Apple Chutney
As with the widely misused term curry, chutney is a westernized interpretation – corruption, if you prefer – of a traditional Indian food preparation. Just as in its truest form curry isn’t a spice mix but a category of dishes, so is chutney a category of compliments to a meal for which there is no singular, definitive version. As with many compliments for food from the vast practice and history of world cooking – think of salsa, think of pickles – chutneys vary by geography, history, and sociology, to name but three. There are chutneys specific to ingredient and specific to locale, chutneys culturally appropriated and chutneys devotedly endemic, and all chutneys are specific to their kitchens.
Chutney is a spiced preserve of fruit, vegetables, and aromatics. Chutneys originated in India from that most common of reasons that heritage food preparations exist: preservation. Versions of chutney present themselves as an effect of colonialism in African, British, French, Caribbean, and American cooking. In this, chutney parallels countless foods from curry to chocolate, as those that traveled from and to indigenous hearths to and from Eurocentric ones via trade routes. While the word “chutney” is derived from the Hindi “catni” concurrently with the Urdu “chatni,” in Europe chutneys were often referred to as “mangoed” fruits or vegetables, conflating them with the tropical fruit, alien to wintry climes until introduced via colonialism, that is arguably at the core of their existence. It also illustrates that, as with “curry,” while chutney is a food inherent to the Indian subcontinent, one can make a case that overall, what many would identify as a chutney or a curry is really British cooking as an effect of colonialism.
One way to tell how your chutney is derived is by the ingredients it’s comprised of. In its home cuisine, fruit chutneys made with mango, papaya, tamarind, and mint are served as compliments to the main course of the meal. Indian cooking runs the flavor spectrum from mild as milk to hot as chiles, and the meal is orchestrated in enhancements and contrasts. Fish is paired with mango chutney, curries with tamarind, mint with tandoor, onion with potato, and so on. If your chutney is sweet, perhaps studded with raisins or citrus, it is of European provenance, dabbed onto a plate of ploughman’s lunch alongside the bandaged cheddar and the brown bread. And if your chutney is a thick, relish-like glob of cranberries, pears, peaches, or tomatoes, your chutney is the American version, showing off in the canning pavilion at the county fair or ferried to the table from a nouvelle cuisine kitchen.
Like many foods at the American table, these chutneys, while not unheard of in earlier cookbooks displaying the bent towards preservation that once was the default American kitchen, are the results of a greater rite: the good living movement. American cooking underwent a sort of lifestyle revolution as the boomer economy boomed. From wine to rumaki, we discovered food and drink that was largely, which is not to say entirely, the provenance of what were labeled the ethnic neighborhoods of American town and country. To use another idiom of the day, it became "done,” especially as an emblem of elegance in entertaining, to serve dinner party or appetizer menus taken from world cooking. Often this was in service to belief in the American melting pot, but it was also an element of the good living through which, for example, Julia Child taught American home cooks about Boeuf Bourguinonne. Chutney wasn’t just a relic from farmhouse preserving or part of the experience of the Indian restaurant. It was on white plates in trendy restaurants and in the glossy pages of homekeeping magazines.
Chutneys typically focus on one ingredient and build complexity of flavor around that. This accounts for the sweet/hot quality that is the fundamental flavor profile of chutney. Vegetable chutneys start with tomatoes, onions, or peppers - familiar to anyone who looks forward to those nuclear red onions waiting like hellfire in the condiment carousel at the Indian restaurant. In that same serving dish, the classic herb chutney is mint blended with cilantro. However, the most popular chutneys are fruit based: mango, papaya, tamarind, lemon, peach, cranberry, and pineapple, to name a few. Of these, our favorite is apple chutney. Apples take to chutney both because their sweetness can be harmonized with a spice merchant's cart of the flavorings that are crucial to chutney, and because - equally crucial to chutney and similar to tutti frutti - they hold their shape during cooking, canning and serving. Here is my original recipe for apple chutney. Make it while apples are in season, safely home canned to give as gifts for the upcoming holidays, to brighten meals of snow day chicken stew, Sunday night pork roast, weekend brunches of eggs and curry.
