Chutney x A LOT

A few weeks ago when we went to the market, our mango people told us that was their last week for the season. So we bought double our usual and went home to make chutney. This wasn't something we had really thought through very carefully, the results of which I will reveal as I go through my chutney tale.

In the past we have used a chutney recipe that requires soaking overnight. This was Sunday morning and we had to work on Monday, so that wasn't going to work. I did a quick search, and found a recipe from Not Quite Nigella that looked do-able, so we used that as our guide.

Her recipe called for 1 kilo of mango flesh, or about 2 large mangoes. We obviously wanted to make a larger batch to use up plenty of mangoes, so we started cutting and scooping them into a bowl on the scale. About 15 mangoes later, we were at 3 kilos - so I think the original estimate of 2 mangoes = 1 kilo of flesh is just not right.

We put the firmest mango cheeks through the shredder blade on the food processor, and chopped up the softer, riper cheeks. We popped this all into our big stockpot, and then realised we had almost no space for anything else. Wah-wahhh.

And because we tripled the recipe, we had nowhere near enough brown sugar, or raisins. We had no onions. We scraped in with just enough cider vinegar. But we realised that Andy would need to go to the shops. He had wanted to run to Bunnings for some seeds anyways, so, perfect.

Because I was expecting Andy back in about 30 minutes, I put everything that we had into a bowl and mixed it all up. Then I put it into two pots to start to simmer, to allow the sugar which we did have to dissolve a bit. Then I cleaned up - chopped up the mango skins so they would compost a bit quicker, gave a few of the seeds to Tika, who loves to suck the flesh off them, and wiped so much mango juice off of every surface. I even did all the dishes.



Over an hour later, I was beginning to wonder if Andy got lost or sucked into some sort of space-time vortex. He sort of did - in Townsville on Sundays, shops don't open until 11am, and he left the house a touch before 10. So although he spent plenty of time in Bunnings, he still had to wait outside the grocery store for it to open.

But eventually he did make it home. By that time the chutney had simmered down enough to fit back into the one pot. We added the onions and the last few bits and pieces, plus a whack of chilli sauce because it was so sweet, cooked it properly, and then got ready to can it.



We ended up with 13 and a half jars of this stuff - about 9 litres worth of chutney. The full ones we processed properly and put them away to last us throughout the year. But for dinner that night it seemed appropriate to have the little half jar with some curry.

I made chappatis, sag paneer (spinach and tofu curry), and we had some leftover dhal, with brown rice and, at the front, our chutney.



Sure, it was an epic process, but the memories of scooping 15 mangoes, stirring a simmering pot of chutney, and cleaning up all the sticky mess will fade as we enjoy our spoils for the next few months!

Storming the Freezer

Last night a cyclone crossed the coast. For the first part of the week, it looked like it was coming pretty much straight at Townsville. I have lived here for nearly 7 years, and while I'm not a local nor a meteorologist, I have seen several cyclones heading straight for Townsville that end up going elsewhere when push comes to shove. So we got prepared by cleaning up the back yard but didn't get too worked up. Good thing, too, because it ended up heading 200kms south of us, and we saw less than 40mm of rain at our house.

One of the things we figured out during Cyclone Yasi, which is rarely given out in official advice, is to eat anything precious from the freezer, so that if the power goes out for a few days you don't have to throw it away. So this week we had a few freezer based dinners. We still have rather a lot in there, but now there is plenty of space for a new batch of ice cream...

We tried some Fry's vegan burgers, which were good but not worth full price. They were delicious with some cherry tomatoes, cooked down with olive oil and garlic.

Here we have tofu (from the freezer) marinated with teriyaki and chilli sauce, spring rolls (from the freezer), BBQ pineapple, and fried rice with capsicum (from the freezer) and eggplant, green beans, cherry tomatoes, sweet potato shoots and baby kale (all from the garden).

When our mulberry tree gets ripe fruit on it, we pick them and stick them in a container in the freezer, till we have enough for something yummy. This container spent an overnight with some oats to become a yummy breakfast.

And for lunch I brought a chickpea naan roll to work, inspired by Joey's link to Dan Lepard's recipe - but with a slightly different filling.

