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Joe Moore’s Chutney

October 11, 2005
19:07 PM

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………………………….

Comments

  1. Petra

    on October 13, 2005

    Dear Martin,
    An internet virgin like Moore senior might not fully appreciate the honour of first being lauded on the www, then wantonly associated with two intriguing yet alarmingly exotic sounding ladies like “Anna Pavlova” and “Nelly Melba” – but believe me: his eldest son is bursting with pride (& eagerly spreading the news)!
    Now there is the little matter of Joe’s delicate digestive system which has alway been known to strongly disagree with, of all things, onions, garlic and chilli. Which leads us to the wistful realization that a taste of your glorious contribution to Moore senior’s posterity might well prove the end of him. But sure, that’s a small price to pay for certain immortality!
    Mit herzlichen Gruessen,
    Petra
    PS
    He still wants to try it.
    PPS
    It’s Bagenalstown (or Muine Bheag)

  2. Aonghus

    on October 13, 2005

    It all makes sense now. I was wondering what cd was doing with the labels.
    If I leave some apples and a stove on our balcony will you sneak by and make our green tomatoes into some yummy chutney?
    I think it would be only fair after you so rubbed the ripeness of your tomatoes in my face then had the audacity to go and find something useful to do with even the green ones

  3. martin

    on October 13, 2005

    Presumably you stopped believing in Father Christmas when you were about seven?What makes you think that Father-in-law Christmas should come Ho-ho-hoing to your balcony 20 some years later?…..Oh, for Gods sake OK. (Don’t forget to leave out something for the reindeer too.)

  4. Petra

    on October 14, 2005

    Oh Martin, Martin, what have you done:
    Just when I felt safe and smug in the assumption that there was at least ONE type of food I could forever remain indifferent to… you go and produce this ludicrously delicious chutney! And as if this revelation wasn’t upsetting enough, you then proceed to mock this fresh, vulnerable convert by providing a receipe that asks for two friggin’ kilos of friggin’ GREEN tomatoes. Don’t you think my relationship with Kervicks is already sufficiently strained, what with me constantly calling their bluff (“If it grows, we have it” – HA!), looking for stupid outlandish weeds like artichokes, horseradish, La Ratte (“eh, RAT spuds!?”) No really: Give me in-your-face-cruel Gordon Ramsay any time!
    And on top of all that your precious son-in-law complains about his idle stash of surplus green tomatoes. T’not fair!
    (Hey Aonghus – if Santa Dwyer grants your wish I’d like to offer you a swap: one big jar or my own home-made spicy mayonnaise for every jar of Joe Moore’s chutney. Deal?)
    Petra

  5. stacey herlihy

    on November 2, 2008

    Delighted to see a recipe that combines both apples and green tomatoes…can do it all together and get rid of both of them in one go!

  6. Martin

    on November 3, 2008

    And anything else you happen to have a glut of as well! Courgettes,cucumbers etc. all melt in nicely, a most forgiving recipe.

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