Glutney Chutney

If at all possible I like to avoid waste –especially food waste. So when the veg in the fridge is looking well past its best (ours was supplemented by a dodgy internet order – peppers for the salad arrived all wrinkly and soft). Normally when faced with surplus vegetables I make soup. Today I was not in a soup kinda mood so thought I’d try something that I was saving for when I had a glut of veg from the garden – Chutney!
Hugh fearnly Whittingstall’s Glutney Chutney recipe was chosen and I started chopping. Dodgy carrots were peeled, wrinkly peppers shopped, a few apples past their most attractive from the fruit bowl and some onions and sugar snap peas soon joined the mix. This recipe is advertised as a serves all type chutney – whatever you have going spare plonk it in! Then once your saucepan is overflowing with diced veg add the cooking liquor (water, vinegar and brown sugar, spices that take your fancy) reduce it – reduce it and by golly reduce it some more – this pot was bubbling on my stove for at least two hours! and gradually the volume decreased, the liquid got more gungy…check out the pan about half way through (this was piled high with veg at the start!)

After a while the mixture gets even gloopier…..

Then once you can leave a trail on the bottom of the saucepan before the liquid rushes in it is deemed gloopy enough! Then into the Jars it goes – I tend to save various ones from shop bought food. This one is labelled up specially for my mum and dad.

The flavour of chutney improves over time but I can tell you now that once cooled this was pretty yummy – well you have to have SOME quality control!
HFW’s recipe can be found here in an old Guardian article 
If you are interested in recipes to help get the most out of your fridge/storecupboard then check out the Love Food Hate Waste website here.