None of this made a massive dent in the freezer stash - we still have about 15 naan rolls, a few boxes of Fry's, a bag of frozen capsicum, 6 blocks of tofu, and other random things. But if any more cyclones form in the coming months, at least we've made a start!

Meal Planning: Week 1

Despite saying in my page on spending less money that meal planning isn't really for us, I made it a resolution to be a bit more organised about dinner. But I didn't want to adopt the kind of meal plan that requires choosing recipes, buying specific ingredients, and following a plan very strictly. We need flexibility, and also Andy gets a little grouchy about buying things full price when there are on-special alternatives, so specific ingredients are rarely purchased in our place.

Our first week of meal planning didn't come about as much through planning as through indecision. Scene: Sunday morning, after breakfast, on the couch. Me: Do you want to go to the market? Andy: We probably don't need to. Me: But the only veggies we have are corn and lettuce... Andy: Well, let's have... dhal, nacho salad, burgers, gnocchi with pesto, and pumpkin risotto. Me: Wait, let me write this down.

So we had a vague plan. Then I realised I wanted fruit so we went to the market anyways, and came home with some more things: potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes and beetroots (plus bananas, a bucket of mangoes and three pineapples). Add to that our eggplant bushes heavily laden with quickly-growing fruits. So I amended our meal plan.

Monday and Tuesday I was home still, not yet finished with my holidays. So I did a lot of prep stuff for the coming week - cooking beans, making chappati breads, and roasting eggplant. And then we enacted our meal plan: no set schedule, just a pretty good idea of what we could make given the ingredients on hand, and no real thinking required (for those nights after work where thinking is very undesirable). Here's how it shaped up.

Monday: Nacho salad. Chips and lettuce on the bottom, a mix of kidney beans, sweet potato, tomato, corn and rice in the middle, and a fresh mango-pineapple-cucumber salsa on top.

Tuesday: red lentil dhal with wholemeal chappatis. I didn't snap a photo of this, because it was just dhal.

Wednesday: kidney bean burgers, with grilled pineapple (under the patty), potatoes, and corn on the cob.

Thursday: gnocchi with eggplant balls and a pesto-y, tomato-y sauce.

Friday: Andy went off script, and crafted a semi-delicious curry of eggplant, tofu and jackfruit.

Since this seemed to work reasonably well for us last week, I tried again on Sunday, this time going a little more adventurous and looking for recipes that we could use. I'll give week 2 a post of its own when we've finished it, but so far meal planning seems to be going well. As long as it doesn't require buying special things, and we have the flexibility to cook what we feel like on a given night, it seems to work for us.I guess I should update the part about not meal planning soon...

Pumpkin Curry

Nacho loves pumpkin. Her love has evolved into ever more invasive practices. When she was a wee little kitten, she tried her hardest to get into any cooked pumpkin we had around. As she grew, she began to recognise the smell of raw pumpkin, and jumped up to investigate whenever any was cut or cooked. More recently, she has begun eating the uncooked inside bits, leaving the seeds behind.

But, if you can believe it, she's gotten even more sneaky & cheeky still.

A week or so ago, when Andy was back at work but I wasn't yet, I did some dinner prep in the late afternoon. I peeled and chopped a pumpkin, which I would turn into a curry. As I worked, Nacho helped herself to the pumpkin guts - as she does. When my pumpkin was chopped, I put it on a plate, covered it with a tea towel to keep the hungry kitty out of it, and then went outside to water the garden. In the meantime, Andy came home, and we were outside for quite a while.

When I came in, I stepped on something squishy in the kitchen. It was a piece of half-eaten pumpkin. I looked at the bench, where my pumpkin-plate was. The tea towel had been pushed aside (with a contemptuous laugh, I imagine). And instead of the full plate I had left, there was this:

Just on the other side of the counter, the culprit was lounging without a hint of remorse.

When I questioned her about the missing pumpkin, her tail started to flick in annoyance.

She gave me her best Julie Bishop-stare, and demanded that I get the hell out of her face (unless I had some cooked pumpkin to give her, please).

I did what any self-respecting cat person would do, and (once photos were taken), did what Nacho told me.  I got on with cooking, and despite having less pumpkin than I started with, we got a pretty good curry out of the deal.

