Lemon (and Lime) Chutney

Winter is a-coming, and citrus season will be bouncing along soon.  I love me a bit of citrus, and I love some chutney, so here is a lemon and lime chutney I made.  (Don't tell, but I actually made this one last winter.)

The fruit trees in neighbours' yards are full of lovely lemons at the moment, and I am very tempted to grab some.  I could always knock on their doors, and suggest sharing some produce and homemade goodies, of course.    

We are very lucky in our street to have wonderfully community-minded folk around us.  One neighbour - I'll call him Mr B. - moves the rubbish bins in and out for us (and our doctor neighbour Ms. M) on rubbish day.  And we often share produce and cakes and so on.  I handed out some of the blueberry-lemon loaf I made last week to a couple of neighbours, and in return Ms. P gave us some Basque cheesecake - delicious!  Oh yes, Mr B. also mows the lawns for us and the young doctor.  We are very lucky!

citrus-y, tangy and sweet!

(Gives you 3 x 150g./5.3 oz jars, says Karon: I only ended up with 2!)

Recipe by Karon Grieve from Larder Love blog:

ingredients:

500g./18 oz lemons, zested   see Notes

125g./4.5 oz onions, peeled and chopped    see Notes

1-2 garlic cloves, minced

1 Tbs EV olive oil

250g./9 oz apples, peeled and chopped

125g./4.5 oz sultanas

1/2 tsp chilli, chopped  (I used 1-2 dried chillies)

1/2 Tbs fresh ginger, grated

1/2 tsp sea salt

350 mL/12 oz cider vinegar

225g./8 oz white sugar

garlic bulb

Method:

Peel the fruit, and zest it (or chop finely), then roughly chop the flesh

Tip the flesh only at this point into your food processor, and give it a good pulsing 

Sauté the chopped onions (in a heavy-based saucepan) in the heated olive oil for 5 minutes, then add the garlic and the chopped apples - and cook (on a low to medium heat) for 10 minutes till tender

Now add the lemon zest/peel and the zapped lemon flesh, the sultanas, the chilli, the ginger, the salt and HALF of the vinegar

Simmer for about 30 minutes till the peel is tender

You then add the other half of the vinegar, and also the sugar into the pan

Stir the mixture till the sugar is dissolved and the chutney has thickened

Pour/spoon into very clean jars, and let it mature for a fortnight

(Can be kept for a year, says Karon, and use within a month of opening)

zest that lime - or lemon!

Notes:

I used a mix of lemons and limes, so do as you please :=)

Peel the onions, then weigh them out to the required amount

lemon!

fresh ginger root

ingredients gathered

sauté and stir the onions, garlic and apples

simmer till tender

and spoon into some sterilised jars ...

red chillies

Jaboticaba Jam

So, our jaboticaba tree fruited like a maniac on steroids the other week.  It is a Brazilian rainforest tree, happily for us planted by the previous owner of our house.  It fruits twice a year (though a friend said they knew someone who had a tree that fruits four times a year).  The fruit grows all over the trunk and branches directly, so it looks really weird!  (As you may have seen in my most recent post.) 

I invited a friend over to pick some fruit, as he is a keen jam-maker, and a very keen forager.  He came over with a large bucket and picked heaps, but it made little difference to the fruits on the tree.  Soooo many fruits!  And the bats and possums must have been having a feast.  Mr P. and I did some house painting just near the tree and were nearly overwhelmed by the fermenting fumes.  I imagine incredibly alcoholic!  So drunken, crazy bats flying over!

here it is before the fruit ripened in the next couple of days!

The whole thing was done and dusted in about five days; it flowered, it fruited and they fell off!  There might be another harvest at Christmas time.  I have bags of fruit in the freezer for more jam-making in the future, anyway.

Original Recipe by Sherry:

ingredients:

420g./15 oz of apples and/or strawberries – strawberries lightly mashed, and apples grated or blitzed in the processor    see Notes

80g.-100g./3-3.5 oz or so of whole jaboticaba fruits – skin on (‘cos that’s where the pectin lies)

400g./14 oz caster sugar – half raw and half white caster – or use all white or all raw sugar

Juice from one lemon – maybe 2 Tbs?

1-2 big tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp rosewater

Big splash of spiced rum - optional, but delicious!

Method:

Put the fruit and sugar into a large saucepan and under a low heat, and bring to the boil while stirring, till sugar dissolves

Then turn up the heat, add the other ingredients, and boil rapidly for up to 10 minutes (watch out for splashes) – no more than ten, stirring often.  This stuff sets like concrete if you boil it too long!

Check for set from 8 minutes on!   i.e. – put a saucer in your freezer for ten minutes, spoon a small amount of the jam onto it, and if you can run your finger thru it after a few seconds, it is ready to go

Let it cool down a wee bit, so you are able to safely spoon out all the skins and seeds – tedious but necessary

Then spoon/pour the jam into sterilised jars (I put my jars in the dishwasher to get super clean!)

