Chutney

I smashed my phone just over a week ago, and it started something within me that I am finding hard to overcome.  True, when I first sent it away to get fixed, I was nervous about how I was going to cope without it.  I’ve had an iPhone for years now, and I’d begun to be accustomed to the immediate access it gives me to everything I thought I needed.  But by the end of the weekend, I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom.  After a few more days I realised I hadn’t checked my email in over two days and that my blog was neglected. I bought a real newspaper, instead of checking the new online.  I spent my mornings with a cup of coffee and a book, I spent my lunch breaks doing the crossword, and my evenings knitting, with nothing but the radio in the background and a cup of fresh mint tea. I went back to Bristol for a few nights, left my laptop in London, and didn’t miss it one bit.

Which brings me to now, and my current predicament, which is best summed up by the fact that I am going to buy a typewriter tomorrow.

I want to make some bread.  I want to smoke my own bacon, cure some ham, some salmon.  I want to make cheese, yoghurt.  I want to get a couple of dogs and a goat.  Perhaps a cow. I want to climb a mountain and go swimming in the sea.  I want to see some cliffs.  Some real cliffs.  I want to eat fish and chips with my legs dangling off a harbour wall, with one eye peeled for greedy seagulls.

Is this a natural reaction to living in London for a while?  Perhaps I’m just tired.  I’ve been spending a lot of time doing London things, the kind of things I usually try to avoid.  Like Soho on a Friday night.  Or Oxford Street on a Saturday morning, and the central line at five o'clock.  It's enough to make anyone want to run away.

So that's exactly what I did: I ran away to Bristol, and more specifically, my parents’ kitchen.  I picked some tomatoes in the garden.  I walked the dogs in the woods and came so close to a cow I could’ve touched it.  I went to the farmers market in St. Nicks, bought some more wool and knitting needles.  I walked the dogs in the woods again, in the heaviest rainstorm I've seen for a long time.  And then I settled down with the radio playing, and made some chutney.

Making chutney is something I have never done before.  I have trouble with the idea of making something that I cannot eat immediately.  Plus I rarely have enough of anything to make chutney, or jam, or anything traditionally used for preserving those lovely gluts of delicious things. I'm developing a real chip on my shoulder about not having space to grow anything edible, which is only heightened by the fact that as I write this from my flat, I can see my neighbours picking cherries off their tree and debating when the apples will be ready.  Salt in the wound, I tell you.  But anyway, I love chutney.  When there's some in the flat, I eat it on most things, but a jar never lasts more than a couple of days around here.  There are some really good chutneys around, which is another reason why I've never really made any.  Duchy Originals tomato is one of my favourites, but the Toast rhubarb chutney is something very special indeed (from a company called Toast, how could you expect anything less?). I didn't have a recipe to hand, so I raided the fridge, ate a lot of cheese and chutney as research, put some things in a big pan and hoped for the best.  No one's going to eat it until next year, so I can't tell you whether it's nice or not.  But it was so worth making, just for that delicious sense of calm.

Tomato Chutney

makes three big jars or four little ones

750g tomatoes

four onions, chopped

four cloves of garlic, finely chopped

two carrots, finely chopped

two sticks of celery, finely chopped

100g raisins, roughly chopped

300ml of white wine vinegar

300g light brown muscavado sugar

2 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds

Cook the onion, garlic, carrots and celery over a low to medium heat

Add the mustard seeds

Add the chopped tomatoes, raisins, sugar and vinegar

Cook for an hour, maybe more, until it is chutney-ish

Spoon into sterilised jars and leave to cool before storing for a few months.