Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Green Tomato Chutney


I've been into sandwiches in the past couple weeks. Probably because Rick and I have been trying to make a concerted effort to bring our lunches to work to save some money. As vegetarians, the standard lunch-meat sandwiches are not on the menu. So I've been trying to spice up boring ol' cheese sandwiches a bit. Mainly, I've been doing this with the green tomato chutney I made last summer when we had a bumper crop of green zebra tomatoes. This is a heritage variety that doesn't actually turn red. At first it was a little hard to figure out when they are ripe. But eventually I concluded that they are ripe when the green starts to have a slight yellow tint and when you give the tomato a little squeeze it feels soft. They are quite tart tomatoes with beautiful white-ish vertical stripes. They're good in salad or maybe a salsa but we had lots of other tomatoes for that too.
Many years ago I remember helping my mother make green tomato chutney because an early frost had killed all our tomato plants with many unripened tomatoes still on the vines. We made a huge batch and preserved it in mason jars, which sat in the cupboard for years because no one in the family really liked the chutney or knew what to do with it. I obviously didn't want my tomatoes to languish on the shelf in the same way so I did a hunt for good recipes. I also decided to use a combo of rip green zebras and unripe green tomatoes in my chutney because I find that unripe green tomatoes are pretty tasteless and I wanted a nice juicy chutney. I found a good one with a lot of coriander seeds and mustard seeds that give the chutney a really nice spicy-aromatic touch. It also contains raisins and apple, so with the vinegar, it has a lovely sweet and sour contrast.
This chutney goes great with a sharp cheddar or a fried egg sandwich and its killer with a samosa. I gave a jar to my next door neighbour and she's still raving about it months later. She recently introduced me to someone by saying I make a mean chutney. I didn't think it was the top of my list of accomplishments, but I guess so.

Green Tomato Chutney
4 small apples or under-ripe pears, peeled and chopped
4 large under-ripe tomatoes and 4 large ripe green zebra tomatoes, chopped coarsely
2 large onions, chopped
1 cup raisins or currants
1/4 cup black mustard seeds
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablesppon ground coriander (this was also from our garden, more about this another day)
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cardamom

Combine all ingredients in a large pand, stir over heat, without boiling until sugar is dissolved. Simmer, uncovered about 1 hour or until thick, stirring occassionally. Spoon hot chutney into sterilised jars and seal immediately. Keeps for about 6 months unopened. Refrigerate after opening. Makes about 4 jars.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

vine-leaf rolls from the garden in the dead of winter


This weekend it was definitely the first bitterly cold weather we've had this winter. Since I didn't want to leave the house, I decided it was a perfect occasion to get a little reminder of summer.
In early August I had preserved two jars-full of vine leaves from our concord grape vine in the backyard. I'd been thinking about what a shame it was that this beautiful vine didn't produce decent tasting grapes (they're all skin and pit and unbelievably sour). Suddenly, it struck me that it might be possible to use the leaves for vine-leaf rolls, aka dolmas, aka dolmatas. So I did some research on how to preserve the leaves in brine and spent a hot afternoon in my kitchen blanching the leaves, rolling them into tight little bundles and stuffing them into jars of salt water. About 3 hours worth of work added up to two jars full.
Rick and I used the first jar at the Cottage on the Labour Day weekend. We made about 36 dolmas as our contribution to the Saturday night feast. Just as Rick and I finished rolling up the last cute little packages, the power went out. There was quite a wind storm blowing and it was a surprisingly cool weekend for September. Fortunately, we'd had the woodstove on. So we put the big pot on the woodstove to slowly simmer. After a couple hours at this very low heat, we had some pretty wonderful dolmas. They were a hit, even with my vegetable-phobe uncle Bill.
So this weekend when it was super cold, I thought I'd use the second jar and repeat our success. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original recipe and I tried to remember what I'd put it them. Then I drank quite a bit of wine while making them and got a little over-zealous in how much of the rice-mixture I put into each leaf. I failed to account for how much the partially-cooked rice would still expand inside the leaves when I simmered them. (A thing I should have remembered from my favourite Horatio Hornblower story where his ship sustains a cannon-ball hole below the water line. The cargo hold is full of rice, which starts to expand as it takes in water. Eventually the whole ship comes apart at the seams!)
As a result, the dolmas didn't turn out quite a beautifully as the original set. There was a few that had to be completely abandoned. The rest were edible only if you held them over a plate when you took a bite. All the stuffing would fall out instead of staying neatly packed in the leaves. They tasted pretty good, but were missing the fresh herbs that we had in the summer.
Still, it was a nice feeling to look out on the blowing snow in the backyard and taste a little bit of the summer garden.