Edible/Usable

Sweet Tomato Chutney

 

I'm having a blog identity crisis.  I've been ignoring my other half.  I'm not married, so no, I don't mean my husband.  I mean the other half of what this blog is supposed to be about.  I've been having a nice summer creating lots of salads, canning stuff when I can (and freezing it when I can't can) and doing a bit of baking here and there.  But I haven't been writing at all about usability and user experience.    Definitely part of is has been that I've been taking advantage of all of the social media, promotion and blog marketing tools that I've discovered in the food blog world, so I've been focusing a lot on writing recipe posts.  I'm pretty amazed at the sheer number of food blogs there are out there, many of them excellent and inspiring.   But it's also a little overwhelming.  I definitely feel like I need to both step up my game in the quality of food photos (which means investing in a decent digital SLR) and the variety of recipe posts.   But I also need to really find my niche and differentiate my blog from others.  I still think that the differentiator should be a focus on usability and user experience with cooking, so I plan on focusing on that a little more down the road.  Those kinds of posts are more difficult to write, and generally not as much fun, but really, I'm not doing this to have fun.

But for now, here's a fun chutney recipe.   At this point you must think that I'm chutney crazy.  I sort of am, but my real reason for making chutneys this summer/fall rather than jam, jelly or simply freezing fruit has been twofold:  first, I've made jams and jellies all of my life and I don't find them particularly challenging anymore.  Chutneys have more ingredients, have more complex flavors and the end result can be used in ways other than just spread on toast.  I serve this chutney with curries, with a cheese plate, as a condiment for egg rolls, on a sandwich, with chicken, fish or pork.  Yesterday, I was making some chicken soup, so I added a teaspoonful of the chutney, and it added a nice acidic sweetness that really added to the overall flavor of the soup. 

The second reason is economic.  I think it can be argued that price isn't an issue if you are learning something about preserving food, so it doesn't matter how much you spend on home canning.  But it can also be argued that the main reasons to preserve food at home is to control the quality and sources of what you eat and to save money.   I didn't can tomatoes this summer.  The late blight on the east coast and New England drove up the price of organic tomatoes, and it didn't make sense for me to pay $50 for 11lbs of tomatoes (nice organic tomatoes run about $4.50/lb at the farmers market) which would translate to probably 5 or 6 pints of canned tomatoes - a cost of roughly $8/pint.  I didn't get out of the city often enough to canvas rural farmers markets for cheaper tomatoes.   I wanted to do something with tomatoes before they all disappeared from the farmers market, so I decided to make this chutney.  I bought some cheaper, non organic tomatoes at $2.00/lb from the farmers market.  I got a little over 5lbs of tomatoes for the chutney, which in the end resulted in 8 half-pints of chutney.  Figuring in sugar, vinegar, spices and raisins (organic where I could, all cost approximately $4.00) each half-pint ended up costing me about $1.75 each. 

The magic of fruit chutney is to have idiosyncratic yet complimentary blends of fruit, sugar, spices and acid.  The amounts of each vary depending of if you are making a spicier chutney or a sweeter one.  This chutney is pretty sweet, but it's also very acidic, with equal parts of sugar and vinegar.  You probably could make this chutney spicier by adding fresh chilies or more cayenne, but I think I'd rather have a hot chutney (like lime or a specific spicy chili chutney) as a separate condiment.   This chutney is fairly easy to make - it doesn't require a lot of preparation besides peeling and cutting the tomatoes, chopping garlic and ginger.  It calls for garam masala, a ground spice blend which you can make yourself by grinding your own spices (cinnamon, cumin, clove, pepper, ginger, anise, etc) which I did with the last chutney I made.  One of the great things about living in NYC is that you have close access to specialty stores that carry fresh spices and spice mixes.   I found some already mixed garam masala from Dual Specialty Store  on 1st ave and 6th street - their custom house blend is great.

Three notes on this chutney.  First, it WILL make your apartment/house smell like vinegar while it's cooking (but in a nice way, of course).  Second, you really do need to cook it for longer than you think you do.  It should get to the point where it is dark, thick and shiny, about 90 minutes.  Third, the recipe below makes approximately 8 half-pints so I processed them in a boiling water bath.  If you don't feel up to processing them, cut the recipe in half, and after cooking put the chutney in glass jars while it's still hot, let cool and refrigerate.

