Redcurrant delight

For those of you who saw the brief appearance on the Great British Food Revival - here's the recipe of what I was making - a delicious redcurrant chutney that goes brilliantly with cold meats and stronger cheeses. Yummy yummy

Redcurrant chutney

250g cooking apples chopped into cubes
900g plums stoned and quartered
400g red onions, chopped into large chunks
30g fresh ginger chopped into small pieces
500g redcurrants stalks removed
500ml red wine vinegar
200g dark muscovado sugar
2tsp mustard seeds

Put all the ingredients into a large saucepan

Bring to the boil

Turn down and leave to simmer for an hour

Spoon into sterilized jars and seal when cooled

Simple!

A slow and smelly (in a good way) Saturday

One of the reasons I love cooking is the process – of course I love tucking into a nice meal at the end of it but it is as much about the actual cooking as it is about the product... Methodical, (mostly) relaxing and intensely therapeutic, it’s pretty much the most calming thing I know how to do.

And there are few things more therapeutic than cooking up a batch of chutneys and pickles on a Saturday afternoon, which is why Natalie and I have decided to put together a batch once a month.

This month’s batch included the ever-popular chilli jam I blogged about in December, a red onion marmalade and something a bit different in the form of an Indian lime pickle. I have to confess I am slightly obsessed with lime pickle and have been known to eat it straight out of the jar with my fingers (the horror), the idea of being able to make several jars of the good stuff rather excited me....

So, Saturday afternoon was once more spent trudging around Croydon gathering the necessary ingredients for the cook off. I’m not going to lie, running around in the bitter cold and both of us nursing a hangover it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience but by the time we settled down with some red wine and got down to the fun stuff later on it might just have been worth it.

First up was the red onion marmalade which involved chopping a prodigious amount of the buggers until both of us were in tears. Tears of laughter aided by my rather rude interpretations of the last doofus I went on a date with – his hot and cold approach could have given Katy Perry a run for her money. So much for a new year and new start, looks like I’ll be regaling you fine folk with my disastrous date tales for a while longer and that’s just fine by me...




Onions chopped and tears duly wiped, we sweated the onions with garlic, thyme leaves, chilli flakes and seasoning for an hour until limp, lifeless and gorgeously sweet before dumping in a bottle of red wine and some golden caster sugar and letting it bubble away for a while.

In the meantime – we were eyeing up the challenge of the lime pickle which started with frying the limes whole before chopping them into slices and trying to dart away from the random spurts of hot lime juice erupting from them in the process.



Making the pickle wasn’t too difficult, the recipe below is a ‘quick’ lime pickle recipe so will only take an hour. I’ve just tucked into some with a few slices of gammon a week later and can tell you it’s only getting better as each day goes by.

Just a hint though, maybe don’t make the same mistake I did and go out dancing after knocking up the pickle. Four hours of sweaty jumping around left me, rather upsettingly, in a fug of fenugreek fumes. It’s not sexy nor is it even particularly pleasant :P

The finished picture


Red Onion Marmalade
Adapted from Good Food Recipe for the same
Ingredients
2kg red onions or regular onions
4 garlic cloves
120g butter
4 tbsp olive oil
140g golden caster sugar
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
pinch of chilli flakes
85cl bottle red wine
350ml red wine vinegar
50ml balsamic vinegar

Halve and thinly slice the onions, and garlic. Melt the butter with the oil over a high heat. Tip in the onions and garlic and ensure they are covered with butter. Sprinkle over the sugar, thyme leaves, chilli flakes and some salt and pepper. Give everything another really good stir and reduce the heat slightly. Cook uncovered for an hour, stirring occasionally.
Pour in the wine and vinegars and simmer everything, still uncovered, over a high heat for 25-30 minutes, stirring every so often until the liquid has reduced by about two-thirds. Leave the onions to cool in the pan, then scoop into sterilised jars and seal. Can be eaten straight away, but keeps in the fridge for up to 3 months.

