Rhubarb Chutney

As part of using up the ongoing glut of rhubarb in the garden, and having already made rhubarb and ginger jam, chutney was next on the list. I never usually make chutney at this time of year, it tends to be the sort of thing I submit vegetables to at the end of their life, such as green tomatoes, huge marrows and windfall apples. It seems slightly unfair on the excited spring shoots to confine them to several hours of simmering in vinegar, but we do get through a lot of chutney over the year and a new flavour will be eagerly looked forward to when it's ready.

The recipe I used was adapted from the one at the thefoody.com, as recommended on the grow your own forums.

See here for the recipe.

Recipe Costs

£9.34 1.5kg rhubarb (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£2.06 1500g dark brown soft sugar
£1.15 900ml vinegar (malt)
£0.55 425g sultanas
£0.36 75g chopped dried apricots
£0.40 40g root ginger
£ 0.01 30g salt
£0.30 30g garlic
£0.10 1 chilli
£0.01 2 tsp peppercorns
£0.90 3 lemons, peel only
£15.18 Total (£5.84 without buying the rhubarb)
£5.06 per kg of jam (£1.94 without buying the rhubarb - 30% of the cost of equivalent at ocado)

I made half as much again as the original recipe, mainly because I enthusiastically picked too much rhubarb. I find adapting a recipe like this isn't a problem with chutney, I'd be a bit careful doing the same with jam as it can be tricky to get large quantities up to temperature quick enough. The rhubarb was chopped into quite fine slices, about 1cm, as I didn't want the end result to be too stringy.
Substituting some of the sultanas for apricots was inspired by seeing several recipes containing apricots or dates, I imagine they complement the rhubarb well and add more variety than the standard sultanas. We've been mixing our own muesli lately so have a good stock of dried fruit in the cupboard.


A nice large amount of garlic went in to the pot, it was getting on for two heads, leaving us with only one head of homegrown left. The lemon peel was taken off some lemons from the freezer, I'd picked these up in the out-of-date section at the supermarket a few weeks ago. Not having any cayenne pepper I chucked in a finely chopped chilli, I'm sure given the volume being made it would be fine to add a few more if you liked it hot.


The ginger, lemon and peppercorns went in the muslin with the garlic, chilli and salt joining the fruit, sugar and vinegar in the Preserving Pan.I'd got the large pan off the top shelf in the kitchen where it had been collecting sticky dust, as I figure it's best to use stainless steel when making chutney, especially with something as acidic as rhubarb. The non stick ones would probably not have suffered too much but I don't really like the thought of Rhubarb and Teflon Chutney.


After several hours of simmering the chutney looked thick enough to pot, it's fine to have a small amount of liquid in the top of the jars as this is absorbed during the 3 months of maturing time. The chutney looked very rich and dark as it went into the jars, I shall look forward to tasting it in August, preferably outside with a nice lump of cheese.


Recipe Timings

0.5hrs Preparation
2 hrs simmering
0.5 hr Potting

Taste Test

This will have to wait until August.

Rhubarb Chutney Recipe

This recipe is adapted from the one at the thefoody.com, as recommended on the grow your own forums.

Ingredients

1500g rhubarb
1500g dark brown soft sugar
900ml vinegar (malt)
425g sultanas
75g chopped dried apricots
40g root ginger
30g salt
30g garlic
1 chilli
2 tsp peppercorns
3 lemons, peel only

Method

See here for pictures of the method.

Finely chop the rhubarb and garlic.
Crush the root ginger and place it with the peppercorns and lemon peel in a piece of muslin and tie with string.
Place all of the ingredients into a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
Simmer gently, stir frequently, until the mixture thickens.
Remove the muslin bag.

Pot in steralised jars.

Makes about 3kg
Leave for 3 months to mature before using.

Carrot Marmalade Recipe

image source wikimedia commons
This recipe is adapted from the one at the Carrot Museum website.

Ingredients

2.5 litres grated carrots (10 cups)
2kg sugar
6 oranges
4 lemons
1 tsp each of Allspice, cinnamon and ground cloves.

Method

Peel the oranges and lemons and remove as much of the membranes and pith as possible. Slice thinly.

Remove thin white membrane from the orange flesh and slice into small pieces.

Squeeze the lemons, add the juice to the carrots, orange flesh and citrus peel and allow it all to stand over night.

The next day, add spices and cook simmer for 2 hours.

Pot in steralised jars

Note on untested recipes

I have not tried this recipe, but plan to in the future. It would be good to hear from anyone who uses it.

Citrus Syrup Cake

I made this cake last week, partly to use up some of the citrus flavoured sugar syrup left over from making candied peel. This recipe was adapted from one of Nigel Slater's published in the Observer magazine, I used less polenta and more ground almonds than originally suggested, I assumed that polenta is only really used for extra texture so this shouldn't make too much difference. The cake did need about an additional 30 mins baking at the second stage, so maybe the polenta also absorbs some of the moisture. After baking I poured over as much of my left over citrus syrup (heated up) as I could manage, about 250ml, this made the finished cake very moist and sticky, to the extent it was best eaten with a fork. No one complained.

Ingredients

210g butter
210g unrefined caster sugar
100g almonds
3 large eggs
175g ground almonds
100g ground polenta
a level tsp baking powder
finely grated zest and juice of a large orange

Method

Using a non-stick, loose-bottomed cake tin about 20cm in diameter, line the base with a piece of baking parchment. Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 5. Put the kettle on.

