George and Mary's tomato chutney recipe.

This year has been the first year ever that me and Paul have successfully grown tomatoes.  Maybe this is because we got our tomato plant from Paul's Grandad George or maybe this is because we weren't too invested in whether they produced tomatoes or not.  We're not sure but the fact of the matter is they grew.

They grew large enough to produce tomatoes, lots of them...

The biggest problem was the fact that we had lots of tomatoes which were mainly green and not ripening very fast.  We didn't know what to do with them, then we had a brain wave we'd ask Paul's Grandad George and Nannan Mary if they had a recipe and thankfully they did. So they passed on his recipe for Green Tomato Chutney to us which we decided to try.

To make Green Tomato Chutney you need the following ingredients:

5lb Green Tomatoes
1lb Onions
1/2oz Peppercorns
1oz Salt
1lb Sugar
2 pints Vinegar
1/2lb Raisins
1/2lb Sultanas

The instructions advise to slice the tomatoes and chop the onions and mix together in a basin with the peppercorns and salt. Allow this to stand overnight

Next day boil up the sugar in the vinegar, then add the raisins (which may be chopped) and the sultanas.

Simmer for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes and onions, and simmer until thick.

So when we followed this recipe with some slight variations such as we used a could of red tomatoes as well as many green tomatoes to make 5lb weight. We also left the tomatoes and onions to stand for a few days instead of overnight, the only other thing that we did differently was to use mixed fruit as this was the only thing available in the local shop.  (Unfortunately this meant that  we had to pick out the candied peel which I don't recommend as this is really time consuming.)

The rest of the recipe we followed as instructed and the resulting chutney is very nice; however, the vinegar boiling stage smells like sick and I kind of burnt the pot I made this in... Still it made 3 generous jars full of chutney which helped stop us from wasting the tomatoes and I may one day scrape the burntness from the bottom of that pot. (In a million years probably.)

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 18.

This week has been a bit of a nippy one so instead of making a sweet recipe I decided to make a savoury one, a nice warming curry!

As well as cooking this week I have been marvelling at the fireworks going off on the building up to bonfire night and on November 5th.

I have also decided to start a new challenge and have a go at NaNoWriMo the novel/ 50,000 words in a month challenge. I used to write a lot and even did a creative writing element to my degree at university but since then I've hardly written and seemed to have fallen out of the habit. So this is my attempt to see if I could write a novel and to kick myself back into the fiction writing habit. Although this will take a chunk of my time up I'm still planning to keep up my blogging at the same time!

So this week I decided to try the Channa Masala recipe that Carly Mountain had published in the same edition of Now Then Magazine my curry recipe was featured in as it looked tasty.

To make this recipe you will need:

1 Onion
A handful of cherry tomatoes
4 Cloves of Garlic
10g Ginger or a few teaspoons of ginger powder
1/2 easpoon Turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon Chilli powder
8 teaspoons Coriander powder
1/4 Garam Masala
1 Mug of water
1 tin of Chickpeas
1 tin of chopped Tomatoes
2 Sprinkles of curry leaves
1 Tablespoon of oil
1 Sprinkle of Salt

To start this I got out the ingredients I thought I needed and sliced the onion.

Once I had sliced the onion I put that, my garlic and some ginger powder into the food processor to try to make it form a paste.

When I was happy it was paste like I heated some oil in my wok then added the paste and started cooking it.

Before glancing back at the recipe and realising I'd forgotten to add tomatoes. So I turned the heat off the wok and moved the existing paste to once side, chopped some cherry tomatoes in half and threw them in my food processor for a few seconds.  Once they were blitzed up a bit I added the existing paste and mixed them with the tomatoes.

Then I poured it all back into the wok and started to cook it again.

I cooked it over a low heat and added the spices, stirring them in, then slowly added the water.

After the sauce had cooked a little longer I decided to add a tin of chopped tomatoes to it instead of sauteing some tomatoes in another pan them and then adding the gravy to them.  After a few minutes I decided to add the curry leaves, the tin of chick peas and a sprinkle of salt.

As there was a lot of liquid I turned the heat up to reduce the mix a bit, I also changed it by deciding it tasted a bit bitter so I added a sprinkle of sugar to the sauce near the end.  (I didn't add this to the ingredient list as I thought this was a matter of personal taste.)

After about ten fifteen minutes the curry had reduced a bit and we dished it up and served it with onion bahjis and naan breads.

It tasted lovely in the end despite all my fretting about tweeking the recipe but it made loads so we ended up having the other half as part of our lunch the next day!

52 Recipe Challenge – Week 14.

This week I decided to make another savoury recipe as my new recipe for the week.

Whilst looking for a recipe to make last week I saw this recipe for Baked Aubergines in my Marks and Spencer Cooks Bible and decided to try it out as it sounded similar to another favourite dish of mine  Mousakka.

