Green Tomato Chutney – Using your Harvest

There’s nothing quite like eating your own fruit & veg that you have grown and just picked from the garden, and an extension of that is to be able to substitute homemade jams & chutney for shop bought products.

With our crop of home grown tomatoes we made chutneys & relishes, soups & sauces as well as freezing some chopped to give us more scope on using them later. Towards the end of the season we did end up with quite a few green tomatoes which were slow to ripen so this recipe for Green Tomato Chutney came in quite handy...

Depending on how many jars you want or how many tomatoes you have, you can scale up the amounts accordingly to suit.

MAKES 1 x 500g jar.

400kg of green tomatoes

125g chopped Onions

100g of chopped / peeled / cored cooking Apples

40g Raisins

100g brown sugar

125ml white vinegar

5g fresh root ginger

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon mixed spice

1.       Dissolve the sugar with the vinegar in a large pan over gentle heat.

2.       Chop the tomatoes and add to the pan with all of the other ingredients

3.       Bring the contents to the boil and then simmer for about 1½ hrs. until its thick

4.       Ladle into sterilised jars and seal with airtight lid immediately. Make sure both lids and jars are sterilised by either heating them in oven / microwave or by using a solution such as Milton.

5.       Allow jars to cool before applying labels.

6.       For best results leave chutney to mature for about a month before using it, in a cool dark place. Will keep for a year unopened, but once you start to use it store in the fridge and use within   3-4 weeks.

Untill the next time - Happy Gardening & Good Cooking !

Preserving & Using your Harvest

 

 

At this time of year we look back on our growing season and I presume you , like me, wouldn’t bother with all the work, wet days & cold days in  the garden unless there was a reward at the end of it – the Harvest , not in the traditional meaning but none the less a crop to use. So that’s what I thought I’d concentrate on here – ways to use & preserve our fruit & veg.

 

Tomatoes:

The biggest crop we had was the tomatoes which was not surprising really because we grew quite a few varieties in a number of different ways, mainly as trials. We were still producing them late into the season when salads had long since finished to get rid of them in any great numbers. Friends & neighbours were also beginning to duck when they saw me coming with baskets of my gifts! So we turned to preserving them or preparing them for other uses.

·       Freezing them - lots of recipes require a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, not anymore! I’ve chopped and frozen red, yellow & mixed bags of around 500g to easily use in cooking over the next few months.

·       Soups – Slow roast tomato with chorizo chips, Tomato & roast fennel, and Tomato & roast pepper are a few we’ve tried. They freeze well too, so make a large batch and keep some for a quick meal later.

·       Chutney – Green Tomato Chutney was a life saver for using up those stubborn green tomatoes that just wouldn’t ripen, or the spicier Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Chutney used up plenty of our red & yellow tomatoes too.

·       Sauces – with bolognese, curries and lasagne ever popular sauces are great at using up your tomatoes.

Recipes to follow for all of the above – watch this space.

Beans:

We had a good crop of both Broad beans and Runner beans. After using those all summer when in season I’ve turned to other means of using these crops.

·       Chutney – Runner Bean Chutney - great with curries!

·       Freezing – your own fresh frozen veg (you know what I mean!)

·       Seed – why not save seed from pods that have gone past their best for picking. Near the end of the season, I left pods ripen on the plant. Let them dry as long as you can, but just before they open and drop their seed. Use them next season to start again.

Fruit:

Hard to get to the stage of having too many strawberries but we did put some by for keeping. Apples too can be tricky to store – no bruised fruit, no touching and cool dry storage and your part of the way. We tried a few well use methods for our fruit and a new one to us

·       Freezing – Apples I sliced and placed in freezer bags, strawberries are best frozen on trays, well-spaced out and then bagged & stored. This way they are easier to separate and use a few, rather than having to defrost and use the entire bag.

·       Tarts – Apple Tarts freeze well too, so it’s an alternative to just freezing the fruit.

·       Hodgkin – Although I’ve heard of this, never tried it. My son Jonathan came up with the idea of using this to “preserve” fruit - the idea of the Alcohol never interested him. His way of selling us on the idea was we got two end products, fruit flavoured brandy and brandy flavoured fruit for Christmas Day!

 

 

Here’s our first recipe –

1.       Depending on the size of the jar you will need about 200g of each fruit. Wash everything well before adding to jar. Half or even quarter larger fruit to about Raspberry/cherry size. Hull and stone as appropriate. Fruit suitable includes: Strawberries, Raspberries, Cherries, Peaches, Apricots, Redcurrants, Blackberries, Plums, Apples (slice) & Pears.

2.       Make sure jar is sterilised – even when preserving in alcohol.

3.       Put in a layer of one of your chosen fruits, sprinkle with two tablespoons of white granulated sugar and then cover with brandy, doesn’t have to be the dear stuff!

4.       You don’t have to fill the jar in one go, just remember to seal lid well and place in  cool dark place until you put in another layer of fruit ,sugar & brandy.

5.       After last layer put in at least 2-3cm of brandy above fruit.

This is easy to do but slow to mature, you need to start in early summer when first fruits are ready and end in autumn when last fruits are used. I’m assured it will be ready for Christmas.

 

Hope your inspired enough to try some of our methods of saving & using our garden produce.

Until next time – Happy Gardening.