture and cook down for 20 minutes; add the beans, cook until hot, then spoon out 300ml of the cooking liquid; mix with the slaked cornflour, return to the pan, and cook for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, make sure your jam jars are washed and clean, and sterilise them by putting them in an oven at 140C for at least 10 minutes. Then fill your jars with the hot pickle and cover immediately. If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the relish will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser pickle.

Hard mangos are good, even preferable, for chutney making

Having got the garden produce under control for the moment, I still had a hankering to make more things for the store cupboard. On a quick trip to my local supermarket, I found large unripe mangoes on sale at a bargain price, so picked up a box full. I left them near the kitchen window for a couple of days to soften slightly, then got busy.

For those of you who don’t know, the mango is a fruit native to the Indian subcontinent. The trees can grow to 40 metres high and continue cropping for over 300 years. As if that wasn’t remarkable enough, it’s also now sometimes called a ‘superfruit’, as it is high in both prebiotic fibre and a number of minerals, nutrients and antioxidants. However, its main attraction for me is that it makes a wonderful chutney. Mangoes can be slightly troublesome to prepare, as they have a large and very hard stone; deliaonline has a photo guide and all I’d add is that for pickle making, waste nothing ! When you’ve removed the skin, scoop any remaining flesh off with a spoon, make sure not to lose any juice, and trim closely round the stone to get every possible bit of flesh.

This recipe will give you a wonderful chutney, particularly good with some hot roast pork (in a bun or bagel!). It’s quite different to the big brand name chutney you might find in the shops – packed with fruit, more texture, and fragrant with spicies rather than either sugary or searingly hot.

David’s Mango Chutney

1.5kg firm mangoes, peeled and diced
4 long red chillies, deseeded and chopped
110g fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
juice and zest of 1 lemon
250ml white malt vinegar
2 tsp ground cumin
15g salt
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp kalonji (black Nigella seeds)
Seeds of 12 green cardamoms
750g brown sugar

Place everything but the sugar in a heavy saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring frequently. Cook for 1 hour or until mixture is thick. Add the sugar, cook again until the temperature crosses 101ºC and the mixture has begun to thicken again.

Meanwhile, make sure your jam jars are washed and clean, and sterilise them by putting them in an oven at 140C for at least 10 minutes. Then fill your jars with the hot chutney and cover immediately. If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney.

This chutney has no obvious connection with the 1954 Sidney Poitier film about the creation of the Harlem Globetrotters

aubergine pickle, german sausage and bread

Aubergine Chutney:

The Turks have a proper respect for the aubergine, and have probably made more use of it in their cooking than any other culture. A food writer once told a joke about a visitor to Istanbul who, at the end of a veritable feast, was asked if he wanted anything else; ‘A glass of water’, he replied, ‘but hold the aubergine’.

An exaggeration, no doubt, but Turkish cuisine has many exquisite dishes based on the humble eggplant. Imam bayildi (literally, ‘the Imam fainted’, probably from the cost of all the olive oil used along with onion, garlic and tomatoes); the Ali nazik kebab, where aubergine puree is topped first with yoghurt and then with fried seasoned minced lamb and slices of peppers; or even the aubergine borek, those little stuffed pastries which make such a satisfying snack when you’re sitting contemplating the Golden Horn

But my ambition was to make an aubergine chutney, dark, rich and with the heat balanced by something sweet. With hints of central Asia and the Silk Road, bringing both spices and subtlety. But enough of the fancy talk, I reckon you’ll want to get to the recipe, and this is my homage to the most noble cousin of the potato.

David’s Aubergine Chutney

2.3kg aubergines
700g onions
4 long red chillies, deseeded and chopped
750ml white malt vinegar
100g tomato puree
7 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp cayenne pepper
2x 15ml measuring spoons hot smoked paprika
2x 5ml teaspoons ground fenugreek
2x 15ml spoons cumin seeds
1x 15ml spoon ground coriander
1x 15ml spoon tamarind paste
¼ tsp ground cloves
770g soft dark brown sugar

Cut the aubergines in half lengthways. Place cut-side down, and cut into 4 lengthways, then into slices 1cm across. Finely chop the onions, place in a large pan with the aubergines and chillies, add everything but the sugar and stew gently until much reduced, with almost all the liquid evaporated. Add the sugar (which will make the mixture go liquid again), cook down once more making sure the temperature doesn’t go above 105ºC.

