Red Cedar
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Tomato Chutney
As previously noted, I’ve been away for most of the last two weeks – first to Ottawa to work on negotiations for my union, then back to BC (Sooke) to get married, then returning to Ottawa to complete the work I started the week before. While this made for a bit of hectic travel, it also gave me the chance to pull a bunch of stuff out of the garden on my way through to Sooke, including the tomatoes that were just about to start blighting and rotting off the vine. Great, yes? But what to do with all those tomatoes upon my return?
I was lucky enough to have a day off work yesterday to catch up on some garden stuff (hooray for the fabulous October weather we are having) and in the afternoon I took an hour to skin a bunch of those tomatoes along with some apples and make a marvelous batch of Tomato Chutney.
I used this recipe at the Bernardin website – slow-cooking the chutney for two and half hours instead of the ninety minutes recommended by them in order to get a really rich, thick chutney. You can see below the transformation from whole fruit to sauce:
Really, the only way to get to sauce like this is *long* cooking over *low* heat. I reduced the total volume of the mixture by half in the cooking process. This turns out a condiment that is rich and jam-like in consistency. If you like a thinner, but chunkier sauce, don’t cook it for as long!
Because of the extra-reduction on the chutney, I got eight instead of nine 500-ml jars out of the canner… but how much chutney do I need in the larder anyway? I’ve already given away one jar and promised another…. I’m going to have to do a round of apple chutney this fall as well.
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