General Chat

I have finally got around to potting it and it is a triumph. Probably the best chutney I have made.

Shame I will never be able to replicate it!

Result!!

Well done!

Old biddies meeting today and I could not decide whether to keep it chutney, put it through a sieve and call it brown sauce or just put it in the digester cone so I took some along for their and the pub chef's opinion.

They loved it, or they said they did, one took the rest of what I took home and they all want a pot. The chef liked it too.

Looks like it might be chutney then!

Having another go at it. I put the turmeric in, some vinegar from the bottom of a pickled onion jar, granulated sugar and hung my jelly bag in it with a sachet of pickling spice in. I did take the dried chillies out.

It is simmering now and tastes very raw and vinegary but I hope it might mellow in the jar (before I bin the jars!).

How about ginger? Goes well with most fruits.

Cardamom, allspice, cloves?

Perhaps something citrusy?

So, I have all these cherry plums/wild apricots/mirabels. Having stewed some, made some apricot type brandy, put some in a crumble, I was still left with a lorry load and we don't need any more jam.

Found a recipe for apricot chutney and thought that might do if I left out what I didn't like,chilli and cinnamon, actually, I forgot the turmeric as well but I can rectify that.

With my usual eye for detail, I chucked in the plums things, all the sultanas that were hanging about in the jar, the cider vinegar that was left in the bottle and those bag ends of brown sugar that were hanging about as well. Because I had not used the spices I was meant to, I put in a good squeeze of garlic paste.

Chef For Forty Years needed to poke about in the kitchen and, with his eye of forty years when he had never made chutney, he deemed it to be ready and turned it off.

Upon tasting it, it is a kind of half arsed jam with bits of raw onion in it. I think it needs more sugar and vinegar, not to mention the turmeric and longer cooking but do you have any suggestion as to what other spices I could use. it already has a good shaking of mustard seeds.