Sweet Tomato Chutney

Adapted From Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking

• 5 lbs of fresh tomatoes
• 4 cups white sugar
• 4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh garlic (about 10 cloves or 1 medium head)
• 1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek seed
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1 t cayenne pepper
• 3 t salt
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 cup raisins

Peel tomatoes by scoring the tomatoes and blanching for 20 -30 seconds in boiling water.  Chop into large chunks.  Place all ingredients, except raisins, in a large non-reactive heavy bottomed pot.    Cover and bring to a boil.  After 30 minutes, remove the lid, add raisins and adjust the heat so you have a low boil.  Continue cooking uncovered for approximately another hour, until it  has reduced by half, is thick, dark and shiny.  You will need to stir it more frequently towards the end as it will be thick and you don't want it to burn on the bottom.

If you are going to can the chutney, prepare your jars by sterilizing in boiling water.  Fill jars with hot chutney, gently tap to remove air bubbles, wipe jar edges, and place lids on the jars.  Process in a  boiling water bath for 20 minutes.  Confirm all jars are sealed.  Chutney will last for approximately 1 year in sealed jars.

Plum Chutney

I'm participating in Summer Fest 2009 - the month-long blog food extravaganza.  This week's theme is Fruit from trees, and rather than doing a pie or a desert, I thought I'd so something different: chutney! 

I'm a relatively recent convert to chutney - but what a convert I am!  I actually can't eat Indian food or most curries now unless I have a sweet/vinegary chutney to counter balance the spicy/savory of Indian curries.  Last year, I made a sweet tomato chutney from a recipe by Madhur Jaffrey from her book "World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking."  But this year, with all of the news on the east coast about the tomato blight, I decided to make a chutney from something different (I'll just have to ration that last 1/2 pint of tomato chutney I have left).

Walking around the farmers market after work, I saw that plums were just going out of season, so I bought a couple of pounds.  I got a few responses to my Twitter query (Twuery?) for good plum chutney recipes (thanks to @FoodPreserver1 and @crankycakes).  I took some basics from these, but then added the spice mixture idea, garam masala, common in Indian food, to give it a little more spice (not hot spice, but spicy spice).  I grind my own spices in a coffee grinder (that is only used for grinding spices), but if you can't do this, you can usually get garam masala mixes in many asian grocery stores.

I used what were sold as "sugar plums," which had dark skin and a dark red flesh, but when I make this again I will probably use a different type that has firmer yellow flesh.  I would also make sure that they are just on the edge of ripe - mine were too ripe and weren't easy to cut and also resulted in a chutney that is a little less chunky than I would like it to be.

Serve this chutney with Indian curries, as an addition to a cheese plate or in a sandwich (turkey or chicken with brie and this chutney would be amazing)It would also go really well with meats like lamb or pork.

Plum Chutney

2 T yellow mustard seeds
3 lbs plums, cut into quarters
1 1/4 cups raw sugar (I used Sugar in the Raw)
1 1/4 cups white vinegar
1/2 cup white onion
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 T kosher salt

2 whole star anise
1 t whole cloves
1/2 t whole allspice
1/2 t whole cardamom

2 cinnamon sticks

If you are going to put up this chutney, wash 5-6 half-pint jars and lids.  Get the water bath canner ready, but don't start heating until 15 minutes or so before the chutney is done cooking.

Cut up the plums (leaving the skin on) and put aside.  Put the whole spices (with the exception of the cinnamon sticks and mustard seeds) in a spice grinder and pulse until finely ground.  Heat a heavy bottom pot and add the mustard seeds to the dry pot.  Watch them carefully, and when they start to pop and jump, turn down the heat and add the plums.  Add the remaining ingredients including all of the remaining spices.  Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer until significantly reduced, about 50 minutes to an hour. 

Stir occasionally, but towards the end, stir frequently, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom.  I always try to cook chutneys a little longer than I think they should be cooked - they always turn out better that way.  The chutney should be thick, dark and somewhat shiny and you should be able to see the bottom of the pot as you stir it.

Sterilize your jars, and fill each leaving a 1/2 inch headroom.  Process for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath canner.  If you don't want to can this, the chutney will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.

Makes 5-6 half pints.

List Post: A Cornucopia of Food Blogs

Back in the olden days of the internet, in the late 90's, before hosted blogging tools like Blogger, Typepad and Livejournal, it was relatively difficult to post your thoughts and photos online, have people comment about them, deliver almost real-time notifications of updates and get real-time stats on who's been visiting.  The challenge then was how to get content online.  The challenge now is that it has become so easy, fast and in many cases free to post content online, that the number of blogs and content on niche subjects is overwhelming.  Technorati has some interesting statistics on "the state of the blogosphere".  Since I started this blog and joined the fray, I've realized that food bloggers are a huge group (271 people have tagged themselves on Twitter as being "foodbloggers" and I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg).  The issue for me has been figuring out which blogs I want to read on a regular basis.

