Sweet Cherry Chutney

One of my favorite things of all is Peach Chutney.   Lily and I can go through a jar ourselves.  It's lovely with sliced apples and brie.   Or poured over pork chops and slow cooked.  I like it with 2 tsps of red pepper flakes, which gives it just enough heat, but not too much for me.   You can add more or less to taste.

I had a few bags of sweet cherries left and decided to try my favorite chutney recipe with cherries instead of peaches.    It was lovely!   Here's what I did.

Sweet Cherry Chutney
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• 8 Cups pitted sweet cherries, sliced in half
• 2 T mustard seeds
• 1 tsp - T red pepper flakes  [I like 2 tsp]
• 2 Cups sugar
• 1/2 Cup white wine vinegar [I use my own homemade white wine vinegar]
• 1/4 Cup crystallized ginger, chopped up [That's a handful of ginger pieces, if you don't want to cram it into a cup measure.]
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 Cup raisins 

Combine ingredients and cook down until enough liquid boils off that you can drag a spoon/spatula across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a dry place for a second before the juices flow again.   Take your time.    The cherries were pretty juicy, so I let it cook on low, with a simmering bubble, for a couple of hours. 


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Peaches, Peaches

Peaches!   Yay!    We got our first bushel from Freedom Country Store in Worthington, Indiana and they are delicious!    It's been a week of peach dumplings, chutney, pies and loads and loads of peels and pits.  

Peaches can be a lot of work.    I used a vegetable peeler to get the skins off because this batch of peaches was still pretty firm.   Worked brilliantly!

I made three batches of my favorite Peach Chutney. I LOVE that stuff.   Love it.

Really, really love it.  

Really.

I still had loads and loads of peaches cut up, so I popped them in small ziplock bags, 2 cups each, and stacked them up in the freezer.   One bag is the perfect size for smoothies and two bags is perfect for pies. 

What are your favorite peach recipes?  

Autumn Olive Plum Chutney

A lot of you have never heard of autumn olive - also called Elaeagnus Umbellata - so check out my posts here  and here for the details.

We have a bunch of these - the thornless kind - and it's harvest time!   In no time flat we had a full gallon of berries.   These babies have a big seed in them so the first thing you do is cook them down and take the seeds out.   The first link above shows you how.

You'll get half as much sauce as berries.   We had 2 quarts of sauce when I was done, which was plenty for a batch of jam and some left over to experiment with.    I thought it would make a nice chutney paired with a few plums and this is what I did. 

Note: I was surprised to discover that this sauce tastes a lot like tomatoes, especially before you add the cloves. As in – everyone who tasted it said – “Did you put tomatoes in this? Are you sure?” If you want to see, then leave the cloves out until the very end of the cooking time. Autumn Olive and tomatoes are very high in lycopene, which contributes to their red color. It’s possible that has something to do with the taste thing.

This is a terrific barbeque sauce for your favorite grilled meat.    Terrific!   Mmmm.







Autumn Olive Plum Chutney

• 2 cups autumn olive sauce [from 4 cups berries]
• 2 cups chopped plums
• 1 tablespoon mustard seed
• 1 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 1/2 cups sugar 
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 1/2 rounded teaspoon ground cloves

Combine ingredients and cook slowly over medium heat. This will get very, very thick, so feel free to add water [or juice] to bring it to the consistency that you want. With no added water, this makes 2 pints. When this stuff cools, it is molto thicko. [I just made that up.]  It takes at least a pint of liquid to bring it to a thick barbeque sauce consistency.

All of which means that you can put it up in smaller bottles, then when you need it, add half as much water for an easily spreadable sauce, and equal parts water for a pourable sauce.  

Mango Chutney - Traditional Style

Last year I made some wonderful peach chutney.  I love it.   Seriously love it. 

I love it over cream cheese on crackers.  I love it even more on brie.   I love it poured over a pork roast and slow roasted for hours until the outsides are crispy.   I love it straight out of the jar with a spoon.

I pretty much thought I was a genius after I made that chutney.   It's some gooood stuff.

I've been thinking about chutneys a lot lately.   Chutneys came from India with strong flavors and textures and heat.   They usually have a fruit base, are heavily sweetened and then the sweet is balanced with vinegar.   I've seen chutneys flavored with cinnamon and cloves, and some with ginger, garlic and mustard.   I've seen chutneys heavy on the heat - with loads of red pepper flakes and some with just a whisper of heat.