Pumpkin Curry
1 small onion, diced
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small pumpkin, peeled and cubed (or less, if your cat gets into it)
2 potatoes, cubed
3 Tbsp. curry paste - we used tandoori
1 can of full fat coconut milk
1/2 c. diced tomatoes (for us, this was the leftovers of a tin)
1/2 c. snake beans, chopped (use any green veggie - we had snake beans that needed using from the garden)
1 c. cannellini beans, drained & rinsed

In a pot, saute the onion and garlic with oil until they are soft. Add the pumpkin and potatoes and stir them around for a few minutes. Add the curry paste, stir it up until everything is coated in it, and then add the coconut milk and tomatoes. Bring it up to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer for half an hour or so, until the potatoes and the pumpkin are tender. Add the green veggie and the beans, let it cook for another few minutes. Season to taste, eat with rice.

Mango Chutney

What do you do when you have three trays of ripe or quickly ripening mangoes on hand? Well, there are lots of options - eating them straight up, pancakes, cakes, jam, salsa, smoothies.... But if you want to spread the mango love across the year, preserving them in one way or another is a good idea. Drying them, either straight up or as fruit rolls, is one option. Or you can turn a bunch into chutney, to spice up drab meals and accompany Indian curries all year long.

Andy and I have made a few batches of this chutney recipe, but have found it, at various times, too spicy, or too vinegary, so have modified it a bit and come up with a configuration we quite like. Andy bought a starter canning kit from Green Living Australia, so this year we could make a very big batch (or several) and keep them in the pantry - in years past we have been limited by refrigerator space.

Mango Chutney
10 ripe mangoes
1 onion, finely diced
4 cups of vinegar
1 cup of dried fruit (Andy used dried mixed fruit, with the cherries picked out, which was actually better than I expected. The citrus peel gives it a bit of zing every few bites)
1 chilli, minced
2 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger

Cut the cheeks off each mango. Score each cheek into fairly small squares, and then scoop the fruit out with a spoon. Put all the fruit from the cheeks into a very large, non-reactive bowl. Peel each seed. Cut the flesh from the seeds and put into a separate smaller bowl, or a jug, or a blender. Blend this up and then mix it with the diced fruit.

Put the diced onion into a jug and cover with boiling water. Let this sit for a few minutes and then drain the water and add the onion to the bowl (I do this because I find the raw onion a bit bitey. If you like raw onion, skip this step). Then mix in the vinegar, dried fruit, chilli and ginger. Cover this and let it soak overnight at room temperature. We stuck ours in the oven, so it was out of the way. 

The next day, put the mango mixture into a very big pot with:

2 and 2/3 cups of sugar

Heat this over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then add:

4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. mixed spice
2 tsp. ground ginger
4 cloves of garlic, minced
chilli powder to taste, if you want it spicier.

Bring this up to the boil and then lower the heat down to a simmer. Cook the chutney for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until it has thickened up.

If you are canning these, put the clean jars and new lids into a big canning pot filled with hot water (with a trivet or something in the bottom) and bring them up to a simmer, then turn the heat off and leave it on the stove. Do this about 20 or 25 minutes before the chutney is finished cooking. When the chutney is nearly done, remove the jars from the pot. Using jar tongs, shake out the extra water and then place them onto a tea towel.

Fill each jar, and then clean the rim of the jar with a damp cloth. Remove the lids from the hot water with a fancy magnetic lid wand thingie, and seal each jar up tightly. Put the full jars back into the hot water, ensuring they are submerged by about an inch, and bring it back up to the boil. Boil for 10 minutes, cool a bit, and then removed the jars and let stand at room temperature until they are fully cooled and have sealed.

Chappatis

There is something about flat bread that, to me, makes a curry meal feel complete. Maybe it is because it feels more authentic, or because I like eating with my hands, or just because I really love bread. But, on an average weeknight, we have neither the time nor the motivation to bother making bread. So, on the weekends, we sometimes make a big batch to stash in the freezer.

Butternut pumpkin & jackfruit curry with mango chutney and chappati.

