MAKING APPLE CHUTNEY IN SICILY

Every autumn in Britain, I would make a batch of apple chutney.  For American readers, chutney is a kind of thick salsa which is, however, a preserve.  The word "chutney" comes from Hindi "chatni", meaning "strongly spiced" and it was the colonising British who began eating spiced mixtures, probably as condiments, in India.  The custom spread to other colonies and tropical fruit, too, began to be incorporated into some of the recipes. Then the travelling British decided they wanted spiced mixtures of fruit and vegetables which would keep and so began adding vinegar and large quantities of sugar.  Eventually they brought their recipes and the word "chutney" back to Britain.

And now I am carrying on the tradition of chutney making in Sicily!  Sadly, it is wasted on most of my Sicilian friends who abhor the British habit of mixing sweet and savoury ingredients and when I point out that they do it themselves in several dishes such as coniglio in agrodolce [sweet and sour rabbit] they just shrug their shoulders and say that is different. Anyway, I brought my preserving pan and extremely long-handled wooden chutney-mixing spoon from Britain and I haven't given up yet!

On Saturday - better late than never -  I made my first batch of apple chutney here in three years: Once again Rosa was the willing "gofer" and once again I used a mixture of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples in the absence of cooking apples.  The recipe I use, from a Jennifer Paterson book called Feast Days [published long before her incarnation as one of the famous Two Fat Ladies] calls for white malt vinegar, but as I like apple chutney to be quite dark and you can't get malt vinegar here, I used a mixture of red and white wine vinegars. I don't leave the chutney to cool before potting it but pour it straight into sterilised jars and then I leave it covered with a clean tea towel for twelve hours before putting on the lids, which I line with greaseproof paper, just as my mother taught me.

This time it took ages to cut out the "hats" as my pinking shears has seen better days and is getting hard to manoeuvre but all will be worth it when the flavours have mellowed after a month and I can use the chutney!


Oh, and this is a 2002 photo of me making chutney in Carson City, Nevada, USA., where a friend had cajoled me into giving a demonstration!