Sometimes things just arrive at the right time.

Sile’s brother Colm bought some tomato plants from the Amish stall in Waterford market in June and presented six of them to us.
Once they entered Sile’s tender and green fingered care they thrived.

When we came back from our holidays at the end of August they were giving us about 8 pounds of ripe tomatoes every week

and they kept this up until there wasn’t enough sun to ripen them anymore (about a fortnight ago.)
This has been ever thus, at the end of the season, being left with vines with some green tomatoes left for the begging.

Our forefathers, being a thrifty lot, would never have left these for the slugs so there are, in older cookbooks, plenty of recipes for using up the green tomatoes.
I have tried several of these and have been adapting the best of them, Margaret Costa’s “Mrs. Postgate’s Green Tomato Chutney” over the years.
Margaret Costa’s Four Seasons Cookbook is still a great food bible of mine but tastes have changed since 1970 when it was first published.
In the original chutney recipe she, courageously for the time, includes 1oz.(sic) of garlic in a recipe which includes about 8 lbs. of fruit.
Even then she feels constrained to add a bracketed note; “Ignore the certain protests of the family that you are using too much garlic” !
My how we have changed, and grown to love the “stinking rose”.

This brings me back to my green tomato surplus.

Searching out the recipe in Margaret Costa’s book I discovered that it also contains large quantities of both cooking and eating apples.
For some reason I always feel that making chutneys should include a minimum of purchasing, as they were always a method of using up the last of Autumn’s free harvest.

Just at the right moment my friend Donal Moore called and offered us some of the bounty of his father, Joe Moore’s, orchards in Bagenalstown.
On Sunday we collected a present of a box of red Fiesta eating apples

and some green Bramley cookers.

Thank you Joe Moore.

My first cooking effort of these apples was my much loved French Apple Tart the recipe for which went out on WLR last week.
My second was a further development of Green Tomato Chutney.

By now the recipe has changed so much that I think it needs a new title.

Its origins I thoroughly respect as I imagine that it came from Raymond Postgate’s wife.
Raymond Postgate was a legendry English connoisseur who founded the marvellous (and still extant) “Good Food Guide” in the 1950’s.
Margaret Costa , as well as being the food editor of the Sunday Times was married to the chef/proprietor of Lacey’s in London (where this writer once very briefly worked) which was for a long time listed in the same guide. It is therefore very likely that they knew each other.

But back to the present.
In gratitude for Joe Moore’s present of apples I have decided to name this version of Green Tomato Chutney after him.

Joe Moore’s Chutney

Ingredients:

1 kg (2 ½ lbs) Cooking Apples
1 kg (2 ½ lbs) Onions
1 Bulb of Garlic(12 cloves) or 2 Bulbs if small
110g (4 oz )Ginger Root
1 kg (2 lbs) Brown Sugar
1 litre (2 pints)White Wine (or malt) Vinegar

1 kg (2 ½ lbs) Eating Apples
2 kg. (4 ½ lbs) Green Tomatoes

½ kg (1 lb.) raisins
60g (2 oz )Mustard Seed
60g (2 oz )Chopped Chillis
2 Tablespoons Salt

Method:

Peel, core,and chop the cooking Apples.
Peel and roughly chop the onions
Peel the garlic and chop roughly
Peel and chop finely the root ginger

Put all these ingredients into a food processor and whizz until they are a coarse mush.
Put these into a large pot and bring up to a gentle simmer.

Peel,core and dice the eating apples
Dice the Green tomatoes

Add these and all the other ingredients to the pot.
Bring back to a simmer and cook gently for about 3 hours.

Chutney toiling and troubling.

Once the mixture starts to thicken you must watch the pot carefully to make sure it doesn’t stick.

The traditional test is to draw a spoon through and it should leave a clear path.

Once it is cooked cover and pot as you would a jam.

……………………..The Finished Product………………………….