Summer's Here, It's Mango Chutney Making Time!

   I grew up in a household where jelly and jams and pickles came in a jar from the market, and cranberry sauce wasn't the "real deal" unless it stood ringed and shivering upright on on the plate. As a working class city kid the idea of making your own condiments was not even on the table. Everyone was working too hard to bother with heavy duty cooking and it was easier and cheaper for my mom to open a box, or buy jelly in glasses that we later used for tableware. By the way, one could also get peanut butter that way back in the day and we had a whole set of "good glassware" that had started out as Big Top Peanut Butter Jars.

Do you know how much peanut butter I had to eat to get a Thanksgiving setting??? Don't even ask. As to Big Top, this is what it looked like... sort of American Horror Story Light.

No wonder I don't like clowns. The idea of actually buying jars and filling them with something one made oneself, was not even contemplated. So, when I got older I became interested in doing just that. I learned to make pickles. I cured olives, and bacon. I made my own  jams, jellies, and chutneys.

   Canning, if one is careful, is actually a really economical and fun way to do home cooking. It's even better if one has access to fruit trees, or one's neighbors do, or one lives in a place where one can forage and glean. Short of that, there are sales and Farmers Markets where things can be bought in bulk. I used to make chutney of the loquats that grew all over the place when we lived in Santa Monica. Friends used to bring them to me to can, and I hated to see something that could be eaten rotting on the sidewalk, or in someones' back yard. Here in Sonoma, I live in a paradise of fruit and vegetables, some of which I grow myself. I don't raise mangoes however and right now we're in peak mango season which means they can be gotten cheaply.

   Whole Foods had a sale on organic mangoes the other day, at 12 dollars a case. One case (12 mangoes) makes 5 pints of chutney, or 10 half pints. When one cooks as much Indian food as I do I'm always opening a bottle of my own chutney for dinner parties, so this is a sweet deal. I have a garage full of canning jars all ready to be filled each season, and I was way behind schedule as we were renovating our new house last Summer and so no canning got done. The pantry was bare. I bought a case of mangoes and got busy.

For those of you who don't want to can , you can also make this chutney in a smaller amount, and keep it in the fridge, just halve this recipe, you'll have plenty left over but it keeps for a while.

Mango Chutney

Here's What You Need:
12 mangoes
5 cups of jaggery  ( you can also use dark brown sugar)
4 Tbs salt
4 Tbs coconut or other vegetable oil
2 Tbs black mustard seeds
4 tsp  crushed cumin seeds
4 cloves
3 cinnamon sticks (about 3 inches each)
1 tsp turmeric
1 to 2 tsp of kashmiri chili

Here's What To Do:
Peel and cut the mangoes into cubes.

Add in the salt.

Add in the brown sugar, or jaggery.

Stir everything together well.

Set it aside and turn you attention to spices.

Put the cumin seeds in a mortar and crush them. They don't have to be pulverized, just sort of smashed.

 Add in the cloves and cinnamon.

Set this aside.
Place a large stainless steel pot on the stove, add in the vegetable oil and heat it up. When it's hot add in the mustard seeds.

When the mustard seeds start to pop, add in the cumin, cinnamon and cloves.

Give everything a stir and add in the mango, salt, sugar mixture.

Bring things to a boil, then lower the heat to a strong simmer, add in the turmeric.

Cook at this heat, stirring occasionally so nothing sticks. You want to cook this for about 1 and 1/2 hours, or until it thickens.

When it's a nice thick blend add in the Kashmiri chili.

Taste the chutney for heat, if you like more kick add a bit more. The best way to do this is start with the smallest amount of chili and then add to that until you're happy with the flavor.
If you're making chutney and not canning it, you are done. Let it cool and then put it into a sealed container in the fridge til you are ready to use it.
If you are canning, sterilize your canning jars  (I run them through the sterilize cycle  on my dishwasher) then put them in boiling water.
Here's an easy tutorial on how to do this. Just click here.
When my filled sterilized jars are ready I place them in the boiling water bath.

place the lid on the pot and boil them for 20 minutes.

Lift them out and let them cool, you will hear the "pop" of the lids as they cool letting you know you have created a seal.

Label your jars and store them in your pantry, or you can open one and enjoy right away.

