Autumn tomato chutney

Tomato blight ripped through the allotment in August this year, turning stems and leaves sooty-black and blotching the fruit. Every plant was dug up and burnt by August Bank Holiday leaving just the greenhouse plants, safe behind closed doors, to carry on free of infection.

My greenhouse isn't frost-free and we've had a few very cold mornings now, with the temperature dipping just freezing. While the chilli plants seem to be able to withstand temperatures hovering around zero, the tomatoes are grinding to a halt, the plants looking pretty exhausted, with brown papery leaves and wizened stems, just a few small fruit still slowly turning red in the sunny days.

I decided last week that it was time to put them out of their misery and to gather up all the remaining fruits, whether ripe or not, and make a big batch of late harvest chutney, so that none go to waste.

I've called this autumn tomato chutney because while it might lack some of the sweet sunshine and honeyed notes of tomatoes picked in high summer, the rag-tag of season's end tomatoes, green, pinkish, orange and red in places, has a concentrated, distinctively sharper flavour.

I added a few more autumn pickings: the last of the huge glut of tomatillos, which restore some of the zingy freshness of flavour, a warm chilli or two from the greenhouse for a little bit of fruity heat, and also one of my favourite chutney ingredients, dates. I use these instead of sultanas or raisins quite simply because I like them better, but also because they add a depth of sweet flavour, and a fudgy texture that definitely contributes to the finished chutney.

Apart from that, I kept the recipe as simple as possible - I don't think chutneys are meant to be complicated either in quantities or method. If you sterilise the jars and lids and utensils, this chutney will keep for a year or so - leave it for three months to mature before starting to eat it.


Autumn tomato chutney
500g tomatoes, mixed green and red
300g tomatillos
500g yellow onions
3 cloves garlic
Large thumb of fresh ginger
500g cooking apples
200g dried pitted dates (I used Deglet Nour from Waitrose but any will do)
300ml cider vinegar
175g soft brown sugar

Chop the tomatoes, onions, garlic and dates. Peel and grate the ginger. Remove the papery husk from the tomatillos and rinse any sticky residue off under the tap. Give a quick shake to throw off most of the moisture. Peel and core the apples, then chop roughly.

Put all the ingredients into a large non-reactive pan and mix with a spoon. You might want to hold back 25g or so of sugar and add it to taste as the chutney cooks, depending on how sweet your tooth is.

Bring to the boil over a medium-high heat, then cover the pan, reduce the heat and simmer for an hour and a half by which time the chutney should be dark and thickened.

While the chutney is simmering, sterilise jars for potting up. The amounts given here will fill around six or seven 250ml jars. I think the easiest way to sterilise them is to run them through the dishwasher on a hot cycle, then dry them off in the oven at 120 degrees while the chutney is bubbling away. You should also sterilise the lids and the utensils used for transferring the chutney.

When ready, spoon the chutney into the prepared jars, seal and leave to cool on a wire rack. Label, and transfer to a cool dark cupboard to mature before eating.

Tomatillo chutney

As well as the quince (see below), my other great glut this year was tomatillos, with hundreds of fruit bursting out of their papery husks and dragging the spindly stems to the ground.

This Mexican fruit, second cousin to a green tomato but actually more closely related to the physalis, or cape gooseberry, grows exceptionally well in a sunny spot in the UK, so long as you don't plant the seedlings outside until after the last frosts. The fruits swell to the size of cherry tomatoes inside their papery husks, although they remain green. They're ready to pick once the husks are full and firm and beginning to split.

The following is inspired by a recipe at Allrecipes, although I've added a few extra ingredients I had to hand. I wanted to combine the tomatillos with the equally Mexican jalapeno chillies ripening in the garden to give the chutney a spicy kick without overpowering it.

I can also never resist adding fresh dates to a chutney. They start appearing in the middle eastern greengrocers around here at chutney-making time: they add bulk, texture and sweetness to the final chutney. Dried packaged dates will do just as well although you could use fewer of them to keep the sweetness levels manageable.

Tomatillo, date and jalapeno chutney

900g tomatillos, or you can mix tomatillos with green tomatoes, or even sneak some red tomatoes in there.

15-20 fresh dates, stoned

15-20 dried dates
2 large persimmons (kaku)
2 jalapeno chillies, or more to taste
2 medium yellow onions
125g (about 8 knobs) crystallised ginger
60g brown sugar
1 teasp salt
450ml cider vinegar
1½ tbsp. pickling spice
1 tbsp brown mustard seed


Makes five medium jars

Chop the tomatillos, dates, persimmons, chillies, onions and ginger. Put all the ingredients into a large non-reactive pan and heat slowly to start with until the sugar dissolves and the juices are released. Then bring to the boil and simmer for 1-2 hours, until the chutney has thickened and darkened in colour. Check every so often to make sure it does not burn.
 
Remove from the heat and spoon into sterilised jars. Seal and leave to cool before storing in a cool dark place.

Tomatillo plant showing both flower and fruit forming.

A glut of gooseberries

I am – barely – managing a glut of gooseberries at the moment. Last year my three gooseberry Pax bushes managed a grand total of eight fruits, each devoured in situ, and in a single morning, I think. This year, each bush is groaning with beautiful, crimson-blushed fruit and with the recent downpours after the drought, some of the fruits are beginning to split.

I’ve found myself at a bit of a loss to know what to do with them. A crop that gives you enough for some fruit salads and maybe a couple of fools is one thing, but this year’s harvest requires something more in the way of mass production. Perhaps a chutney? We have been missing a good chutney over the last winter and spring: usually I make a green tomato chutney in October to use up the last of the fruits that haven’t yet turned red. Last year, I was still waiting for any ripe tomatoes in October and I really couldn’t face making chutney out of the whole crop. So a gooseberry will usefully fill a gap in the store cupboard; the sharp-sweet flavour of gooseberries seems well-suited to a chutney as well.


Gooseberry chutney with cranberries and fennel

Made with sweet amber gooseberries, this cooks to a glorious deep maroon colour. The cranberries were included as an alternative to the more usual raisins and actually may help more with the colour than anything else. The fennel notes, which cut the sharpness of the gooseberries, are quite subtle even with the addition of a whole star anise. I did consider using fennel seeds in the spice mix and would normally do so, but on this occasion thought it might just overload the chutney with aniseed.

1.2kg gooseberries

300ml cider vinegar

500g light brown sugar

1 onion, chopped

1 fat fennel bulb, chopped

100g dried cranberries

2cm cinnamon stick, ground

1 star anise

2 tspcrushed black peppercorns

1 tsp Szechuan pepper

3 cloves

1 cardamom pod, crushed

½ tsp turmeric

Rinse the gooseberries, then top and tail them. In a large pan, bring the gooseberries and vinegar to the boil and simmer until the gooseberries are disintegrating – about 10-20 minutes depending on how ripe the gooseberries are.

Add the onion, fennel, cranberries and sugar and stir well to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a simmer. Lightly pound the spices, apart from the star, together to a coarse powder and add to the pan. Simmer gently for about 2 hours, until the mixture has cooked right down and is sticky rather than soupy.

While it’s cooking, sterilise your jars so that the chutney can be potted up and sealed as soon as it’s ready.