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!

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 8

Here is my personal pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:

Our featured "golden oldie" film was Three Coins in the Fountain.  It makes me cry every time and oh, that song!

Nick Calvano told us what happened when he went to see his newly-found Italian relatives.  I happen to know that there's another story from Nick coming so watch this space!

Our blog of the week was Marc Dalessio.  Marc is a painter based in Florence and if you love Italy, you'll love his paintings.

Of the news stories, I liked this one about a prank that fooled the art world and this one about D&G designing for the Chelsea football team.  OK, I especially liked the picture that went with that one!  And what woman could not be cheered by this?

For my Patti Chiari column I ruminated on the process of making preserves and liqueurs in Sicily.

If you've ever wondered how to ask for the ice cream flavour you want in Italian, this article is for you.

Finally, if you need a  cool summer dessert, why not make Gaetano Naclerio's melon cups with summer fruit? His secret ingredient - not secret any more, Gaetano -  is melon vodka and I'm definitely going to try this recipe.

Happy reading.

MEDLAR JELLY

Nespole abound so I made a small batch of this, using the miracle machine I bought last year.

FOODIE FRIDAY - TOMATO JAM

Tomato jam may sound odd, but I assure you that it's a good accompaniment to cold meats and cheese and you can even dollop it on bruschette. There's a recipe for green tomato jam in the booklet that came with my miracle machine but as we don't get many green tomatoes here, I 've adapted the recipe for red tomatoes and added some spices:

1 kg plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 kg vanilla sugar [just leave a vanilla pod in the pack of sugar overnight]
juice of 1 lemon
1 teasp ground ginger
1 teasp ground cloves
commercial pectin, liquid or powder

Put the lemon juice in a measuring jug and make up to 200 ml with water. Pour it into the bowl of a jam-making machine or into a preserving pan and chuck everything else in. If you are using the machine, follow the instructions for your chosen programme and stir in the pectin at the end. If you are making this the traditional way, bring the ingredients to the boil then simmer, stirring, till you have a soft set. Add the pectin according to the instructions on the bottle or packet. Pot in the usual way. Refrigerate once opened.

GOLDEN PLUM

Well, how about that? My miracle machine has gone and made plum jam - all by itself!

PLAY TIME!

Rosa and I had a great time playing with my new jam-making machine this afternoon and guess what? - It works!

All you have to do is prepare the fruit and bung it in, with sugar and water as directed in the recipe instructions, programme the machine and you're off!

We both watched, spellbound, as the miracle machine proceeded to do its job. "Funziona!" ["It works!"] we exclaimed to each other over and over again. Lucia arrived in the middle of all this and beheld the new kitchen wonder, too.

After a mere 40 minutes, we were able to pot our cherry jam. [I'd tested for a set the traditional way, ie., on a cold saucer. ] You can't buy wax discs and cellophane covers for home preserves here. The Italian women use vacuum seal lids on their jars and nothing you do - well, nothing I do, at any rate - will release the vacuum. So I brought 10 years' supply of discs and cellophane covers with me when I moved here because this is one British way of doing things that I like.

Admittedly, you cannot make enormous amounts of jam in the machine and it will give you a light, "French" set, but I think it's superb! In fact, I think I might start worshipping it, like the woman in Forster's tale. "Oh, Machine, oh, Machine!" I shall declare every morning.

Look, it even cleans itself!

Next I am going to "jam" these plums from a kind friend's garden.

AIUTO!

Above you see the results of a morning spent making apple chutney, with Rosa as the willing "gofer". Even with 2 of us plus food processor the whole operation took 4 hours. I use a Jennifer Paterson recipe from a book called Feast Days, published long before her incarnation as one of the Two Fat Ladies. I like this recipe because it includes fresh dates and I found some lovely, plump ones in the supermarket a few days ago.

All was going well until it was time to ladle the mixture into the jars, when we realised we were going to be a jar short. [Yes, I do usually prepare and sterilise more jars than I think I will need but I miscalculated this time - or the Sicilian apples give a better yield.] I hastily found the preserving jar on the right and sterilised it but the trouble is now it is time to seal the jars and I have run out of rubber preserving rings.