Sterilise your jam jars in the oven at 140ºC for at least 10 minutes. Remove jars from the oven, cool for a few minutes, then pour in the hot chutney, and cover immediately. If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney.

Oh, and the headline? Well, an aubergine walked into a bar and asked for a pint of lager. After serving him, the barman said “We don’t get many aubergines in here”. And the aubergine replied “At £4.50 a pint, I’m not surprised”.

abundant and starkly beautiful, runner beans suit all manner of pickles and relishes

Runner Bean Mustard Pickle:

It’s odd how sometimes mentioning something, even to dismiss it, can spark a smouldering interest which you find yourself returning to later; and having sorted out my french bean surplus without resorting to the ‘piccalilli’ solution, I still needed to do something with my continuing bumper crop of runner beans. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of making a mustard pickle for the store cupboard, but to be honest, most of the recipes I found on the internet had an almost 1950s-austerity-period parsimony to them – as though the idea was to eke out the supply of beans and flavours, rather than pack them into the available jars.

I looked at the Delia recipe for spiced pickled runner beans, which seemed to be directly related to a much older WI recipe, and a Welsh recipe which mercifully came with an English translation but like everything else I found, they didn’t seem to pack the punch of either beans or spices that I was looking for. So I used these as my starting point, and by increasing the quantity of both beans and spices (compared to vinegar and sugar), arrived at the following, pungent, bean-packed pickle:

David’s Runner Bean Mustard Pickle

25g plain flour
140g English mustard powder (Colman’s)
30g celery salt
15g turmeric
100g dried garlic flakes
900ml white malt vinegar
25g black mustard seed, ‘popped’ in
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1.25kg runner beans
500g Demerara or other pale brown sugar

Combine the flour, mustard powder, celery salt, turmeric and dried garlic with 600ml of the vinegar in a large bowl, to form a thin paste. Heat the oil in a saucepan with a lid and ‘pop’ the mustard seeds.

Top and tail the beans and ‘string’ them if necessary, then chop them on the diagonal into 2.5-4.0cm pieces; drop into a very large pan of boiling water, return to the boil, cook for 15 minutes and drain. Return the beans to the pan and pour the remaining vinegar over them, to help preserve the colour.

Add the mustard seeds and oil, and then the paste, and stir everything together gently but thoroughly. Return to the heat, add the sugar and cook for 10-15 minutes until the sugar has fully dissolved and the whole mixture is bubbling gently, making sure it doesn’t stick and that the raw flour taste is cooked out.

Meanwhile, sterilise your jars by washing them inside and out in hot soapy water; rinse well, dry, arrange in a roasting tin and heat in the oven at 140ºC for 10 minutes. Put the roasting tin on a heatproof surface and fill the jars with the very hot chutney, and cover immediately.

If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney.

yellow tomato & ginger chutney

I decided to make a spicier version of my original Yellow Tomato chutney, as in addition to a last flush of the ‘Sun Baby’ or ‘Sun Belle’ tomatoes I’d used from our garden earlier this year, we also had a sudden rush of a heritage tomato variety called ‘Yellow Peach’. If you see this variety offered for sale, I’d recommend it for lots of reasons; it looks and feels quite unusual, because when it’s ripe, it has a softly yielding quality, almost like a big yellow Jelly Baby. It’s also the most lovely delicate yellow colour, in our garden at least it cropped much later than most of the other varieties we grew this year, and when you cut and eat it, it has a superb ‘real tomato’ flavour. I have to say, the chutney made with these tomatoes was particularly fine.

David’s Yellow Tomato & Ginger Chutney

1175g yellow tomatoes – a mixture of ‘Sun Baby’ or ‘Sun Belle’ and ‘Yellow Peach’
2 yellow peppers – 450g unprepped weight
800ml white vinegar
640g onions – unprepped weight
440g dessert apples – unprepped weight
200g fresh root ginger – unprepped weight
Juice of 1 lemon
Seeds of 20 green cardamoms
1x 10ml measuring spoon fenugreek seeds
1x 10ml measuring spoon kalonji (black Nigella seeds)
1x 10ml measuring spoon ground mace
2x 10ml measuring spoon ground white pepper
2x 10ml measuring spoon rock salt
70g English mustard powder (Colman’s)
6 long red dried chillies
700g golden granulated sugar

Cut the tomatoes in half, and place in a large saucepan with the yellow peppers, diced and de-seeded, the vinegar, the diced and peeled onions and apples, and the peeled root ginger, cut into fine long strips or finely chopped.