In all my reading, the consensus is that a lot of traditional chutneys were made with mango and lime.  Heavy on citrus overtones. Spiced with cinnamon and cloves, with lots of heat.   So I thought I'd play around.

The first thing I decided was that it needed heat, but not heavy heat.    I was thinking more along the lines of cat-in-your-lap kind of heat and not the white hot heat of a thousand suns.    I realize that right off the bat I've deviated from the traditional, but no one at my house would eat it if it is too hot.   We're pepper wimps. 

For citrus, I used the zest and juice of a lime, plus some lemon and orange juice for flavor. 

I used loads of garlic and an onion.

For spice, I used candied ginger, and cinnamon and cloves.  And for the sweet, I opted for brown sugar.  

I used white wine vinegar, because it's my own and I much prefer it over the apple cider vinegar that the vast majority of chutney recipes call for.   I used regular raisins instead of the golden ones that are traditional because that's what I had.    If you want to use golden raisins and cider vinegar instead, then go for it.   I'm sure it will be delicious.

One of the things I like best about chutneys is that they are a slow food.  

Slow.  Food.

You put it in a pot, heat it all together and the cook it until the flavors are melded and the color is dark and mysterious and delicious.   Take your time. 

Mango Chutney

• 4 cups of mangoes, peeled and chopped [about 3 large mangoes]
• zest and juice of 1 lime
• juice of 1 lemon
• juice of 1 orange or 2 clementines
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 1/4 cup finely chopped candied ginger
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 Tablespoon mustard seed
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves

Put everything into a large pot and cook it down.   Start it on medium until you read a boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer until it's the consistency you want.    It'll be good and thick if you let it cook down until when you scrape a spatula across the bottom of the pan, it leaves an empty space behind it for a couple of seconds before the juices crowd in again.  

When you're happy with it, ladle it into jars and process for canning.  Makes 3 pints.

Note:  Thick is in the eye of the beholder.    If it ends up runnier than you wanted, then use it over meat.   It's probably my favorite way to eat chutney.

To use it on meat, brown and season the meat with salt and pepper, then transfer it to an oven safe pot or pan.  Pour the whole pint of chutney over it and cook it uncovered at 300 degrees until your meat falls apart.   Delicious! 

Peach Chutney

When I have an abundance of something hanging around the house waiting to be 'done with' so we can eat it through the winter, I get brave.

I cook things that normally I wouldn't cook for fear I'd screw it up. Or that no one would like it. Or something like that.

But when you have a million peaches sitting around, you get desperate for something interesting to do with them. Let's face it, you can only eat so much peach jam before it gets to be no fun anymore.

Over at  Food in Jars, I heard about a book by Stephen Palmer Dowdney called Putting Up.  Though the Amazon reviews were mixed, I thought it was worth a look see at the library and I was glad to see they had it when I looked.

It's full of interesting recipes!  I looked for recipes for peaches and sure enough, he had a recipe for Peach Chutney that sounded very good and very doable.

I revised the recipe some to fit my needs.   He makes LARGE quantities and measures in pounds.   I wanted a few jars and I don't have a kitchen scale.    I used measuring cups.  Also, I needed to dial down the spicy heat.   Quite a bit.

It worked fine.  I can't wait to throw a jar of this in the slow cooker with a pork roast. [UPDATE:  We did throw a pint of this in the slow cooker with a pork roast and it was fabulous!  Brown the roast first.   Put it in the pot, pour the chutney over it.  Cook on low until it falls apart.]

Here's the recipe.

Peach Chutney

• 8 Cups peach pieces
• 2 T mustard seeds
• 1 tsp - T red pepper flakes
• 3 Cups sugar
• 1/2 Cup white wine vinegar [I used my own homemade white wine vinegar and it was fabu!]
• 1/4 Cup crystallized ginger, chopped up [That's a handful of ginger pieces, if you don't want to cram it into a cup measure.]
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 Cup raisins [I like golden raisins in this.]

Combine ingredients and cook down.   When the temp gets above 212 degrees, it's done.  Or you can skip the temp watching and cook it until enough liquid boils off that you can drag a spoon across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a dry place for a second before the juices flow again.   I cooked my first batch long because I got busy with something else and it cooked down a bunch.  I got three pints out of it.   I cooked my second batch shorter and watched the temp.   I stopped at 212 degrees, but it was much wetter than a chutney usually is.   I didn't care.   I canned it wet anyway.   I got just over three pints.

For more jam recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!