Courgette and Tomato Chutney

A few days back I had a specific request for a new chutney flavour. A regular customer to my market stall had just finished a jar of my beetroot and orange chutney and was saying how much she enjoyed it, but one of her favourites was courgette chutney, which she couldn’t find anywhere; so she asked me to make her some. The task duly taken on board I dug through my recipe notebooks and came across what sounded like a very tasty recipe for courgette and tomato chutney.

This chutney was so easy to make, a bit of chopping time, but that really is the most laborious part of it. The smell filling the kitchen as it cooked was divine and after putting it in the jars I had a small amount left, not enough to fill a jar…so of course I had to eat it. Even though there had been no aging time to soften the sharpness of the vinegar it was delicious. Tasting that good just made I have high hopes for it after 4-6 weeks.

Here’s the recipe, give it a go!

Ingredients

500ml cider vinegar – I used Aspalls Cyder Vinegar

300ml water

400g brown sugar – I used half brown caster sugar and half light muscovado

1 tbsp mixed spice

2 tbsp yellow mustard seeds

1 cinnamon stick

1tsp salt – I used Maldon sea salt

4 onions chopped small

1kg diced courgettes

1kg chopped tomatoes – I used plum tomatoes

4 eating apples peeled, cored and chopped – I used cox apples

300g sultanas

Method

In a large, thick-bottomed pan (not aluminium) add the vinegar, water, sugar, all the spices and salt. Bring to a simmer stirring continuously until all the sugar has dissolved.

Once the sugar has dissolved add all the other ingredients and turn up the heat. Bring to the boil but do not cover. Once the mixture is boiling turn down the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally until the liquid is greatly reduced. The chutney will become darker as it cooks down, just how dark depends on the type of brown sugar you have used. Mine took about 1½ hours to reduce sufficiently to be placed in jars. When you think it is ready draw a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan, if you can see the bottom of the pan clearly along the path of the spoon and it takes a second or two for the remaining liquid to close over it the chutney is ready.

Pot up into hot sterilized jam jars, seal and label when cool. Leave in a cool, dark place for at least 4-6 weeks before trying. Make sure your lids are vinegar proof and have a vinegar proof seal.

HINTS: As you are cooking with vinegar make sure your pan is stainless steel and not aluminium. I use a proper maslin pan that has a wide opening for easy evaporation and a thick base that reduces the chances of the chutney or jam sticking and burning.

My jars and lids are bought specifically for the market stall and are not second hand. I sterilize them by washing jars and lids in very hot soapy water, rinsing in hot water and then placing the wet, unlidded jars upside down on a baking sheet, the lids are placed on a second baking sheet and everything is placed in a fan oven at 130C for 30 minutes by which time the jars will have dried. I turn off the oven leaving the jars inside to cool a little ready for the chutney once it has finished cooking.

Days Without End – Review

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry has just won the Costa book of the year award. Barry is the only author to have done so twice, he previously won with The Secret Scripture in 2008. Although I have known of Barry as an author for sometime I had not, until Days Without End, read any of his work. I was inspired to buy the book after being told about it by one of my peers on the writing course I am attending. When I got to the bookshop I found they only had it in hardback. I don’t normally buy novels in hardback as they are just too expensive, but as it was my birthday I decided I needed to buy myself a present.

The story revolves around Thomas McNulty, an orphan refugee from Ireland’s great famine, who has made his way to America during its formative frontier years. As a teen he befriends another lad, John Cole, who is in a similar position and it isn’t long before they become lovers battling to survive under harsh conditions and in even harsher environments. Their journey takes them from performing on a small town stage for miners, Thomas in female roles, through to enlistment in the army, fighting in the American Civil War, battling Native Americans and on to a form of wedded bliss before their world is turned upside down yet again towards the end of the book. An older McNulty, through a retrospective narrative, tells us the story.

To say I enjoyed the book is not really correct, but I was fascinated by it. The book has many visceral, disturbing and at times brutal events and McNulty and Cole constantly have to fight for survival. The language reflects the people with oft times use of the f- and c-words, so if you are offended by that… A couple of the main things I struggled with were, firstly, the use of dialect in the narrative resulting in poor syntax and grammar, which perfectly fits the narrator telling the story (you can hear his voice in your head as you read), but for me broke the flow of the reading and I still wasn’t used to it by the end. Secondly Thomas McNulty is an uneducated, bread line orphan who, with John Cole makes some money along their journey, but it is mainly a subsistence living, yet as he tells his story he uses many big, multi syllable words that, to me, seem incongruous with the character. Granted he is in his 40s when telling the story of his and Cole’s adventures, but at no point does he mix with characters or a lifestyle that would facilitate this extra knowledge.