Canning is simple once you get the hang of it. I've been doing this for about 20 years and there is a lot of information about this both on line and in books.
Mrs. Wheelbarrows Practical Pantry is a great guide to all things preserving, I highly recommend it.

Once you've tried this ancient skill I promise you'll get hooked and start looking around for anything that can be shoved in a jar. Meanwhile you have all that delicious chutney to enjoy.

Coming up next, more chutney recipes, and great easy Indian recipes for Summer entertaining follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Anyone Can Pickle! Cherries, Sweet, Spicy and Fast!!

      I've always been interested in pickles, preserving and canning. I guess it's my inner squirrel speaking. The little squeaky voice in my head in the middle of summer that says "save all those wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables you see now, its going to be a long cold winter".
      I love looking into my larder when the rain is pounding on the skylights and the winter creek is gurgling under the driveway and seeing all my bottles and jars on the shelves glittering with the warmth of summer colors.
    Yeah, I know, I can get get all this stuff almost any time of the year. Through the magic of shipping there are grapes from Chile in mid-December, and strawberries in January, but I'm trying to keep it local. Why not, since I happen to be lucky enough to live in the heart of Californias' Wine Country.
     Therefore, every summer I get what I can and can it. Because I can can.
      I'd been putting off doing cherries so far this year. First of all because my friend Laura (Maeves' mom) was going to give me cherries from their trees. But we had a long and wet winter this year and by the time the cherries came, they were rotting and not good for canning. Then when they did appear at the Farmers Market, they were too expensive for my taste. Half the fun of preserving is getting the fruit ripe, local and cheap and then saving it for later.
 So I bided my time.
    Finally, the day came. In fact it came a couple of days ago. The price of cherries dropped, and I pounced. It was time to pickle.
     Every summer I make two types of pickled cherries. One is spicy and sweet and one is more tart and savory. Both go well with any sort of pork or poultry. They even do well on the Indian table.
     Both are easy to fix and the main labor involves sterilizing the jars. I'll give you the recipes for both so you can decide which variety to make.
     If these cherry recipes don't suit, there are a lot of them out there online. My two are adaptations of a few that appealed to me.

  

Sweet and Spicy Pickled Cherries

    Wash and dry about 1 lb of cherries. Do NOT pit them.
 Cut their stems down to about a 1/2 inch.
  Stick them each a few times with a sterilized needle and set them aside.
    In a large pot or pan, heat 3/4 cup of water,
    3/4 cup of sugar either white or brown
    3/4 cup of white vinegar
     This is your pickling brine. Keep it hot while your jars sterilize.
   When the jars are ready take them out of the hot water bath and drop in:
   2 peeled thin slices of ginger root
  6 peppercorns
   2 cloves
 1 small cinnamon stick
 Add the cherries and then pour the hot brine over the whole thing and put the lids on the jars.
   If you want to keep these in the fridge, this is all you need to do. Let the jars cool and then put them in. However you must wait and let them mellow for 1 month before using them.
   I have done it this way, and I've also processed them in a canning bath so I don't have to keep them refrigerated. If you are using 1/2 pint jars, process them for 10 minutes.
   I usually make these cherries in pint jars so all ingredients are doubled, including the processing time.
     Tart And Savory Cherries
   These are a bit more "pickely". Here's how to make them.
 Wash and dry 1 lb of cherries .
Trim the stems down to 1/2 inch. Do NOT pit them.
   In a large pot or pan mix:
 2 cups of water
 1 cup of cider vinegar
 1/2 cup of brown sugar
 2 Tbs of kosher (pickling) salt
     Bring your pickling liquid to a boil. When it's nice and hot, take the jars out of their sterilizing bath and pack the cherries into the jars . Pour the hot liquid over them, seal the jars and process them for 10 minutes.
   This is for 1/2 pint jars, double everything including processing time for pint jars. There is no waiting period for enjoying this sort of cherry.
     After a weekend off, we were back at work writing all day yesterday, and so I got very ambitious as you can see. I even baked some bread.

     If anyone were to offer me a ride in a time machine, I think I'd rather go back into the past than rocket into the future. In the dead of winter, these wonderful pickled rubies are as close to a time machine as one can get.