There are several things I've come to realize about my use of food blogs in compiling this list. First, I've relied on Twitter way more than Google for referrals and links to new blogs that I wasn't previously familiar with. Second, I definitely have noticed a 'birds of a feather' syndrome - both on blogs and on Twitter.   People link to to similar blogs on blogrolls and follow similar 'Tweeps' on Twitter.  I started following a locavore food blogger and subsequently was following and was followed by lots of other locavore food bloggers.  When I tweeted something about a diet I was on, I got several followers who wrote blogs about diets and nutrition.   Third I really don't like using RSS - or I haven't found the right RSS reader.  I'd much rather go directly to each blog and read posts in context.  I think this method works well for blogs that are updated at most once a day - the general publication scheudle of most food blogs that I read. 

Despite all of the blog content I consume on a daily basis, and the fact that I've started my own food blog, I really don't think that blogs are the best medium for recipes.  Two things that I want to do with a recipe when I find one are to 'save' it for future reference (a digital version of clipping it from the newspaper and sticking it in a binder or folder somewhere) and/or to print it so I can either make it right away or save it for future use.   Neither of these things are easily possible with most blogs in the way they are formatted.   You have to use a 3rd party for saving (del.icio.us or other bookmarking tool) and either print a whole long post or cut and paste to print.  Most of the online recipe sites have added this sort of functionality, but most blogs don't have it.  Lastly, in general Google does a lousy job of finding recipes on food blogs.  Unless you know the specific title of the post, or unless is particularly popular, rarely do you get results for blog posts in a Google search.  I haven't found a good search tool for finding recipes posted on blogs.

So here's my list of blogs that I've been reading and using in the past few months.  It doesn't include blogs that are only about restaurants or the restaurant scene (like Grub Street which I read occasionally).  I'll probably add to and remove items from this list in the future.

Cookbook Review: Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone

There's been a lot in the press lately about preserving food at home:  canning, curing and pickling.  Maybe it's because of the bad economy, or maybe because of the growing movement for people to be closer to and more in touch with the food they consume.  Since 1967 with the "Fair Packaging and Labeing Act", the ingredients of any packaged food must be listed on the label.   But beyond having the ability to decipher what some of the ingredients actually are, are you ever really sure what's in the packaged food you buy? 

From the article on Salon last week about home canning, the discussion in the letters  was both about whether or not home canning really can be economical (the article starts out with the author stating that she's eating a $17.00 peanut butter sandwich because she spent so much money on the homemade jam in it) or if it's just a anachronistic craft and a craze that guilty city dwellers partake in to make themselves feel better about themselves.  For me, the answer is "sorta both."

I live in Brooklyn.  I don't have a garden, and for the past few years, I haven't belonged to a CSA.  My only source of fresh vegetables is the farmers markets that dot the city and my occasional trip to Vermont, upstate NY or Pennsylvania.  As anyone who's shopped at farmers markets in the city, even when produce is in season and plentiful, it's often not cheap.  But I really enjoy the process and hard work that goes into making jam, chutney, pickles and other condiments that can easily be preserved (either canned or frozen), and I'm always proud of the end product.

That's why I especially like Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone .  Though it does give good, basic instructions on the process of preserving food, the real focus of the book is how you can make small batches of preservable foods that become pivot points for meals that you can make all year long.  The book is structured into sections on types of food - fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, & fungi and meats and fish.  Within each section, there are several "master recipes" - for things like Brandied Figs, Meyer Lemons, Preserved Zucchini and Sauerkraut, followed by recipes for meals and dishes that use the "master recipe."

Although I've only tried one recipe in this book so far, I wanted to review it now, mainly because it's summer and it's time to be inspired by some of these recipes and start putting stuff up.

How it stacks up to the cookbook review criteria:

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

I'm not a vegetarian. I was a vegan for about 3 years, and I worked in college as a vegetarian cook, but I'm a meat eater now.  I really do think that everyone should try being a vegetarian (or even a vegan) for at least a few months of their life.  I think it gives you a full appreciation of how good meat can be, and also how we take vegetables for granted.  And you might loose a few pounds.

