The Book of Rubbish Ideas

I'm having an identity crisis - I used to be a jar of tomato puree, now I'm all a pickle...

I must confess I haven’t made any chutney for a few years – I’ve been a very lucky girl and on the receiving end from a few preserve loving chums instead.

The first time I made it however, I seem to remember I was making good of a massive glut of courgettes and onions and our tomatoes were on their last legs, so it seemed like a good idea all round.

After becoming sick to the back teeth of eating courgettes in every possible way, including dolling them up as the delicious ‘Courgette Surprise’, I thought there wasn’t much else I could to do to inject excitement into the little green fellas; I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Simple recipes for chutneys, jams, jellies and other preserves are a great way of turning an abundant something into a delicious something else and this time, it was marrow in line for the chop!

According to the Wikipedia page for chutney (yes, there really is one…),

Chutney is a term for a variety of sweet and spicy condiments, usually involving a fresh, chopped primary vegetable or fruit with added seasonings. Chutney, as a genre, is often similar to the Indian pickle and the salsa of Latin American cuisine, or European relish.

Chutney may be dry or wet; dry chutney is generally in the form of powder. In India, a chutney is often made to be eaten fresh, using whatever suitable strongly flavoured ingredients are locally traditional or available at the time.

Somehow I’d found myself with 7 marrows. All just laying around in my study (read ‘shed’, which is tiny) and there simply wasn’t room for us all.

They were whoppers too, all weighing in at about 4lbs each. I dug out a wonderful tried and tested recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from the ever-resourceful River Cottage, which is very versatile and can be used to make the best of many different seasonal vegetables. Hugh says,

This is a ‘multiple choice’ recipe for chutney, designed to help you use whatever seasonal fruit and vegetables are in full glut at the time. For me, the courgettes/overgrown marrows are pretty much a staple in August and September, and they may give way to pumpkins and squashes in October and November. Tomatoes and plums are around at roughly the same time, though the tomatoes will start early – particularly if you use green ones.

Of course, no two batches of glutney will ever be quite the same – but that hardly matters. You should also feel free to play fast and loose with the spice bag. And if you like a really hot chutney, add as much dried chilli as you dare.

Serve with cheese, cold meats, terrines, pork pies etc. But also remember what a useful ingredient chutney is, with a ready-mixed blend of sweet, sour and spice. I frequently add it to curries, soups and stews.

To make about 10 jam jars’ worth:

• 1kg marrows/overgrown courgettes, unpeeled but cut into dice no bigger than 1cm (discard seeds from really large marrows) OR 1kg pumpkin, peeled, seeds and soft fibres discarded, and diced no bigger than 1cm
• 1kg red or green tomatoes, scalded, skinned and roughly chopped OR 1kg plums, stoned and chopped
• 1kg cooking or eating apples, peeled and diced (I used the windfalls from our tree in the garden)
• 500g onions, peeled and diced
• 500g sultanas or raisins (I went for sultanas)
• 500g light brown sugar
• 750ml white wine or cider vinegar, made up to 1 litre with water (I used White Balsamic vinegar)
• 1-3 tsp dried chilli flakes (I used Barts Chilli seeds in white wine vinegar)
• 1 tsp salt

for the spice bag

• 1 thumb-sized nugget of fresh or dried ginger, roughly chopped
• 12 cloves
• 12 black peppercorns
• 1 generous tsp coriander seeds
• a few blades of mace (opps, didn’t have any mate…)
• © River Cottage

Do visit the excellent River Cottage website and get the rest of the ‘Glutney’ recipe.

It might seem like a faff, but believe me, once you’ve had a go at making chutney or jam, you’ll soon realise how easy it is and be surprised by how much food you can make from a batch.

This is inspirational news indeed, particularly at a time when the pinch is pinching ever harder. And don’t forget, many jams and jellies can be made from the freely available fruits of Mother Nature’s own back yard; the hedgerow! Pretty much all you need to add to the mix is sugar and a stack of empty glass jars.

Don’t go buying anything special for goodness sake, just reuse what you have from your kitchen cupboards and ask friends to hold on to any tall jars they are finished with too.

One top tip is not to fill your jars to the very top. Leave a gap so the food doesn’t touch the lid (vinegary things like chutney do not like metallic lids) or you could seal jams and jellies with a wax top or a cellophane lid if you like.

Back to the yummy marrow chutney, I made it alongside my lovely chum Heather and it was a real giggle just chopping all the food up and getting everything ready. It’s a pleasurable experience doing a foodie thing with a friend, especially when you’re about to make something that will fill about 20 jars or more and it’s much more fun to share the abundance.

I had planned to leave my chutney in a dark cupboard for a month or so to mature and intensify in flavour, but tonight my darling husband Ray tucked into a jar and threw a huge spoonful into a pasta and chicken dish (made with leftovers from the Sunday roast and pasta from last nights tea)…it was delicious!

Chutney’s not just for cheese at Christmas you know, it’s smashing in a stir-fry too and a fraction of the cost of those posh jars in the supermarket.

Heather and I are planning a marmalade session with the Seville oranges in the New Year and a good cook-up should see us through to the summer when the berries kick in, but I suspect we might have to see what we can do with the surfeit of pumpkins that are going to be going begging in a month or so – all the rain we’ve had lately will be making those fellas enormous Norman!

Rubbishly yours,
TSx

Addendum: Just to let you know, we only used one huge marrow to make a batch that filled my enormous stock pot and it gave us about 15 good sized jars. We went 1 1/2 times the River Cottage recipe. The other marrows were gratefully received by my good friend Sophie and lovely chum Helen, who was giving a cooking lesson at the local primary school – my top tip, spread the love!