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 the 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
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.