That said, if you are a vegetarian, thinking about becoming one, you just joined your local CSA, or you just love vegetables, this cookbook is for you.  Not only can you find delicious recipes for most common vegetables, there are also recipes for the most uncommon ones - things like kamut, salsify, Jerusalem artichokes, Jicama and amaranth.  It also has great basic recipes for desserts, salads, condiments, side dishes and main courses.  Vegetarianism has changed in the last 15 -20 years.  It's moved away from the "crunchy," soy-based, Braggs flavored, Moosewood Cookbook,  "counter culture"  hippie inspired fare, to something that is both political (green) and trendy (green).  Deborah Madison has been at the forefront of the local, sustainable "slow food" movement since 1979 when she helped open Greens Restaurant in San Francisco at the Zen Center.

But besides all of the issues about food, where we get it, how it affects the ecology of the earth and  how this is all relevant to what we eat and how we eat it, this is one of my favorite cookbooks because of it's sheer utility.  Using the 'cookbook grading methodology' I wrote about previously, here's how this book stacks up:

Inspiration:  This is one of my go-to cookbooks when I have an ingredient, especially a vegetable that I don't know what to do with.  It has great photos, ideas for menus and a really great introduction that inspires you to cook.  Most recipes also feature suggested substitutions, alternate ingredients, food pairing and serving suggestions, mostly in the sidebar of the main recipe so as not to interfere if you want to stick to the original.

Instruction:  Most of the recipes in this book are not difficult, especially for a cook with some experience.  But, for more difficult items like making fresh pasta or explaining different varieties or types of vegetables (e.g Flageolets, Jacobs Cattle and Marrow are all different types of beans) she provides clear instructions on handling, amounts, cooking times and storage.

Resource:  Even for basic recipes like risotto, pie crust and pesto, I often turn to this book to get direction.  The index is comprehensive, and since it's organized by type of food (salads, sandwiches) and courses, it's easy to find what you are looking for.

On that note, I'll leave you with a random recipe that I haven't tried yet, but plan to in the near future: 

Braised Red Radishes

• 20 plump radishes (red or multicolored)
• 1-2 tablespoons of butter
• 1 shallot, diced
• 1 teaspon chopped thyme or several pinches dried
• Salt and freshly milled pepper

Trim the leaves from the radishes, leaving a bit of the green stems, and scrub them.   If the leaves are tender and in good condition, wash them and set aside.  Leave smaller radishes whole and halve or quarter large ones.

Melt 2-3 talbesppons of butter in a small saute pan.  Add the shallot and thyme and cook for 1 minute over medium heat.  Add the radishes, a little salt and pepper, and water just to cover.  Simer until the radishes are tender, 3-5 minutes.  Add the leaves if using and cook until they are wilted and tender.  1 minute more.  Remove the radishes to a serving dish.  Boil the liquid, adding a teaspooon or two more butter if you like, until only about 1/4 cup remains.  Pour it over the radishes and serve.

(she's big on braising vegetables, which truthfully is a really great thing if you haven't tried it.  The braised fennel recipe in this book is one of my favorites)

From "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison

It's Gettin' Hot In Here

Yes, today feels like spring.  Finally.  I have my (newly cleaned) windows open.  But what I really want to talk about is kitchen thermometers.  I'm going to a friend's house for Sunday lunch (a lovely British tradition) tomorrow, and I'm bringing dessert.  I decided to make a lemon tart, and found a really nice recipe in the "Baking" cookbook that L&R gave me last year.  There's a whole story behind the 'creamy lemon tart' - some fellow in France emulsifying lots of butter - so I decided to make it.

 The recipe calls for a double boiler, constant whisking, and heating the lemon curd to a temp of 180 degrees.  Often the issue I've had with thermometers is that they don't measure high enough heat - say if you're making caramel, candy or jelly (generally 250 degrees).    I actually have two kitchen thermometers, and they both go beyond 180 degrees.  My problem this time was that I had a really hard time keeping the thermometer in the mixture while stirring at the same time.  I dropped each of them into the pot at least two times.  I also got a steam burn on one of my hands.  I'm sure it was funny to watch, but it was frustrating and I actually never got the curd beyond 170 degrees.  I just kind of eyeballed it.  I'll find out tomorrow if it really worked or not.

What I'd really like to have is some sort of thermometer that you could clip to the edge of the pan, and that would stick out away from the side so you could get an accurate temperature.  Does this exist?  If not, it should.

Overall assessment - kitchen thermometer=fail.

Update: I'm trying out the Foodista web site to drive traffic to this site. Here's a link: (btw, this is NOT the recipe that I used for my lemon curd...)