Keeps in the fridge – well, for ages!  Unless you eat it all first :=)

Notes:

I peeled my apples but you don't have to.  I used red apples 'cos they were lurking in my crisper, but you can use your fave apple!

If you have a lot of fruit still on the tree (and you will!), place them into a plastic freezer bag in a single layer (and you can freeze them for a couple of months, maybe more), and then when next making jam, let them thaw out and make the jam as above

tip the fruits and sugar into the saucepan

and let it boil! but only for 10 mins.! And stir it often

ooh it's so shiny and beautiful!

so delicious!

so enchanting! so mysterious! so pretty!

c. Sherry M.

Caramelised Onion And Garlic Jam

We don't eat a lot of sweet jam in this house, but luckily for us, we have a Tassie friend who brings us her homemade cumquat marmalade every winter, which is great on toast, or in bread and butter puddings.  (I made a pudding the other night with leftover Hot Cross buns and Easter eggs and her marmalade!)  We do love a savoury jam though, and this one goes down a treat.  

I hunted up the 'Net for a recipe and found one by CSR (The Colonial Sugar Refinery), which was a big sugar-producing company here in Queensland (now owned by a Singaporean company).  Oddly to my mind, they are also a construction company!  Something to do with them making their own sugar mills, it seems.

And speaking of sugar mills ... there are sugarcane farms and a sugar mill just over the Queensland border in Northern Rivers.  I love watching the pure white smoke come out of the stack when they are processing the sugar.  And when they are burning the cane before harvest, the fires are huge and bright and burn into the night.  Very magical! though not very environmentally sound.  In fact, most Queensland sugarcane is harvested "green" (i.e. without burning), while New South Wales still burns the crops first.  I do like the fires I have to admit :=)

   

image Wikimedia Commons (author: Rob & Stephanie Levy)

They burn at dusk, when the winds have dropped.  The fires get rid of vermin, and the debris from the canes.  It is always a magnificent sight with flaming fields burning into the night.

   

delicious onion and garlic jam   (bronze kingfisher by Dion Parker)

Makes 2 smallish jars:

ingredients:

1.5 Tbs EV olive oil

3 large red onions, finely sliced

3-4 garlic cloves, crushed or finely sliced

65g./2.3 oz dark brown sugar

250 mL/1 cup red wine vinegar  (I used my homemade blood orange vinegar)

1 Tbs yellow mustard seeds

2 bay leaves

1.5 tsp sea salt flakes

1/2 dozen grinds black pepper

1 tsp smoked paprika

a wee bit of cold water if needed

Method:

Grab a large and deep frying pan, and throw in the oil and onions over a low heat

Cook for about 15 minutes till tender and just turning colour, stirring now and then

Add the garlic, stirring for 3 minutes

Stir 1 Tbs of the sugar over the mixture for 1 minute, till it starts to bubble 

Now turn the heat up to medium, and add the vinegar, mustard seeds, bay leaves, salt, pepper, paprika and the rest of the sugar; let it cook for a couple of minutes then - 

Reduce the heat to medium-low to low, and let it simmer away for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally, till you have a thick and luscious jammy mixture  (add a splash of water if it's starting to go too thick)

Take out the bay leaves, and spoon into hot, sterilised jars

Makes 2 smallish jars

Notes:

I halved their recipe, except for the garlic and bay leaves, so double this recipe if you want to make a full amount

ingredients gathered

stir that onion and garlic

and stir some more till jammy and fragrant

et voilà!   (figurine by Denise Murray)

(Joining up with Min from Write of the Middle blog - for the #WWWhimsy post.)

c. Sherry M.

Spicy Tomato Relish - By Long Track Pantry

I finally got to visit Long Track Pantry when we took our road trip to Canberra last month.  I've been buying online from them for years, so it was great to finally get there.  There is almost nothing in the tiny, wee town of Jugiong except them and a few holiday cottages for rent.  Rather expensive holiday cottages I might add.  Fortuitously, Long Track emailed out their tomato relish recipe recently, so voilà, here we have it.  And it worked brilliantly; it tastes just like theirs (funny that).

We had a great road trip down to Canberra, where we visited our nephew and his hubby.  We met up with a Brisbane friend who flew down, so we could all go to the National Portrait Gallery (London) exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (Canberra).  We had a fab weekend, visiting a number of galleries and eating Turkish food on election night.  There was just we three eating in, as I assume locals were glued to their tv's (yes, you do need an apostrophe here), watching the election results.  Yay Labour got in!  This is a sweet relish, my friends, and very delicious.  You could try making it with slightly less sugar, but somehow it all melds together at the end. 

relish on the way!