To make this recipe I used:

2 Aubergines

4 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

4 Slices of Prosciutto Ham

375g Mozzarella

2 Small Onions/ 1 Large Onion

4 Cloves of garlic crushed

1 Tin of chopped tomatoes

A handful of Cherry Tomatoes

450ml/ 1 Pint of hot vegetable stock

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 Tablespoon Lime Juice

150ml/ 5 Fluid Ounces Red Wine

25g Butter

25g Plain flour

300ml/ 10 Fluid Ounces Milk

A sprinkle of Nutmeg

To Start with I preheated the oven to 190c/ Gas Mark 5, put the olive oil in the pan and then sliced up the onion.

Next I heated the oil and added the onion and garlic , whilst they were frying away I started to cut up my aubergines. (One small one and one large one which reminded me of something...)

The recipe said to chop them lengthways which seemed a bit weird but that’s probably because I’m used to chopping them the otherway.  Halfway through chopping the aubergines I checked on the onion and garlic and realised they had started to soften so I added the tin of chopped tomatoes, put the water on the boil for the stock and chopped up the cherry tomatoes I had in my fridge.  After I had chopped up the cherry tomatoes and the water had boiled I added the cherry tomatoes and then put a vegetable stock cube in my measuring jug, added the boiling water gave it a decent stir and added it to the mix. After that I hunted a sprinkle of parsley, the sugar, the lime juice and wine then gave it all a good stir and there looked like there was tonnes.... it looked soup like!

So I brought it to the boil to try to reduce it. Once that was simmering away I set the alarm for 15 minutes, put the kettle on again and finished chopping up my aubergines.  Now my recipe says to cook the aubergines in a large pan for 5 minutes but my biggest pan is my wok and the next biggest pan isn’t all that big so I had to cook the aubergine in batches. I put the boiled water from the kettle in the pan and started trying to cook the aubergines.

Then I realised the recipe said “bring a large saucepan of water to the boil” which my boyfriend helpfully pointed out is not the same thing as boiling water in a kettle... After a good six or seven minutes I took the first batch of aubergines from the pan and realised that I had run out of kitchen roll to drain it on, so I popped them in my sieve over the sink and dashed across the road for the kitchen roll. After I returned I put the aubergines on a plate with some kitchen roll to drain and started on cooking the second batch.

Whilst the second batch of aubergines were cooking I oiled the roasting dish I was using and started chopping up the mozzarella , before I checked on the tomato sauce and decided it had reduced enough and spooned half of it into the dish as instructed in the recipe. Next I took the second batch of aubergines from the pan and drained them, got a separate chopping board out for the prosciutto ham, then I finished chopping up the mozzarella and then I patted the aubergined dry with the kitchen roll. After patting the aubergines dry I used half of them to form a layer over the tomato sauce.

Then I put just over half the mozzarella over the aubergines and tried to cut up the prosciutto ham and put that on top; however, it worked better just to rip it into pieces than cut it.

When I had done that layer I put the last batch of aubergines in the pan to cook and hunted for the ingredients for the béchamel sauce which was going on top.  When the aubergines were done I put them on a plate to drain like the other two lots and washed the pan they had been cooked in to make the béchamel sauce. Whilst the aubergines were draining and the pan was drying I poured the last of the sauce into the roasting dish and it had reduced more than I had expected.  The recipe I had followed said to use a tin of chopped tomatoes and 450g/ 1 Lb of fresh tomatoes but I only had a handful of cherry tomatoes so when I make this again I’ll either have to buy more tomatoes or out two tins in.

After I had poured this I put the last of the aubergines on top and tasked my boyfriend with chopping the last of the mozzarella whilst I cracked on with the béchamel sauce. To make the sauce I melted the butter in the pan then added the flour and stirred until they were mixed before stirred in the milk and stirred it over the hob until it stopped being lumpy. Once that happened I stirred in a tiny sprinkle of nutmeg after last week’s disaster... then I spooned it on to the aubergine and tomato mix but I didn’t make enough so I got some more butter, flour and milk and made some more sauce and covered the rest of the mix up before grating Cheshire cheese on top and bunging it in the oven for 35 minutes.

Once it was cooked I dished about a third of it up as it made tonnes!

It looked quite sloppy to me but my boyfriend thought it looked ok.  (Then again it was late he was probably famished at this point!)

This dish actually tasted as good as it looks in the book! I was impressed with this one despite not having, marjoram to sprinkle, parma ham, mustard powder for the béchamel sauce or the right type of wine it was very tasty, even if it did make a mess of my cookbook...

The best part of this recipe is it makes loads! Now, should I have the rest for tea tonight or tomorrow?