Almost Ripe Tomato Chutney

Not as enticing a name as ‘Green Tomato Chutney’ I know, but more accurate given that many of mine were shades of orange at the point summer ended. Chutneys and pickles are a new world for me in the kitchen and I’m realising that making preserves is in some respects akin to the precision of baking – you really do need to sterilise stuff properly; but in other ways it is a more happy-go-lucky, taste and edit as you go type of cooking.

When you are dealing with unripe fruit and a mix of cooking and eating apples – not to mention varying acidity in vinegars – you have to adjust the sugar content a lot to get the right balance. I was working from two recipes using similar quantities of fruit. One called for 1.5 litres of vinegar and 800g of sugar, plus a few chopped-up bananas; the other for 250ml of vinegar and a single tablespoon of sugar. Cooking times were 2-3 hours in one and bring-to-a-simmer plus five-minutes in the second. So, quite a lot of room for discretion in writing a recipe. Mine is different enough that I feel it would be unfair to cite/blame my sources. Tomato season is well over now, but I wanted to taste it before committing to the recipe. The picture includes the trusty badger scarer – without which there would be no crop to pick, even if unripe.

• 1.5kg unripe tomatoes,halved if small, quartered if larger – you’re aiming for roughly 1cm³
• 600g onions, diced large – again about 1cm cubes, this was 3 large onions in my case
• 500g apples, cored and diced smaller, say 1/2cm³– A mixture of cooking and eating apples is fine, no need to peel them.
• 1 red chilli, seeded and cut into small rings
• 500ml cider vinegar – mine was 5% acidity and I actually used more than that, but won’t next time I make this
• 75ml olive oil
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 600g sugar – I used 150g brown and 450g white, as that’s what was left in the cupboard. A higher proportion of brown might be nicer and as I said in the intro, you may well end up needing a fraction or a multiple of this. Keep tasting – you want it sharp and sweet, as both will mellow after a few months in the jar.
• 100g stem ginger, diced finely – no need for the syrup. I used 5 balls to get to the 100g

• Spice bag – a square of muslin tied in a knot works well
• 3 star-anise
• 12 cardamon pods, crushed
• 6 cloves
• 1 tablespoon allspice berries
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
• 1 hot dried chilli

Mix all the ingredients in a large, non-reactive saucepan (i.e. one that won’t give off odd flavours with the acidity of the vinegar). Heat gently until the sugar has melted and everything is amalgamated. I’d say 2-3 hours is nearer the mark, as you want the fruit to be starting to break down, but not completely disintegrate.

Sterilise clean jars and lids in the oven at 140°C for twenty minutes and leave them in the warm over until the chutney is ready. The ‘trail’ test for this is to draw a wooden spoon across the top of the mixture in the pan and it should take a few seconds for the furrow to refill with juices. Then ladle into the jars to within half a centimetre of the top and screw on the lids. Resist trying it for a couple of months, although you’ll see I cheated a bit to taste before publishing this recipe…