Apricot chutney
Aug. 4th, 2008 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThese days I always seem to default to chutney before jam, so the first round of apricot bounty is being chutneyized. (I thought I'd taken lots, but they fit into the pot just fine. I'll have to obtain more for jam.) As usual with chutney, I looked at a couple of recipes online, then put together another permutation based on what I already have in the house (which still doesn't include onions, unfortunately).
I've never worked with fresh apricots before (heck, I never even tasted a fresh one until I was adult; the only apricots I knew of were dried, which is a totally different beast. Good, but different.). They're stone fruits, but much easier to work with than peaches or nectarines because the pits are loose (and the fruit is dryer). It's easy to split them in half by hand, toss the pits in the compost bin, cut off any no longer good parts (and rinse out any little white worms; I now understand why I'd rather not eat an apricot out of hand).
I diced the fruit roughly, and tossed it in a stock pot with cider vinegar and some brown sugar. I chopped up half a head of garlic, ground some black pepper, grated a knob of fresh ginger, and added that (Measurements? We don't need no stinking measurements! Until I liked how it looked and smelled is about all I can tell you. Oh, except that the vinegar was until I finished off the big gallon jug.). I looked for the ground cayenne, didn't find any, and added two fresh Thai chili peppers, most of the seeds taken out, and kept in big enough pieces to eat around/discard later. I added ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, and let it simmer while I boiled a huge pot of water with canning jars and bands. When the big pot boiled, I canned the chutney, realizing as I did that perhaps I should have included dried fruit in the mixture. Ah, well. Results: two pints and two half-pints of apricot chutney, with a bit more for immediate gratification. And about eight fresh apricots left.
If I get more apricots, I think the next experiments will be jam, either with or without some cranberries (requires acquiring sugar, unless I also want to play with alternate sweeteners), or liqueur (requires acquiring neutral alcohol, also sugar at some point). And in either case, I need more lids. Time to go to Tag's.
I've never worked with fresh apricots before (heck, I never even tasted a fresh one until I was adult; the only apricots I knew of were dried, which is a totally different beast. Good, but different.). They're stone fruits, but much easier to work with than peaches or nectarines because the pits are loose (and the fruit is dryer). It's easy to split them in half by hand, toss the pits in the compost bin, cut off any no longer good parts (and rinse out any little white worms; I now understand why I'd rather not eat an apricot out of hand).
I diced the fruit roughly, and tossed it in a stock pot with cider vinegar and some brown sugar. I chopped up half a head of garlic, ground some black pepper, grated a knob of fresh ginger, and added that (Measurements? We don't need no stinking measurements! Until I liked how it looked and smelled is about all I can tell you. Oh, except that the vinegar was until I finished off the big gallon jug.). I looked for the ground cayenne, didn't find any, and added two fresh Thai chili peppers, most of the seeds taken out, and kept in big enough pieces to eat around/discard later. I added ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, and let it simmer while I boiled a huge pot of water with canning jars and bands. When the big pot boiled, I canned the chutney, realizing as I did that perhaps I should have included dried fruit in the mixture. Ah, well. Results: two pints and two half-pints of apricot chutney, with a bit more for immediate gratification. And about eight fresh apricots left.
If I get more apricots, I think the next experiments will be jam, either with or without some cranberries (requires acquiring sugar, unless I also want to play with alternate sweeteners), or liqueur (requires acquiring neutral alcohol, also sugar at some point). And in either case, I need more lids. Time to go to Tag's.