The descriptive writing is fabulous. You get such a sense of the scenery and settings, the moods and emotions, but be warned a lot of the mood and emotion is quite primeval and animalistic. One of the Costa prize judges was quoted as saying it was the best depiction of love in fiction, or words to that effect (check the Guardian review). I would take issue with that big time. The relationship between McNulty and Cole is a sort of love, but born out of the struggle for survival where the friendship of the two melds in sex and companionship. It is a basic, functional love more akin to the relationship between the two protagonists in Brokeback Mountain. Where the love of these men comes through is for their adopted daughter Winona, a Native American girl. I won’t go into how the men came to adopt her but suffice to say they were in an army platoon that, a few weeks prior, had attacked and virtually wiped out a Native American village, killing Winona’s mother in the process. From other reviews I have read many reviewers seem to have a fair amount of empathy with McNulty and Cole; I am afraid I don’t. I didn’t find them particularly likeable characters and the ease with which they joined in the slaughter of Native Americans definitely added to that. However, I did find them fascinating, well-written characters.

So the upshot of my review is that I would most definitely recommend the book and if you struggle with the dialect try to keep with it to the end. I finished it about 10 days ago and I am still running the characters and events through my head and for me one of the signs of a good read is that it doesn’t leave you the moment you have reached ‘The End’.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry. Published by Faber.

Faber Writing Course – a 1/3 of the way through

I can’t believe we are half way through February already; this year is going SO fast! Sorry for the delay writing a blog post about the Faber Academy course I am doing, it’s been pretty hectic the last couple of weeks. We are now four sessions into the course and I wanted to have something interesting to say about it…that’s not to say I haven’t been having an interesting time so far. You know how it is with courses though – the first session is all introduction stuff, for the second session the person leading it was away doing book signings and radio interviews, so it is really only the third session and last week’s fourth time in class that we really got our teeth into something. Last week and week five have an extra hour tagged on to catch up for missing week 2.

We are a diverse group of writers from all backgrounds, most of us are 40 plus and looking to get something in print. Some people want to concentrate on short stories/novellas and others, like yours truly, want to play in the big game with the full works 80,000+ word novels. In the intro session we all submitted our WIP ideas and got feedback on them. I was impressed with some of the things people are working on and there are definitely several I’ll happily read if/when brought to fruition. My own feedback was that the Basil WIP is very viable – it’s apparently topical for the young adult market and could be a very viable proposition – here’s hoping anyway!

Week three saw us all exploring the ‘writer’s voice’- our own and those of famous writers like Austen, Hemingway and Stephen King. We had to dig deep into ourselves to find our motivations, experiences and traits that might influence our own writer’s voice.

Last Thursday was particularly good – all about plots…plot ideas, plot structures, plot pacing, the rise and fall of plot development through a novel, three act plotting and so on. I really enjoyed it and there were some good writing exercises to focus us. I love the writing off the cuff exercises where you are given something – an object, a character, a scenario and you start to plot around it. In fact I have a detailed plot and character set for a dark psychological thriller that was born out of just an exercise a year ago, more of that another time though.

Homework this week is writing a 1500 word synopsis of our work in progress which is to be written playing to all the rules set by agents and publishing houses. It seems most authors hate writing a synopsis of their book, but I am loving it…hope I’m doing it right! I started with detailed bullet points of all the main points and actions during the novel, now I need to flesh around them according to the ‘rules’ of synopsis writing – correct person narrative, tenses etc.

I also got feedback on my first 2000 words of Basil’s story that had been handed in for assessment. It was with a little trepidation that I sat there seeing my peers receive feedback and waiting for my name to be called. It was also with a huge relief that I was told apart from a couple of cock ups with tenses in the first paragraph it was “…excellent. I really enjoyed reading it and look forward to more.’…I couldn’t have been happier, great encouragement to keep going…just as well since I’m over 25,000 words into Basil so far!

Next week I need to submit my own offering for peer review the following week. The rest of the class will be getting Basil’s story part way through so I think I will include a very short resume of what has gone before. I hope they like it. I think this coming Thursday is sub plotting and character development.

That’s all for now. I’ll give you another update after a couple more lessons and let you know how Basil’s shaping up.