About half an hour ago I remembered I had an unopened jar of Foie Gras in the fridge and that it is a similar type of jar; therefore I thought I would be clever and use the ring from it. [Yes again, I know you should use a new one each time but I would have sterilised it and replaced it on Friday as I have better things to do tomorrow than go rubber-ring-hunting!] But can I get the goddam jar open?! No, I just can't and I have tried every trick I know and every Lakeland gadget [Lakeland is a UK kitchen shop famous for inventing problem-solving devices] at my disposal. So please, before I get myself into a "Mr Bean" situation of smashing the wretched jar and binning the contents in order to get the ring, does anyone know how I can open the thing?!

Rosa was very interested in the whole process and went home with a [ringless] jar of chutney onto which I popped a pretty label and a nice Christmasy "hat" before she left. Leafing through my "Preserves" cookbooks, she came across a recipe for piccalilli and was much taken with a picture of the finished product, so I translated the recipe for her and gave her dollops of the necessary spices which are difficult or impossible to find here: mustard powder [impossible], ginger [difficult] and turmeric [difficult]. I hope the recipe works for her!

OF VERJUICE AND ROMANS

I’m sure everyone else is writing of momentous world events whilst I continue to prattle on about Sicilian culinary delights. Still, many important political decisions are made during “working” breakfasts and lunches, I’ll wager, so that is my excuse!

Some time ago, I featured mostarda as it is known to Sicilians – a solid preserve made from grape must and wood ashes. Yes, ashes! [Don’t worry; they are filtered out.] I find the texture too leathery but at the weekend I tasted the fresh version, as made by Gina’s mother-in-law. This is much lighter and is eaten as a dessert. I found it refreshingly different and very pleasant.

The reason that it shares the name mostarda with the mustard-based fruit relishes of northern Italy is that the Romans used to mix mustard seeds with verjuice instead of vinegar and in the Middle Ages, for a time, the vinegar was replaced by must, so some etymological confusion arose.

MARMELLATA

I intend to tell you all about the Sicilian hospital experience in a subsequent post but in the meantime I thought you'd like to see this quince marmellata which my friend Gina made and was kind enough to bring to me there. She picked 30 kilos of quinces from her tree last weekend so there is plenty more, she says. This marmellata is of a different consistency to the cotognata [quince paste] that I have shown you before; although it is, as you see, made in moulds, it is spreadable. Both preserves are delicious.

PLUM CRAZY

You have got to be plum crazy to make chutney during July in Sicily, in 36 C., but that's what I did this afternoon, dear reader. I just had to use up the plums my kind neighbour had given me, so decided the quickest way of doing so was to prepare plum and ginger chutney. [Root ginger, by the way, is quite difficult to find here, so when I do see some on sale, I buy it and freeze it.] For my North American readers and others new to the word, "chutney" is a corruption of Hindi chatni, meaning "strongly spiced". The best way that I can describe chutney is that it is a kind of salsa, only thicker and it keeps for a long time. The British in India invented it as a way of preserving the exotic fruits and using the spices they found there. We eat it with cheese and cold meats. It is quite useless trying to serve chutney to the Sicilians for, as I've mentioned previously, they do not understand how we can mix sweet and sour tastes and many have an aversion to dried fruits.

Whilst I was at it, I also got around to bottling my plum liqueur. I must say I am pleased with its colour and aroma, but it cannot be drunk for at least another month! Tomorrow will be a day for putting the lids on the cooled chutney and placing little gingham "hats" on top of these....

FUNGHI SOTT'OLIO

Tiny chiodini mushrooms are in the shops at the moment so I decided to preserve some in oil: funghi sott'olio are a favourite preserve in southern Italy and they are good as part of a selection of antipasti. Wash the mushrooms and then simmer them in 2 parts water to 1 part white wine vinegar, with coarse seasalt to taste, for about 10 minutes. Drain them and let them dry on kitchen paper - about 30 minutes. Put them in a sterilised jar and add garlic slices* , a chilli pepper if you like and herbs such as bay leaves, thyme and oregano. Fill the jar with olive oil. A trick I learned some years ago for keeping the vegetables down in the oil is to cut 2 cocktail sticks to fit inside the top of the jar exactly and lay them crosswise on top of the vegetables.

* As my commenter Ludlingtonian rightly points out, there are some concerns about the safety of adding garlic to vegetables preserved in oil. See his comment on this post and also this article. Because of this, I simmered the garlic slices with the mushrooms for this preserve.