Makes 2 jars X 250 mL/7 oz

ingredients:

1 kg/2.2 lb tomatoes - any kind, any size

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp whole cloves (yes, really!)

1 tsp black peppercorns

1 tsp allspice

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp sea salt

a big pinch of cayenne or up to 1 Tbs of chilli flakes

1/2 cup (125 mL) white wine vinegar

200g./7 oz white sugar or caster sugar

Method:

First blitz your tomatoes in a food processor, or mash them up really, really well - with gusto, as Mr P. says

Put everything except the sugar into a large saucepan

Simmer gently for 30 minutes

Then stir in the sugar, bring back to the simmer and let it simmer away for another 30 mins. or so - mine took a bit longer to thicken up, so about 1 hour 10 mins.  Be aware that this is a loose relish, so it won't thicken up like a chutney or jam

Spoon/pour into sterilised jars or bottles; seal and whack into the pantry or fridge, depending on which climate you reside in :-)

Will keep for a year apparently, but not in our household - we love it!

gather your ingredients

blitz your tomatoes

chuck everything bar the sugar into the saucepan

and simmer

then bottle or should I say - jar it?

and whack on a label :-)

© Sherry M.

Pickled Cucumbers - The Quick And Easy Way

Pickles - the quick and easy Curtis Stone way.  Curtis, a well-known TV chef and food writer, lives in the U.S., but is originally an Aussie boy.  He writes a monthly column for the Coles supermarket magazine, and this was one of his latest recipes.  I figured I could put this together even with my wrecked ribcage, so I did - with just a few tweaks.  (All the optional items are my additions.)

Next time I will use the smaller amount of sugar, as it was too sweet for me, but see how you go ...  Curtis just blithely states to use 1 cup, but wow, that's very sweet.  I've had the pickles in my fridge for a week, but I'm getting through them like the clappers (an ancient British phrase, but I like to use it - tee hee).  Great on sandwiches, and good for your gut health.

ready to go into the fridge

ingredients:

5 Lebanese cucumbers (about 12-15cm/5-6 in) long

1 tbs sea salt

1/2-1 cup (110-220g.) of caster sugar

1 cup (250 mL) apple cider vinegar

1 tsp yellow mustard seeds

10 black peppercorns (optional)

2 small red chillies (optional)

2 bay leaves (optional)

6 mountain pepper berries (optional)

Method:

Slice those cukes nice and thin, after topping and tailing of course :)

Place them into a sterilised jar (or 2) then add all the other ingredients

Give it a good swirl, leave on the kitchen bench for 3 days, swirling once a day, then into the fridge, where they will happily last for at least a week (or 2)

Notes:

Lebanese cukes are those cute little ones, with dark-green skin

It's hot and humid here in Brisbane atm, so I only kept mine out for 2 nights

Curtis says to use a 450 mL/1 lb jar, but I only had 2 smaller ones

gather your ingredients

thinly slice those cukes

ready for the vinegar

vinegar in; ready for jarring

now to sit for 3 days

© Sherry M.

Apricot Harissa a là Nigella

Happy New Year, my friends.  I hope you had a lovely festive break, and feel full of vim and vigour for 2021.  I'm not sure how I feel lately; life, blogging, writing, drawing, reading - they all seem a teensy bit hard right now, but let's keep on keeping on (as Martin Luther King once said).  So here's my first food post for this year - a recipe from Nigella's new book Cook, eat, repeat which Mr P. gave me for Christmas.  I am a big Nigella fan, and I love her new book which has lots of lovely essays as well as recipes.

During the Christmas break, Mr P. and I headed west to Murgon and Kingaroy, small Queensland towns.  He is designing a cultural centre in Murgon, and wanted to check the lay of the land.  We stayed in Kingaroy, the peanut capital.  And yes their peanuts are fabulous.  We loved the heritage-listed peanut silos out there - soooo huge!

the back end of the peanut silos

silos silos everywhere ... (built in 1938)

Silos to the right of us, silos to the left of us ... And a massive storm rolling in!  Anyway, back to the recipe.  Just so you know, I always re-write recipes from books, etc.  Re: copyright - a list of ingredients does not come under copyright but prose does, so I always re-write the method in my own words (and the ingredients if poss.).

ingredients:

20g. large dried chillies or 15-20g. small fresh red chillies

1 tsp cummin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp caraway seeds

the seeds from 4-5 cardamom pods

45g. soft dried apricots, chopped into 2 or 3 pieces

1 tsp ground turmeric (or 15g fresh turmeric, sliced)

4 juicy cloves of garlic

25g. fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

a few small pieces of naked ginger (uncrystallised ginger) (optional - my idea)

2 tsp dried rose petals (optional - my idea)