Quick lime pickle recipe
Adapted from limepickle.com

500 grams of green chillies (we like ours super hot but if you don’t, use half red and half green chillies)
200 grams chopped fresh ginger
15 chopped garlic cloves
6 chopped fresh curry leaves
4 cups distilled white vinegar
1 tsp turmeric
1 Tbsp salt
3 Tbsp mustard seed
2 Tbsp fenugreek seeds
3 cups vegetable oil (If you have mustard oil, use 2 cups vegetable oil and 1 cup mustard oil)
5 Tbsp vegetable oil
Preparation for this lime pickle recipe
Make sure you have sterilised jars and lids prepared for bottling. They must be thoroughly dried!
The method for the quick lime pickle recipe
Heat 3 Tbsp of oil in a large frying pan until hot.
Sauté the limes turning them over until their skins are a golden brown.
Dry the limes and cut them into about 6 thick slices and then half the slices.
Put 2 Tbsp of oil into a blender, add the chillis, chopped curry leaves, chopped garlic, chopped ginger and curry leaves. Blend to a paste
Heat the rest of the oil in a pan until hot. Add mustard and fenugreek. Heat the seeds until they pop open.
Add the paste, stir and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off heat.
Add the turmeric, pieces of lime and vinegar and stir until thoroughly mixed.
Using a slotted ladle or spoon, put the limes into jars, and pour the remaining fluid over the limes ensuring they are just covered.
Stir to remove any air bubbles and seal jars.

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine

I've always wanted to be the kind of domestic goddess who made chutneys to bring to dinner parties instead (or more honestly alongside) a bottle of wine. Who makes her own sloe gin and bread.

Well I'm getting there... Having never made chutney, Natalie and I decided Christmas was the perfect time to try our hands at making some....delicious.

Festive as the snow was I can't say it was much of a help as we trundled through the snow getting the ingredients from the market but by the time we had the ingredients all laid out and some cider mulling on the hob things were just peachy again.

Before we knew it we had three pans bubbling away on the hob.



As it was our first time making chutneys and jams we decided to stick with the recipes of those in the know - Nigella is responsible for the Christmas chutney and the gorgeous chilli jam and Jamie's cheeky chilli pepper chutney. Yummy. We tweaked the recipes a bit, adding half green chillis instead of all red to the chilli chutney for extra kick.

Afterword (January 11th)
So far, the presents have gone down well, best summarised by my dad (a man of few words) serving his chilli jam on the Sunday dinner table every week since he got it. Not an easy feat to achieve as he's rather particular about his Sunday suppers. Thanks dad!

Cheeky chilli pepper chutney


• 8-10 fresh red chillies

• 8 ripe red peppers

• olive oil

• 2 medium red onions, peeled and chopped

a sprig of fresh rosemary, leaves picked and chopped

• 2 fresh bay leaves

• a 5cm piece of cinnamon stick

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 100g brown sugar

150ml balsamic vinegar

Place your chillies and peppers over a hot barbecue, in a griddle pan or on a tray under a hot grill, turning them now and then until blackened and blistered all over. Carefully lift the hot peppers and chillies into a bowl (the smaller chillies won’t take as long as the peppers so remove them first) and cover tightly with clingfilm. As they cool down, they’ll cook gently in their own steam. By the time they’re cool enough to handle, you’ll be able to peel the skin off easily.


When you’ve got rid of most of the skin, trimmed the stalks and scooped out the seeds, you’ll be left with a pile of nice tasty peppers and chillies. Finely chop by hand or put in a food processor and whiz up. Then put to one side.


Heat a saucepan and pour in a splash of olive oil. Add the onions, rosemary, bay leaves and cinnamon and season with a little salt and pepper. Cook very slowly for about 20 minutes or so, until the onions become rich, golden and sticky.

Add the chopped peppers and chillies, the sugar and the vinegar to the onions and keep cooking. When the liquid reduces and you’re left with a lovely thick sticky chutney, season well to taste. Remove the cinnamon stick and the bay leaves. Either spoon into the sterilized jars and put them in a cool dark place, or keep in the fridge and use right away. In sterilized jars, the chutney should keep for a couple of months.

Nigella's Christmas chilli jam

150g long fresh red chillies, each deseeded and cut into about 4 pieces.
150g red peppers, cored, deseeded and cut into rough chunks
1kg jam sugar
600ml cider vinegar
6 x 250ml sealable jars, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or re-usable pickle jar

Method

1. Sterilize your jars and leave to cool.
2. Put the cut-up chillies into a food processor and pulse until they are finely chopped. Add the chunks of red pepper and pulse again until you have a vibrantly red-flecked processor bowl.
3. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar in a wide, medium-sized pan over a low heat without stirring.
4. Scrape the chilli-pepper mixture out of the bowl and add to the pan. Bring the pan to the boil, then leave it at a rollicking boil for 10 minutes.
5. Take the pan off the heat and allow it cool. The liquid will become more syrupy, then from syrup to viscous and from viscous to jelly-like as it cools.
6. After about 40 minutes, or once the red flecks are more or less evenly dispersed in the jelly (as the liquid firms up, the hints of chilli and pepper start being suspended in it rather than floating on it), ladle into your jars. If you want to stir gently at this stage, it will do no harm. Then seal tightly.