Apple Chutney

Look, I don’t want to seem obsessed or anything, but I’ve still got apples in mind.  Before I plunge into the fruity part of the blog, though, I had an email from Jane Finnis, part of which read:

I’ve actually managed to add a comment to your blog. The trick seems to be, don’t click on Add a Comment (I mean why would you, it’s only what you want to do!) Instead click on Reply...that is if it’s really succeeded! I can’t quite believe it yet.

The only thing is, I can’t find the comment.  Maybe it’s under the sofa or the cat’s run off with it, but I can’t see it anywhere.  Sad times.  However, I do know what it was about. 

A couple of weeks ago, me, Jane and Rebecca Jenkins gave a talk in the wonderful old Portico Library in Manchester about writing murder mysteries. It was an ace evening, with a terrific audience.  The next day, as Becca and Jane departed, I pressed upon them a pot of my home-made chutney.  Jane thought it was the nicest chutney she’d ever had, and asked me for the recipe.  It comes from an ancient old cook book that belonged to my mother, so here it is. 

3lbs apples, peeled, cored and sliced (Get an apple corer!)

3ils onions (Peel them in a basin of water otherwise  your eyes will sting like blazes)

1lb sultanas or raisins

2 lemons

Fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped

1 and a half lbs of Demerara sugar

1 pint of malt vinegar

A large pan.

Grate the lemon rind and put the grated rind and the juice into the pan together with the other ingredients. 

Bring it to the boil, reduce the heat to very low and let it simmer until its nice and thick.  This will take an hour or so.  You know when its done when you can make a channel across the top of the chutney without it immediately filling with liquid. 

Pot and cover.

This will make about 4lbs of chutney.

I sterilize the jam jars in the microwave, by putting a tidgy bit of water in the jars and giving them about a minute and a half in batches of four jars at a time.  I tighten the lids whilst wearing a rubber glove, which gives a bit more power as you twist the lids on.

The other discovery was that the apple syrup - the result of my unsuccessful attempt to make apple jelly – tastes dropdead gorgeous in an apple suet pudding.    Wow.

Apples....

We’ve got apples.  Oh my days. as the youngest, Jenny, would say, do we have apples.  I suppose, if you plant apple trees, that’s what you can expect.  The thing is, we’ve only got two trees, a Worcester Pearmain and a Granny Smiths, and neither tree is that old, so I wasn’t really ready for the influx of apples the other week.

Even if you were as devoted to apples as Steve Jobs, you’d have a job to munch your way through this much of nature’s bounty.  Indeed, I don’t think it could be done.  So, obviously, I had to make something out of them.  Faced with pounds of the things, I bought an apple peeler, slicer and corer.  I got it from Amazon and it’s the most amazing gadget ever. (For dealing with apples, I mean; if you want to make a quilt or play the violin, it wouldn’t do you much good.)

Put the apple on the prongs on one end, turn the handle, and bingo!  One perfectly peeled apple with no core.  The apple itself is in a sort of spiral which looks really attractive.  Now, what I really wanted to make was apple jam, but, judging from the fact I couldn’t find any recipes, I don’t think apples jam very well.  (It sounds as if they’re failed jazz musicians, but you know what I mean.)

Chutney, yes; we now have pots of it in the cellar. Dried apples; yep.  Apple sauce?  Fine.  That’s in the freezer.  Hunting round the internet I came across something called apple butter, which is a sort of concentrated apple sauce that you can spread on toast;  fine.  Got it.  But apple jam?  No.  However, in an old cook book, I came across apple and rosemary jelly.  Now that sounded really nice, so it was out with the apple slicer and off we went.

You know when things just won’t work?  Why this lovingly slaved over substance wouldn’t turn into jelly, despite being boiled and adding pectin, I just don’t know.  It remained stubbornly as apple syrup.  But, as it turns out, apple syrup is rather nice.  So that’s a good few pots of apple syrup, then.

I was just congratulating myself on having dealt with the Gordon-Smith apple mountain, when I bumped into Jez, the caretaker at the local school.  He was lugging an immense bin bag.  What have you got there? I innocently asked.    Apples, he said.  The kids had sorted through the apple trees on the school grounds and chosen the best.  What was left – about forty pounds of Cox’s Orange Pippins – was going in the bin.

I couldn’t let him do it.  The apples were fine.  Yes, they might not have been supermarket standard, but their failings were definitely skin deep.  So it was out with the trusty slicer and off we went again.

And, d’you know, I’d just finished turning all the poor little reject Coxs into jars of stuff, when my pal, Jane Finnis rang.  She was coming to stay, but they had a bumper harvest of guess what.  And would I like a bag?  I must be mental, but, with the thought of the apple slicer in the cupboard, what could I say?