Add the lemon juice, spices and seasoning (in fact, everything but the sugar), stir well, and bring to the boil. At this stage, the mixture looks quite unappetising, but don’t lose heart. Cook it until the mixture is almost dry, making sure you stir it regularly and that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Add the sugar and cook again until reduced, to a soft and still slightly moist consistency. Meanwhile, make sure your jam jars are washed and clean, and sterilise them by putting them in an oven at 140C for at least 10 minutes. Then fill your jars with the hot chutney and cover immediately.

If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney. If possible, leave it to mature in the jars for a few weeks before eating.

plum chutney

Late in the autumn, I had some dark red plums that were just asking to be made into something, and I also needed to sort out a couple of kitchen cupboards and use up some of the things I found there, to make space ahead of Christmas. I realised I wasn’t going to eat all the soft dried apricots I had in stock, and while I guess it’s unusual to make a chutney with a mixture of fresh and dried fruit, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t. So with Christmas on the horizon (well, it was then), I decided to make something to go with the cold meats and pork pies traditional for Boxing Day – something where the spicing had a ‘seasonal’ flavour.

David’s Christmas Plum & Apricot Chutney

300ml white vinegar
900g fresh dark red plums, halved & stoned
500g ready-to-eat soft dried apricots, chopped to a small dice
140g fresh root ginger, peeled & chopped
3 medium onions, 400g unprepped weight
550g peeled chopped cooking apples
Juice of 2 oranges
Juice of half a lemon
1 tablespoon dried red chilli flakes
2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp ground cloves
Half a tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground mace
1 tsp ground cinnamon
700g white caster sugar

Put everything but the sugar into a heavy pan and bring to a simmer, cook for about 30 minutes to reduce, then add the sugar and cook again for 30-45 minutes on a low heat, to reduce again, stirring frequently to avoid any sticking.

Sterilise your jam jars in the oven at 140ºC for at least 10 minutes. Remove jars from the oven, cool for a few minutes, then pour in the hot chutney, and seal immediately. If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the chutney will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser chutney.

I’m told this is particularly nice with some cold leftover roast lamb!

the beans still have some crispness in the pickle

Just after Christmas is hardly the time to be making chutney with anything from your garden (unless someone has invented Brussels Sprout chutney, there may be an opening there!), but late in the season I did make a batch of Runner Bean & Pepper Relish, using up some of our late runner bean harvest and a load of peppers I’d bought at a market. This has been very popular with the people I gave it to, so for future reference I’m posting it here.

David’s Runner Bean & Pepper Relish

570g runner beans, trimmed, de-stringed and cut diagonally into chunks
1kg red tomatoes, quartered
6 peppers, 850g unprepped weight
2 medium onions, 450g unprepped weight
100g fresh root ginger, unpeeled weight
8 cloves of garlic
6 dried red chillies
2tsp fine sea salt
3tsp ground white pepper
Seeds of 15 green cardamom pods
3tsp ground cumin
3tsp fenugreek seeds
500ml white vinegar
600g white sugar

The method is really on the same lines as the chutney and relish recipes I posted last year.

Drop the chunks of runner beans into a pan of boiling water and cook until just tender. Then drain, and throw into a bowl of iced water, to halt the cooking. When cold, drain again.

Meanwhile, put the quartered tomatoes into a large pan. Trim the peppers, removing stalks and white pith, and dice to about the size of a man’s smallest fingernail; peel and chop the onions, likewise; peel and finely chop the fresh ginger and the garlic cloves, and add these ingredients to the tomatoes, with the chillies, spices and white vinegar. Cook until soft and reduced in bulk by 35-50%, stirring regularly to avoid any sticking, then add the white sugar, and continue to stir until it has again reduced by maybe one-third. Add the drained cold beans and cook until everything is hot and bubbling.

Meanwhile, sterilise your jam jars in a warm oven at 140ºC for at least 10 minutes. Remove jars from the oven, cool for a few minutes, then pour in the hot chutney, and cover. If you use acid- and vinegar-proof screw-top metal lids, the relish will retain its moisture content and remain quite soft, but if you use cellophane covers held in place with elastic bands, some of the moisture will gradually evaporate, giving you a denser pickle.