The recipe for these chappatis originally came from How it all Vegan, which I borrowed from the library. It was the version that was translated to British measurements, and I know that in other cookbooks this has led to errors and mistakes. So that may be an explanation for how unimpressed I was. But, the recipe wasn't very good. So I've changed it, quite a lot. I'm not sure about the distinctions between Indian flatbreads, so maybe these need a name other than chappatis - maybe Andy's constant mispronunciation (chiapattis) is a more apt name for them.  Anyways, they're the best flat breads I've been able to make. They're soft and chewy, rather than dry and cardboardy. The recipe is easily cut in half, or doubled. And they're perfect for scooping up a curry.

Black-eyed pea dhal, eggplant bharta, rice and chappatis.

350 grams plain flour (or a mix of plain & whole meal)
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. oil
90 - 175 mL water (this will depend on humidity, your flour, etc. Start with a little - you can always add more later.)

In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.

Drizzle over the oil and mix with a fork until the oil is well incorporated.

Slowly drizzle in the water, a little at a time. Mix with a fork until it starts to form a dough, then take over with your hands. Mix it until you have a soft, but not sticky, dough. If it feels just a little too tough, a good way to incorporate a tiny amount more liquid is to knead with wet hands. Knead the dough for 5 minutes, until it is smooth and stretchy.

Divide into balls - about 8 is the size we like from this amount of dough.

Roll each ball thinly. I find the oil in the dough is enough to keep them from sticking without dusting any flour - just keep flipping the bread over as you roll, to make sure one side doesn't hold fast to the counter top.

Hint: don't roll too many at once. If they sit on the counter for too long, they stick and make a mess. I learned this the hard way while making a double batch by myself. It really works best if you have two people, one rolling and one cooking.

Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Let it get nice and hot before you start cooking the breads. Then cook one bread at a time, for about 1 to 2 minutes on each side, until they are lightly browned and bubbly. If the pan is hot enough, they should look like this for about 20 seconds:

Then they will get small bubbles:

Which then turn into big bubbles:

These big bubbles collapse when they cool, leaving light, chewy breads.

Let the breads cool a bit on a plate, and then either (1) eat straightaway, (2) wrap up so they don't go stale while your curry cooks, or (3) put them in a ziploc bag and freeze for later. Half an hour at room temperature and they'll be thawed and fresh as new.

Some more things to do with mango

We've been busy the last few days, between Christmas, and medical emergencies of the feline variety (now sorted... Nacho ate a loooong shoelace and had to have it surgically extracted, but will be home 1 hour from now, which makes me happy). So I will get to holiday-ish posts, eventually. But, for now, I leave you with some photos of mango-creations. The season seems to be tapering off for us here, but there may be some alternative varieties at the markets in the coming weeks.

We recently grabbed this stellar bargain: fill a bag for $4.

That bag was filled, to the brim.

Most of the mangoes were very ripe, so we peeled and blended up something like 14 of them, mainly for fruit leather.

Some of the blended mango went into mango-ginger muffins.

Another scoop of the mango, blended with banana, went into the mix for granola. Served with, of course, more fresh mango on top.

Fresh mango, fresh pineapple, fresh mint, and Cointreau makes an easy but fancy grown-up fruit salad.

In preparation for a mango-coconut upside down cake, my mango slices were so pretty. Then, I poured in the coconut cake batter and baked.

When I poured, the prettily arranged slices got messed up.  Woops.

In the world of savoury foods, Andy made this "mango three way" (his name for it, not mine). Mango jerk seitan, with grilled mango cheeks, and a mango noodle salad.

Throwing mango in to a chickpea curry at the last minute is pretty delicious.

Mango, pineaple and avocado with soy & sesame dressing made a very tropical, Asian-ish side to the very traditional, Western-ish meal of seitan schnitzels with potato mash.

It's vegetable season again!

Summer in Townsville isn't really veggie-friendly.  Most stuff goes out of season, because it is too hot and wet for local crops.  The markets dwindle to things like sweet potatoes, pumpkins, sometimes zucchinis and eggplants.  This summer was worse than usual, thanks to most of Queensland being submerged in some floods and another good chunk of Queensland getting worked by Cyclone Yasi.  Instead of loads of fresh veggies over the summer, Andy and I had a lot of potatoes and not much else -- everything else was from far away, and expensive as a result. 