Apple Chutney
For the chutney
4 lbs. sweet apples, such as Jonathan, Red Delicious, Fuji, or an assortment
1 lb. Granny Smith apples
1 lb. red bell peppers
2 banana peppers
1 large red onion
2 cups golden raisins
1 quart apple cider vinegar
2 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/3 cup crystallized ginger
For the spice blend
1 teaspoon allspice berries
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon onion seeds
3 cardamom pods
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons salt
Note: It is essential to follow safe canning practices. For instructions on safe canning, click here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html or here: https://www.freshpreserving.com/canning-101-getting-started.html
Fennel Relish
Red-Hots
Apple Cider Jelly
Chutney is a spiced preserve of fruit, vegetables, and aromatics. Chutneys originated in India from that most common of reasons that heritage food preparations exist: preservation. Versions of chutney present themselves as an effect of colonialism in African, British, French, Caribbean, and American cooking. In this, chutney parallels countless foods from curry to chocolate, as those that traveled from and to indigenous hearths to and from Eurocentric ones via trade routes. While the word “chutney” is derived from the Hindi “catni” concurrently with the Urdu “chatni,” in Europe chutneys were often referred to as “mangoed” fruits or vegetables, conflating them with the tropical fruit, alien to wintry climes until introduced via colonialism, that is arguably at the core of their existence. It also illustrates that, as with “curry,” while chutney is a food inherent to the Indian subcontinent, one can make a case that overall, what many would identify as a chutney or a curry is really British cooking as an effect of colonialism.
One way to tell how your chutney is derived is by the ingredients it’s comprised of. In its home cuisine, fruit chutneys made with mango, papaya, tamarind, and mint are served as compliments to the main course of the meal. Indian cooking runs the flavor spectrum from mild as milk to hot as chiles, and the meal is orchestrated in enhancements and contrasts. Fish is paired with mango chutney, curries with tamarind, mint with tandoor, onion with potato, and so on. If your chutney is sweet, perhaps studded with raisins or citrus, it is of European provenance, dabbed onto a plate of ploughman’s lunch alongside the bandaged cheddar and the brown bread. And if your chutney is a thick, relish-like glob of cranberries, pears, peaches, or tomatoes, your chutney is the American version, showing off in the canning pavilion at the county fair or ferried to the table from a nouvelle cuisine kitchen.
Like many foods at the American table, these chutneys, while not unheard of in earlier cookbooks displaying the bent towards preservation that once was the default American kitchen, are the results of a greater rite: the good living movement. American cooking underwent a sort of lifestyle revolution as the boomer economy boomed. From wine to rumaki, we discovered food and drink that was largely, which is not to say entirely, the provenance of what were labeled the ethnic neighborhoods of American town and country. To use another idiom of the day, it became "done,” especially as an emblem of elegance in entertaining, to serve dinner party or appetizer menus taken from world cooking. Often this was in service to belief in the American melting pot, but it was also an element of the good living through which, for example, Julia Child taught American home cooks about Boeuf Bourguinonne. Chutney wasn’t just a relic from farmhouse preserving or part of the experience of the Indian restaurant. It was on white plates in trendy restaurants and in the glossy pages of homekeeping magazines.
Chutneys typically focus on one ingredient and build complexity of flavor around that. This accounts for the sweet/hot quality that is the fundamental flavor profile of chutney. Vegetable chutneys start with tomatoes, onions, or peppers - familiar to anyone who looks forward to those nuclear red onions waiting like hellfire in the condiment carousel at the Indian restaurant. In that same serving dish, the classic herb chutney is mint blended with cilantro. However, the most popular chutneys are fruit based: mango, papaya, tamarind, lemon, peach, cranberry, and pineapple, to name a few. Of these, our favorite is apple chutney. Apples take to chutney both because their sweetness can be harmonized with a spice merchant's cart of the flavorings that are crucial to chutney, and because - equally crucial to chutney and similar to tutti frutti - they hold their shape during cooking, canning and serving. Here is my original recipe for apple chutney. Make it while apples are in season, safely home canned to give as gifts for the upcoming holidays, to brighten meals of snow day chicken stew, Sunday night pork roast, weekend brunches of eggs and curry.
