The loneliness of the long distance runner bean

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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.

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Yellow Tomato & Ginger Chutney

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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.

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Christmas Plum & Apricot Chutney

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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!

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Runner Bean & Pepper Relish

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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.

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