But now that it's cold, we have been able to buy lots of veggies of all kinds, grown nearby and available very cheaply.  Instead of needing to rely on seitan-centric meals, we've returned to some pretty hardcore veggie-on-veggie meals.  (I realised only after I typed that sentence that it sounds really dirty.  But, I'm gonna let it stay.)  Here are some of the vege-ful meals we've been indulging in...

Beautiful roasted Brussels sprouts, with potatoes and carrots, and a side of baked beans.

Peanut Curry Casserole, a variation on a recipe from Urban Vegan, full of broccoli, fresh tomato, and chickpeas.  On the side, a yummy salad with cos lettuce (also known as romaine), carrot, cucumber, avocado, sunflower seeds and more tomato.

Eggplant parma (topped with a little sprinkle of breadcrumbs, rather than cheese), with Garlic Bread Zucchinis -- these are an Andy original, a garlicky bread-based stuffing inside of little zukes.  And some potato wedges.

And some yummy veggie fried rice, with zucchini, green peas, and carrots.  Coincedentally, shortly after eating this dinner we tuned into MasterChef, where the pressure test involved fried rice.

I'm so happy to have a fridge full of veggies again.

One Dish Round Up

For the past few months, I have been testing recipes for Carla's in-the-works cookbook about one-dish meals.  Andy and I tested a bunch of recipes around christmas, and then took a few weeks off from testing, before another big spurt in the last few weeks.  Carla has recently discussed a slight change in direction with her publishers - so I won't be testing any more.  However, I have really loved the recipes we have tested, so I'll post some photos here to give you an idea of the excellence that Carla manages to come up with.

 

 White bean peanut dip tastes like yummy peanut sauce, in dip form.  What else could you want?

Carla's spiced oven wedges have become a popular side dish, like here with sausage rolls.

Baked lemon tofu with green beans reminded me of an excellent flavour combination that I haven't taken advantage of in a while - lemon pepper.  Duh, but yum.  

Cream Sausage & Tomato Pasta was really easy to pull together, and very yummy.

The sauce, bubbling away on the stove after maybe 10 minutes of prepping and cooking.

 

Franks & Beans, which we actually served as "Bangers & Beans" using sausages, was super tomatoey and hearty.  Served with a side of creamy mushrooms, and some toast, this was almost brinner.

One of our favourite recipes is Carla's Crumbed Seitan.  The crumb mixture is a lot more interesting than our usual, so we've had this a few times.

 All fried up, these schnitzels are crispy and tasty.

We had them once with garlic mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy.

Then another time we served them up with mashed sweet potatoes (the ones with purple-red skin and white insides) and Easy Cheesy Gravy from Ultimate Uncheese.

And the leftovers from that were turned into parmas - a jar of enchilada sauce and some leftover cheesy gravy, and popped in the oven for a few minutes.

Two cuisines meet in Ethiopian Sweet Potato Stew, which matches the spices of Ethiopian cooking with the peanut stews of Western Africa, with sweet potatoes and chickpeas.

Seitan, marinated overnight in Thai BBQ marinade and then baked with some veggies and frozen spring rolls, made for a really yummy and really easy weekday dinner.

Red Seitan Curry required more effort than the last meal, but was well worth it on a Sunday evening.  The seitan is cooked in the curry itself, so it is full of flavour with a texture that is quite different to typical seitan.

Corn bread scones were simple to make, full of flavour, soft and delicious.  Declared by Andy to be the best corn bread I've ever made.

We served our scones with Kidney Bean & Sweet Potato Chilli, a thick and herby stew which we topped with jalapeno slices.

We made the chilli with a mix of orange sweet potatoes, and these beauties with an ugly white exterior but a brilliantly violet inside.

The chilli was reincarnated later in the week as Chilli Muffin Loaves, light little muffins with chunks of sweet potato and bean throughout.

Home made tofu is beautiful when marinated and baked, and Carla's Pan Pacific Marinade didn't disappoint.

My advice is to keep your eyes peeled for Carla's cookbooks, because if the recipes I've tried are anything to go by, they will be excellent.