Chutney

More from last year....

I had a bit of tomato glut, loads of green ones...so I decided to make green tomato chutney. I hunted around and in the end used Clare's recipe on the forum, and realised it was the same as a book I had. Funnily enough I didn't find any on the internet like this though.

4lb green tomatoes
1.5lb onions
1lb cooking apples
1 pt vinegar
8 dried chillies
1oz dried root ginger
8oz raisins
1lb sugar
2tsp salt

Chop first 3 and boil 30mins with half the vinegar.
Add spices (in muslin) and raisins and simmer about an hour.
Add sugar, salt and rest of vinegar and cook until thick and all liquid has boiled away.

I use this as a basis and it is probably different every time I make it!
I have never used dried ginger (never see it these days) and just replace with about 4tsp dried ginger or some grated fresh. I usually use dried chilli flakes or powder/cayenne straight into the pan - again just whatever I have to hand. I have also added garlic which works too.
Malt or distilled malt vinegar is fine - never tried cider vinegar, but I think with chutneys you don't need as strong a vinegar as you do for pickling so no reason why it wouldn't work just as well. Brown sugar as it gives a nice dark colour and a slightly richer flavour I think, but not necessary.

I tweaked it a bit and added garlic and sultanas as I had no raisins, and not so keen on chilli.

Then the green tomatoes that were left on the side all ripened so I had a glut of those!

I made red tomato chutney - which is sweeter than the green, but perfect with a strong cheese. Again I searched around for a recipe and did one similar to the green, but put a couple of eating apples in instead of all cooking apples - as I had a couple of dodgy ones in the fruit bowl. I put in slightly less sugar, and I think I added some paprika.

I made more labels - as I gave several of these away for Christmas. This was my first adventure into chutney making and enjoyed it.