Green Tomato Chutney

I promised Color Chic that I would post a green tomato chutney recipe after I commented on her blog about her tomato recipes. So, here is that recipe:

The truth is that I referred to one of my favoutite recipe archive sites for this recipe and that is The Cottage Smallholder. I am going to repeat their recipe here after a jolly photo of my homegrown tomatoes. Nice huh ?

Green tomato chutney


As usual, I tampered with the recipe and will indicate what I did instead, in italics.
Ingredients:

1 kilo of green tomatoes (chopped)
35g of red onion (chopped) I think I used a little  more - I like onion.
1 lemon quartered (skin on), sliced finely
100g of sultanas
250g of pale brown sugar
10g of fresh ginger (skinned and finely chopped) I used my jar minced ginger which keeps in the fridge.
10g of fresh garlic (peeled and finely chopped)
10g of green chilli pepper (deseeded and sliced fine) I didn't have any green chilli pepper, so put in some tabasco instead - it's chilli no ?
The juice from one small orange (mine weighed 150g) I used a splash of carton orange juice - about 3tbsp.
250ml of white wine vinegar
2 cloves I had these - I was amazed !
5 cardamom pods (just the seeds) and these !
1 small star anise None of this tho...
Half a heaped tsp of allspice berries  nor this..
1 tsp of mixed peppercorns ..and I only had black peppercorns
1 heaped tsp of coriander seeds
2 heaped tsp of coriander powder
2 heaped tsp of turmeric powder
Half a tsp of ground white pepper - I used black pepper instead..
Half a tsp of yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp of cayenne pepper I think I used chilli pepper. ...

Method

1. Put all of the above in a big pot. I doubled  (or was it tripled?) the recipe and this is what it looked like:

I love the colour of this - stunning.
As you will see from my post on Courgette chutney the idea is that you have to basically mix all the ingredients and then boil it, then you have to turn it down to a simmer (lid off) for a good few hours, and maybe a few more hours after that....

This is a photo of it as it comes to the first boil:

I still think it looks great - so garishly green ! (My favourite colour btw, well green, not the garish bit....)
Although the chutney may still smell a little vinegary by the time it is ready to bottle, it should have lost that acrid vinegar smell that it had when it first started to boil. The chutney, when it is ready should look like chutney and have a jam-like, thick chutney texture. It will thicken a little more on cooling - but not loads.. When, you run a spoon through the mix, you should be able to see the metal of the pan (like you would with a jam).

After a while (eg a couple of hours) cooking, the chutney looked like this:

You can see where the vinegar has evaporated. So, what you struggled to fit into one pot, will eventually disappear... all that lovely, condensed flavour, yum ! You can also see that there is still vinegar / liquid on the top there that still needs to be evaporated off, so this is nowhere near ready at this stage - still a fair bit of simmering to do yet ..


This is the finished article: (photo to follow)

NOTE: Although this can take quite a few hours, you don't need to stand over the oven stirring - it ain't risotto ! Just leave it on a lowish simmer and give it a little stir as you're passing. It will (obviously) need more attention the longer it simmers away for, but for the quantity listed above, for the first hour the odd stir is fine. If it is still very watery/vinegary you need to turn the heat up on the gas and get a faster simmer going.

As with most chutneys this is best left to mature for four weeks in a cool, dry place so if you get started now it will be delicious in time for Christmas ! Once opened, keep refrigerated (although personally, I hate fridge-cold chutney, and prefer it a little warmer...)

Enjoy !

Update: December 2010, here's a photo of a jar ready to present as a lovely homemade gift. I think it looks lovely !

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