Beat the butter and sugar in a food mixer till light and fluffy. Put the almonds in a heatproof bowl and pour over enough boiling water to cover them. Leave for 5 minutes, then pop each nut out of its skin, squeezing between thumb and forefinger. Discard the skins.

Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. You just want them lightly mixed. Pour a little of the beaten egg into the creamed butter and sugar, beating thoroughly, then slowly continue adding and beating till all the egg is used up.

Finely chop the almonds. Add the chopped and the ground almonds to the egg cake mixture. Stir the polenta and baking powder together then add it gently to the mix. Lastly, mix in the grated orange zest and juice.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes, then turn the heat down to 160C/gas mark 3 and continue cooking for a further 30 minutes, covering the surface with tin foil if it is browning too quickly. Remove from the oven but leave the cake in its tin.

Spike holes into the top of the cake (still warm in its tin) with a skewer, pour over the hot syrup and leave to cool.

For the syrup:

a large, juicy lemon
a large orange
100g golden caster sugar
2 tbsp liqueur, such as limoncello

To make the syrup, finely grate the zest from the lemon and orange over a measuring jug. Cut the fruits in half and squeeze their juice into the jug, then top it up to 250ml with water. Pour into a saucepan and add the sugar. Bring to the boil and keep at a rapid bubble until the sugar has dissolved and the liquid has reduced to about 175ml. Remove from the heat and add the liqueur.

Serves 8.

The cake was, as I mentioned before, very moist and sticky, but I have to agree with what Nigel Slater said last week:

I don't really mind a moist undercrust - pastry or cake sodden with juice being a good thing in my book.

I think the mixed citrus taste worked well and the polenta gave it a good bit of bite. We had one slice with a cup of tea while it was still warm, and some more for pudding later in the evening.
I'm tempted to make it again soon, not least as I have more of that syrup to use up.

Candied Peel Recipe

This is taken from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes blog.

Ingredients

Citrus Peel (lemon, grapefruit, orange, lime)
Granulated sugar
Water

Method
See here for pictures of the method.

Grapefruit skins are much thicker than other citrus skins. Cooking them a while in boiling water helps loosen up the white pithy part so it is easier to scrape off.

Scrub the outside rinds thoroughly to remove any dirt. Put rind in cold water, bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Drain and repeat this process two more times. Drain, rinse with cold water, and scrape away the pithy white part of the peel. Slice into strips.

For each cup of rind, prepare a sugar syrup of 1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water. Put rind in syrup and cook slowly until syrup is completely absorbed - several hours. Stir occasionally and watch carefully near the end of the process.

Cool the peel and coat the strips with granulated sugar.
Dry overnight on a rack.

Candied Peel

When making marmalade last week I froze some unused lemon peel with the thought of using it for something constructive. After some thought, and research, I decided to have a go at candied peel, not something I'd usually even use. Hopefully having some in the house will be useful when it comes to baking, and for mincemeat at Christmas if it lasts that long.
I wanted to have a wider range of peel than just two lemons, so the bag in the freezer grew to contain the following:

Peel of three lemons - 170g (left over from marmalade making)
Peel of 1 grapefruit - 140g (a breakfast treat)
Peel of five oranges - 255g (a regular winter craving)
Peel of 2 limes - 100g (I wanted some green in the mix, so cooked Thai curry)

I pulled all this out the freezer in the morning so it was thawed when I came to prepare it.


There seemed to be several ways of preparing the peel, either repeated boiling and draining, or just prolonged boiling, but all recipes needed the peel to have the membranes scraped off and then be sliced. This took about 20 minutes, I wasn't too fussy about removing all the pith as I'd read it added to the succulency of the finished product, which made sense - the more pith, the more sugar could be soaked up.



Roughly following the recipe from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes blog, I boiled all the peel 3 times draining in between.

See here for the recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.00 665g left over citrus peel
£1.39 1.5kg sugar
£1.39 Total
£1.63 per kg of Candied Peel (50% of the cost at Tesco)

I choose to use the above recipe as it had a nice adaptable way of measuring the sugar syrup - using cups as a volume measure. It also gave me a chance to use one of these lovely measuring cups from Nigella Lawson.

I had 6 cups of peel, which wasn't too tightly packed, in hindsight I should probally have packed it in a bit more, as I ended up with way too much syrup. Having surplus did mean that I wasn't concerned about the pan catching or drying out. I do also now have a bottle of citrus flavoured sugar syrup, which makes a nice drink with fizzy water. I may be tempted to try a gin fizz this weekend.
In went the peel to the syrup.


After two and a half hours of simmering the peel had turned translucent, so I drained it and left it on racks before dusting with granulated sugar. I'll be letting it dry out in a large bowl for a few days before packing into jars.


This made a massive 850g of candied peel, which judging by the starting weight of peel means about a quarter of it is sugar. It should last a while, in an airtight jar apparently it's ok for up to a year. Now I just need something to do with it all before it gets nibbled away, time to get baking I feel.

Recipe Timings

1 hrs Preparation
0.5 hr Draining and Dusting
0.5 hr Potting

2.5 hrs Cooking
48 hr Drying

Taste Test

It tastes wonderful, initially sweet with a citrus bite afterward, with also a real difference between fruits. The lime could have done with being a bit softer - more boiling next time. Being able to cut the peel to size will be excellent when cooking with it.