Making chutneys and preserving garden produce is a childhood memory of mine from the 1960s and 1970s. I remember Mum with her store cupboard shelves stacked to the ceiling with bottled fruits, veg, relishes, pickles and chutneys. Of course, those were the days when Auckland was crisscrossed with quarter-acre sections and summer evenings and Sundays were dedicated to weeding, watering and family fun.
You can still enjoy the kitchen side of this memory, while squeezed into an inner-city apartment, downsized town house or landless cottage.
Cherry tomatoes come in many colors and shapes and make for a very hasty and tasty chutney. Quick to prepare and easy to make, this is a wonderful companion to meats, cheeses, sandwiches and snacks.
Ingredients:
- Canola oil
- 2 onions, cut fine
- 500 g cherry tomatoes
- 1 diced jalapeño or chili pepper, seeds removed
- 75 ml red wine vinegar
- 135 g brown sugar (not Demerara)
- 1 bay leaf
- 5 English peppercorns
- A good pinch of both coarse salt and ground pepper
Method:
Add a dash of canola oil to a small pot and place on the stove on a medium-high heat. When hot, add the onion and stir or toss until the onion becomes translucent. Reduce the heat and add the remainder of the ingredients. If you are making a bigger batch than this, you should place the peppercorns and bay leaves in a bouquet garni. Because this quantity of chutney is so small, however, I place the bay leaf and peppercorns directly into the mix, which means they have to be picked out when the chutney cools. Biting into a peppercorn while eating your sandwich isn’t pleasant.
Cook the chutney on a low heat for 40–50 minutes, stirring occasionally. And that’s all. This is an aromatic and surprisingly tasty chutney for such little preparation and cooking time.
We’re still in pre New Year mode in Jerusalem. Supermarkets are bursting at the seams and roads are jammed as the frenetic masses rush around in the cooking mania of making enough food to welcome in the New Year of 5784 and feed extended families over what can best be described as a non-stop two-day festive eating marathon.
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