wideeyedfunk

Tag: green tomato chutney

  • Desperate times, moldy (delicious) measures.

    The time comes in every household when there’s nothing to eat. Just now, right this minute, it came to the WideEyedHousehold. The Mini and I splashed home from the Bug Lab and the Dry Cleaner through slush and muck and I was starving. The Mini wasn’t starving, it has a nice, expensive full tank of premium in the belly. I was STARVING.

    As I steered around interdimensional pot holes, I worked my way through the cupboards and fridge in my head. Chips, gone. Cheezits – a stale two or three rattling in the box. Cookies. Nope. Chocolate. Nope. Ice cream. Nope. Nothing. Sure, I was shoving ingredients out of my way (in the cupboards in my head) but there was nothing to eat. It doesn’t have to make sense. When a person is feeling peckish only certain eats will fix it. None of those eats were in my house.

    I got home, hung up the dry cleaning, said hi to the dogs, and hit the fridge. Nothing. I dangled there in the open door. Milk. Eggs. 57 stale bread ends each in their own little bag. A couple of lumps of dryish, greenish cheese. Ketchup, and three kinds of French mustard. Chutney. Jars of bacon fat. Because Grandma D always saved hers and I figured there must be a reason.

    And, oh, a treasure – one lonely English muffin with a thin skim of bluey-pink along the edge.

    Ahhh, yes. From the fridge dregs of rejected bits and things I forgot about I found something to eat. Toasted slightly moldy English muffin, buttered. Topped, while still warm from the toaster mind you, with sweet English cheddar with the green parts scraped off and a dollop of precious green tomato chutney we canned last fall. Crunchy. Sweet. Salty. Greasy. All the (important) food groups represented.

    I’m just swallowing the last bite, well, Miss T and Hamish are actually having the very last bites, and I’m here to tell you – aside from the faint whiff of decay and old fridge, my desperation eats were really good. I want more. I wonder if that rock hard butt end of a sourdough batard would toast well? The dogs and I are going to go check.

  • Curse Not the Green Tomatoes, Make Chutney.

    The Fedco seeds Cosmonaut tomato variety yielded fine, heavy fruits in my garden this summer. They failed to ripen. I may have had words about that in past times. I take them all back.

    The knife wielding WideEyedSpouse and I picked, washed, chopped pounds of green tomatoes to make six pints of chutney, six pints of green tomato gold. Five are left. Yesterday, on hearing that I had chutney stored in the basement, WidedEyedFriend W made unsubtle overtures toward getting some of it. I pretended not to understand. There are only five pints left to last an entire year. I am already planning a 2014 green tomato garden.

    I combined two recipes (1, 2) I found on other sites to make my own concoction based on what they said and what I had around:

    • 12 cups seeded, cored, and diced green tomatoes, 5-7 pounds
    • 1 cup raisins (paid no attention to light, dark, whatever)
    • 1 cup Craisins
    • 2 cups mixed chopped onions, shallots, 2 garlic cloves (in exponentially decreasing volume order)
    • 3 cups brown sugar (paid no attention to light, dark, used whatever dregs I had around)
    • 2 teaspoons salt (fine-ground French sea salt, Penzeys Spices)
    • 2 ½ cups cider vinegar (cheap, store brand that I keep in gallons for cleaning)
    • 2 tablespoons pickling spice (grocery store bought)
    • 2 teaspoons chili powder (Penzey Spices)
    • 2 generous tablespoons of old, crusty dried, sugared ginger lurking in the back of the cupboard

    We started with big, green, healthy but unripe tomatoes.clean tomatoes

    The WideEyedSpouse cored and seeded the tomatoes because of the sheer volume of seeds and interior bits that would have possibly impacted the texture and taste.green tomato chopped

    All of the ingredients went into the non-reactive Le Creuset oval dutch oven. Once they boiled, I set them to simmer for an hour and a half while I heated the waterbath and sterilized the pint jars in the boiling water. The lids boiled in a smaller sauce pan for 15 minutes (or so, I sort of forgot about them for a while).boilingchutney

    The chutney was dark and thicker but still liquidy when we spooned it into the jars. The stuff is napalm so if you do this, be careful. I wore a nice new pair of thick kitchen scrubbing gloves so I could handle the hot stuff. We left about ¼ inch of headroom, wiped the extra yuck off and hand tightened the lids down with the bands. The chutney jars boiled away for 15 minutes or so with an inch or more above their lids in our giant scary pot of boiling water. boiling chutney

    Now, except for the one I couldn’t resist opening and eating in the space of a week (squandered!), they are resting quietly on a dark shelf in a cool root cellar part of my basement. I look at them most days. I imagine the chutney on pork chops, on egg and cheese sandwiches, on cream cheese toast…if I ration it, if I guard it from friends, there will be one pint every two months. I need more green tomatoes.FinishedChutney