2 tsp sea salt flakes or 1 tsp fine salt

1 tsp sweet smoked paprika

60 mL (4 x 15 mL tablespoons) olive oil

1 tsp vinegar (I used raspberry 'cos that's what came to hand first, tho' Nigella says to use apple cider vinegar)

Method:

If using dried chillies, put them in a bowl and pour over 500 mL of boiling water, and let them soak for 15 minutes

Tip the four kinds of seeds into a small frying pan, and let them toast carefully over medium heat - watch them, my friends as they can burn so very easily!  Give them a bit of a shake often as they toast.  When they smell delightful after a few minutes, take them off the heat and tip into a bowl to cool

Grab your food processor (I used my small one), and throw in the apricot pieces, turmeric, garlic, ginger, naked ginger, rose petals, salt and paprika

Drain the dried chillies, take off the stalks, and chuck 'em into the processor - or if using fresh chillies, de-stalk and throw into the processor

Add the cooled spices, the oil and vinegar and blitz to a lovely, fiery paste - Nigella suggests using a bowl and a stick blender but I think the processor was a better bet

Notes:

Try adding another couple of apricots if you want a fruitier flavour, and less chillies if they bring you out in a sweat

I only had small, fiery red chillies in my freezer so that's what I used - phew!  hot hot hot ... la la la ...

Naked ginger is ginger that has been infused in cane sugar syrup, and then allowed to dry out, with no crystals of sugar on the surface

gather your ingredients (this is 20g. small chillies BTW)

dry-toast your spices (no oil needed)

ready for zapping and blitzing

beautifully blitzed!

keeps for 2 weeks in the fridge

all ready for my next blog post :-)

artwork © Sherry's Pickings

(Joining up with Marg from The Intrepid Reader for Weekend Cooking)

Eggplant Relish/Pickle

I had been meaning to make eggplant relish for yonks, and I finally got around to it recently (as some will have noticed on my latest IMK post).  A few readers have asked me for the recipe, so I am doing a quick post here.  I can take no credit for it, as it is from the blog: In Search of Golden Pudding.  Beck says she got the recipe from Charmaine Solomon's book Complete Vegetarian Cookbook.  She adapted it a wee bit, and I've adapted hers a wee bit, so here we are.  Only a few photos as I wasn't expecting to blog it:-)

delicious on all sorts of things - spicy, oily and tangy

Makes about 1 Litre/34 oz:

ingredients:

1 kg. (35 oz) eggplant, diced or sliced thickly - see notes

12 dried red chillies - see notes 

2 large cloves garlic, chopped

a hefty 4-5 cm piece of fresh ginger (about the size of my thumb, don't cha know), chopped or grated

2 tbs black and/or yellow mustard seeds

1½ tsp ground turmeric

200-250 mL (6½-8 oz) EV olive oil or vegetable oil of your choice - see notes

3 tsp sea salt

100g. (3.5 oz) brown sugar

185 mL (6 oz) vinegar - I used a mix of whatever vinegars I had in the pantry

2 tsp garam masala

Method:

If using dried chillies, soak them in boiling water for 5 minutes

Combine the chillies, 2-3 tsp of the soaking water, the garlic, ginger, and mustard seeds in a blender or processor, and blend/zap to a rough paste

Heat 200 mL of the oil in a large saucepan, then add the spicy mixture plus the turmeric

Stir the spices in the oil for a few minutes, then chuck in the eggplant, and give it a good stir.  If it looks too dry, add the other 50 mL of oil

Let it cook away on a low heat, with a lid, till the eggplant is soft (25 minutes or so?) stirring now and then so it doesn't stick or burn

Add the salt, sugar, vinegar and garam masala

Let it simmer away for another 5-10 minutes till thick (the oil will be sitting on top most likely)

Cool for a few minutes, then put into sterilised jars.  Will last for months in the fridge!

If you find it too oily for your liking, just put the whole shebang through a strainer, like I did

Notes:

The eggplants I bought weighed about 400 grams each.  I used 3 of these fruits (actually berries), and ended up with roughly 1.2 kg.  I kept back about 120 grams for another dish

I used six frozen red chillies and some chilli powder as I had no dried ones

Beck says to use a neutral oil, but we love EVOO chez Pickings so I used a whack of it, with some plain sunflower oil added in.  She also said to use 375 mL (12.5 oz) which led to a swimming pool of oil!  I ended up straining the relish, which worked out fine.  But I suggest using 200-250 mL (6½-8 oz); you may still need to strain this, though she does say it is meant to be oily, and her photos prove this

This recipe is so much easier than others I've seen around the Net - no frying off of spices, nor salting and rinsing the eggplant and so on.  It's really rather simple, and tastes great.  And will be even tastier once it has sat in the fridge for a few weeks to mature.

cook away on a low heat for about 25-30 mins.

bottled and heading for the fridge

© Sherry's Pickings