Sweet Tomato & Chilli Chutney

It’s that time of year again – as the summer draws to an all too abrupt end, the garden is overflowing with more fresh produce than you can shake a stick at.  The efforts of a hard years graft realised, but it’s just too much to consume as fresh.  Freezer full, friends and neighbours provided for, it’s time to resort to… pickles.

This is a really versatile spicy tomato chutney designed to be a ‘medium hot’, for cheese, sandwiches, salads, sausages, burgers, in fact just about anything you fancy.  You can vary the amount of chilli to taste or remove the seeds for a milder pickle, but try & stick to the more fruity cayenne types, rather than the Indian/Thai chillies, or the hotter Harbaneros.  These have there place (more on that soon…), but for now we’re after something to contribute to the full fruity flavours rather than a big punch of heat

You can choose to skin the fresh tomatoes if you wish – if so, cut a cross through the skin of the raw tomato & drop into a bowl of boiling water for 30 seconds.  Remove ad drop into a bowl of cold water – the skin should peel straight off

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp Olive Oil
• 3 Onions, diced
• 2 Red Peppers, deseeded & diced
• 6 cloves Garlic, sliced
• 2-3 Red Chillies (cayenne type, I used 3 * Las Cruces), chopped but seeds retained
• 2 Bramley Apples, peeled, cored & diced
• 2 tsp Paprika (smoked)
• 1 tsp Mixed Spice
• 1kg Fresh Tomatoes, chopped
• 300ml Cider Vinegar
• 300g White Sugar
• a pinch of Salt
• a handful of chopped Sundried Tomatoes (optional)

Method

• In a large pan (4-5 ltr), sweat the onions gently in the oil until translucent, then add the peppers, garlic & chilli.  Cook for a couple of minutes
• Add the apples and spice and stir well
• Add tomatoes, vinegar, sugar and salt and stir well.  Bring up to the boil
• Simmer gently, uncovered, for about an hour, stirring occasionally to prevent catching on the bottom of the pan
• After about 30 minutes, add the sun dried tomatoes
• Continue to cook until the chutney has thickened up and much of the liquid evaporated.  The apples should have broken down into the mixture

Related articles

• Ripe Tomato Chutney (dixtervegetablegarden.wordpress.com)
• homemade Tomato Chutney (peacelovequinoa.com)
• Sweet & Spicy Tomato Chutney (gardeningvix.wordpress.com)