Apple Chutney
For the chutney
4 lbs. sweet apples, such as Jonathan, Red Delicious, Fuji, or an assortment
1 lb. Granny Smith apples
1 lb. red bell peppers
2 banana peppers
1 large red onion
2 cups golden raisins
1 quart apple cider vinegar
2 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/3 cup crystallized ginger
For the spice blend
1 teaspoon allspice berries
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon onion seeds
3 cardamom pods
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons salt
- Place a drop of food-safe vegetable cleaner in your palm. Rub each pepper with the cleaner, then run each pepper under cool water until it is clean. Stem, seed, and pith the peppers. Cut the bell peppers into dice and cut the banana peppers into rings.
- Fill a large mixing bowl 1/4 with water. Add a teaspoon of the cider vinegar to the water. Peel, core, and pith each apple. Rough-cut the apples into bite-sized pieces. Place the cut apple into the vinegar water bath.
- Measure the raisins into the vinegar-water bath.
- Peel and stem the onion. Cut the onion into half from stem to blossom end. Cut each half into quarters. Cut each quarter along the stem-blossom line to form thin half-moon shaped slices. Measure the cut onions; you should have approximately 2 cups. Prepare the spices
- Measure the allspice berries, cloves, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, onion seeds, mustard seeds, and peppercorns into a mortar and pestle or old coffee grinder. Pulse the spices just until they break apart and become very fragrant - you do not want to grind them too finely.
- Measure the cinnamon, pepper flakes, and salt into the pulsed spice mixture. Make the chutney
- Measure the brown sugar into a large stock pot. Measure the vinegar into the pot.
- Turn the burner to low. Use a whisk to stir the sugar and vinegar together until the sugar dissolves into the vinegar.
- Working carefully to avoid splashing, measure the cut onions and peppers into the pot.
- Drain the apple-raisin mixture well. Use a large spoon to transfer the the drained apples and raisins into the pot.
- Measure the ginger into the pot.
- Use the spoon to stir the mixture until it is thoroughly incorporated. Turn the burner to medium. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally.
- Once the mixture begins to boil, measure the pulsed spice mixture and the cardamom pods into the pot.
- Stir the mixture together. Adjust the heat so that the mixture stays at gentle boil
- Cook, partially covered, stirring occasionally until the mixture is thick and very fragrant, approximately 30 - 45 minutes.
- Can the chutney following the canning instructions below. Refrigerate any leftover chutney to use within a couple of weeks.
Note: It is essential to follow safe canning practices. For instructions on safe canning, click here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html or here: https://www.freshpreserving.com/canning-101-getting-started.html
- Place a clean towel on a counter near the canner but not near the burner.
- Use canning tongs to remove hot jars from water bath. Do your best not to touch the hot jars; let the tongs do the work. Place hot jars mouth up on the clean towel.
- Use a jar lifter to transport a jar mouth-side up to the pot containing the hot chutney. Place a clean canning funnel into the mouth of the jar. Carefully use a large spoon to fill the jar with chutney to the ½-inch mark.
- Check for and remove air bubbles if any.
- Use a clean, damp sponge to wipe the rim of each jar. Center a clean, hot lid on each jar. Screw a band down on each jar until it meets resistance; increase just until tight.
- Use canning tongs to return the jars to the boiling water bath. Add more water if necessary to ensure that the jars are completely covered by boiling water by 1 inch. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
- After jars have processed for ten minutes in the boiling water bath, turn off the heat. Remove the canner lid and set aside. Let jars sit in hot water ten minutes.
- After ten minutes, use the canning tongs to remove the jars. Being very careful of the hot jars, lids and liquid, place jars upright on the towel. Allow to sit 24 hours.
- After 24 hours, check for a vacuum seal (see instructions). Label each jar with the contents and the date prepared.
- Safely prepared, stored and sealed, apple chutney will keep for one year from date of preparation.
Fennel Relish
Red-Hots
Apple Cider Jelly
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