Courgette Chutney 26/08/2009

Lovely Fresh Courgettes

Courgette Chutney

A great way to use up a glut of courgettes, making a lovely rich but mild tasting chutney.

Ingredients

2.5 kg courgettes
1 kg fresh or tinned tomatoes
6-8 cloves garlic
450g onions
1.5 kg pale brown sugar
175g sultanas
4 tbsp salt
1 tablespoon each spices of your choice, such as peppercorns, ground ginger, allspice
1 litre malt or white vinegar

Slice the courgettes and cut up into cubes of about 2 cm square and 1 cm thick (dont leave the chunks too thick as they won’t soften when cooking). If using fresh tomatoes, roughly chop, along with the garlic and onions. Put these, along with the rest of the ingredients into a large pan and bring slowly to the boil, and stir well to dissolve the sugar. Then turn down the heat and simmer slowly for the next few hours, until the mixture is thick and syrupy, but not disintegrated. Ideally, this should be like the consistency of jam but not too dry (depending on your type of pan and cooker, this may take a while!). Once ready, ladle into sterilised pots, cover and store.

Welcome! 25/08/2009

Hello everyone

Welcome to my new blog. I hope to share with you all the things I learn about gardening and self-sufficiency. It is our dream to be fully self sufficient one day, but for now we are starting with the veggies!

We live in a lovely railway cottage with ample gardens, the longest part being our allocated veggie patch. Back in March this year we built our 4 raised beds, and sowed the seeds ready to go in.

The results have been fab. We started off harvesting lettuces and spring greens in April/May, then came the beginnings of summer veg – peas, new potatoes, carrots, beetroot and the like.

Some were enjoyed fresh, with the rest being frozen or stored so we can enjoy the summer taste in Autumn/Winter! The pea-pods did not go to waste, with them being made into our finest Pea-Pod wine.

We made a second sowing of carrots, peas and beetroot etc which look like they are nearly ready again now. The main harvest over mid-late summer has been courgettes and runner beans. Too many courgettes cropped to all be eaten at once, so they were made into a courgette and apple chutney. We think the bumper crop is to do with the nettle fertiliser we made back in March. A top tip from Alys Fowler!

Wild foods have been made use of too. We are lucky to have wild plums in Tring and loads were gathered by us to make into jam, chutney and wine. Our latest wine endeavour has been elderberry. That looks like it might be the nicest tasting, but we shall see. Got a long time to wait yet, we will probably be tasting this time next year.

The latest foods to gather in the garden are our tomatoes and blackberries. Am planning to do lots with those – the first being blackberry jam!

So that’s all for now, my first post. Hope you enjoyed and will be back soon!

Rachel