September is for making chutney
The fertility of September is an inspiration to cooks everywhere. In the UK, it is a forager’s paradise as fruit ripens and mushrooms crown. Even our dog, Mr Bingley, has become a blackberry obsessive and I return from our daily walks with purple fingers.
Beautiful blackberries
Over the last week, we have picked countless blackberries and sloes; harvested lavender from the garden; gathered windfall apples and enjoyed our first ripe tomatoes.
The sloes will become sloe gin, a firm family favourite that is stunningly simple to make and tastes like alcoholic Ribena. The downside is that it’s far too easy to drink, its sticky sweetness distracting the drinker from its true nature until you are singing from under the table.
Sloe season
Lavender has many uses and properties from flavouring food to deterring clothes moths. I love its calming sensual properties, so this year a friend and I have made essential oil from the flowers, which we will mix with different raw oils (sweet almond, avocado and grape seed) for our baths. Again a very simple process involving steeping the flowers in vodka, filtering and then letting the alcohol evaporate.
The best thing, however, about the start of autumn is making Green Tomato Chutney (known as GTC), traditionally made at the end of the tomato season with the green tomatoes that did not ripen. This chutney is more of a family identity than a food to us. Anyone who has visited a Helm house will know that GTC is a table staple unconfined to any particular savoury mealtime or food. Thick, spicy, aromatic, sweet and rich in umami, we eat it with bacon, eggs, salads, cheese, steak, sandwiches, cold meats and pâté. Mum proudly boasts of GTC converts across the world.
We are not completely sure when or where the family obsession with Green Tomato Chutney began. We do know that my maternal grandmother is responsible for embedding GTC into our DNA.
Granny was born in Yangon (then known as Rangoon) in Myanmar (Burma to her) in 1914. Her grandfather had immigrated to India in the 1820’s and her father was born and lived in India before qualifying as a doctor and joining the Indian Medical Service sometime around 1900. He spent about 10 years practicing near Kolkata before moving to Myanmar. Recipes from both Myanmar and India frequently use green tomatoes. We have never found the recipe in a book or online nor do we know if our recipe is a traditional, local speciality or whether it was anglicised to suit European taste buds.
In 1931, Granny moved to Dublin to train as a nurse, leaving both Myanmar and GTC behind. It would take thirty years, a world war and an odyssey through Libya, Italy, Palestine, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and deepest, darkest Devon before a chance encounter with a childhood friend from Myanmar reunited her with her beloved GTC recipe.
Green Tomato Chutney
Made with love and eaten with everything
Before you start, do read the tips below. We’ve learnt them hard way!
1. AIR
Depending on the quantity, the chutney will take some time to cook. Unless you enjoy living in vinegar steam, make it on a warm day with all the windows open. If you have the luxury of a kitchen door, keep it closed at all times.
2. IT IS OLD SCHOOL
This is an old recipe and all of the measurements are imperial, do the conversion to metric to work out what quantities to buy. Whilst you are cooking, use the imperial proportions to keep it simple or you’ll go crazy in the detail.
3. SCALE
The recipe calls for 2lbs of tomatoes. I reckon you would get maybe two or three jars worth from that. We cook an industrial amount because we have a number of people counting on us and because, as I may have mentioned, we eat it with everything. This year we used 12kgs / c.27lbs of tomatoes and got 29 jars in return.
4. WEIGH
We tried a new tactic that really worked this year. We worked out how many whole tomatoes would fit into each pan, then calculated the proportions from there and kept everything separate and organised.
Yes, we really did peel 204 cloves of garlic
5. CHEAT
I remember my hands reeking of garlic for weeks after making this chutney when I was growing up. The invention of the silicon garlic press has saved a lot of time, latex gloves are a must and a food processor (for both the ginger and the garlic) will be your best friend!
6. WAIT
This chutney only improves with age. Once you’ve made it, keep it somewhere dark and cool for a few months so that it has had a chance to mature.
The Recipe (for two or three jars, scale up according to preference)
2 lbs green tomatoes
1 tbsp salt (or less)
1½–2 tsp chilli powder
½ oz root ginger
1 lb soft brown sugar
1½–2 tsp garam marsala
15 cloves garlic
12 oz malt vinegar
Fresh chilli (optional – we added a few scotch bonnets because we like heat)
Wax discs for bottling
Three steps to GTC heaven
Rinse, dry and cut tomatoes into small pieces. Skin and mince garlic and ginger.
Put tomatoes in heavy saucepan with all ingredients and cook until right consistency (several hours). When it is close to being ready, make sure you keep an eye on it and stir in case it sticks. The right consistency is thick and dark with not much liquid left.
3. Sterilise your clean jam jars by putting them in the oven at 180˚C for 10 minutes and boil the lids. Bottle while everything is still hot to avoid glass cracking and put a wax disc on top of each before sealing with the lid.
Almost Professional
Mum designed these labels to enter GTC into a chutney competition at our local village fair. Of course we won.