Green tomato chutney

It's that time of year again, when we change our polytunnels over from summer to winter crops. This entails taking out tomato vines now that they are past their best, and replacing them with crops such as watercress, which means that we now have green tomatoes for sale in the farm shop, priced at £1.50 per kilo. One of our local volunteers has sent this recipe for green tomato chutney, which we thought you might like to try:-

Green Tomato Chutney

Bosavern Green Tomatoes, Bosavern Red Onions, Bosavern Chillies.

1kg green tomatoes

1kg of red (or brown) onions

150g raisins (I put some dried dates in too as they needed using up)

3 chillies (or to taste)

3 cloves garlic (or to taste - I used 6!)

1 lt vinegar (your choice - I used lots of part bottles up from my shelves, but you could just stick to malt if that suits)

500g sugar (again - I used up some ends in packets - muscovado, demerara, etc)

2 tsp ground black pepper

2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp salt.

Chop up the tomatoes and onions - not too small - you want to see the constituent parts! Roughly chop the dried fruit, slice the chillies fairly thin and crush the garlic. Put in a lage pan along with the vinegar and sugar. Bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer. Keep simmering, stirring occaisionally until the liquid reduces and you have a nice chutney. Remember it will be thicker once cooled. 

 

Once cool, but not cold, put into sterilised jars and pop the lids on.

 

Store best in a cupboard (out of direct sunlight). Give at least half the jars away to friends!

This recipe is very forgiving to exact amounts and as you can see - you can swap things in and it is great for using up 'ends' be tat different vinegars, sugar or dried fruit. You can always halve the quantities if you don't want to give any away!