Spicy Sweet Tomato Chutney

Spicy sweet tomato chutney based on Madhur Jaffery's delicious recipe from Spice Kitchen. Perfect with any meat.

If you have been reading along for a while, you know that our family has lived all around the world, in a variety of great places.  This nomadic lifestyle introduced us to vegetables, fruit, spices and other ingredients that we grew to love and adopted into our family meals, but when we moved on, sometimes those items weren’t available in the next place and we had to do without.  Mourning the loss not just a little.

With the advent of catalog shopping, the world got a little bit smaller.  When I posted my recipe for potato curry, I went on about Madhur Jaffery’s Spice Kitchen cookbook, and how I came to own curry spices again in Brazil, so I won’t tell the story again here.  But I will show you a photo of the little containers those spices came in because I remembered to take a photo this summer.  Empty now, and a little bit rusty, they live on the small shelves over my sink in Houston and their bright colors make me happy, even when I’m washing dishes.

Anyway, this tomato chutney recipe is adapted from that same well-worn, food-bespattered book. It makes a great gift for neighbors and relatives but I always have a couple of jars on hand for personal consumption.

Spicy Sweet Tomato Chutney

Tomato chutney dresses up a plain grilled chicken breast or pork chops like nothing else can, with a hit of sour, sweet and spicy. But most importantly, it preserves a bumper tomato crop for enjoyment year round.

Ingredients
12 cloves garlic, peeled
1 piece fresh ginger, about 4 inches long, 2 oz or 60g
3 cups or 710ml red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons mustard oil or extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
12 fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon kalonji
4 lbs or 1.8 kg fresh ripe tomatoes (2 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes can be substituted)
3 cups or 600g sugar
3 teaspoons salt
1/2 – 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (according to your personal preference – I use at least a teaspoon)

Method
Measure your spices out so that they are ready for adding to the pot in a hurry.

Cut the brown ends off of your garlic and peel and coarsely chop your ginger.

Put the garlic, ginger and 1/2 cup of the vinegar into the container of an electric blender and blend at high speed until smooth.

Halve the fresh tomatoes and cut out the hard cores.

Pretty summer tomatoes from the UAE.  Yes, farms do grow things in the desert. 

Heat the oil in a 4-quart, heavy-bottomed pot with non-metallic finish, over medium high heat.  When hot, add the mustards seeds.  As soon as they start to pop – this takes just a few seconds – add the fenugreek, cumin, fennel and kalonji.

Stir once quickly and add the paste from the blender. Stir paste for one minute then add the tomatoes (and juice from the can, if using,) the rest of the vinegar, the sugar, salt and cayenne pepper.  Bring to a boil.

If such things matter to you, feel free to pick the skins out of the pot with tongs as they become detached from the tomatoes.  Some can be rather thick so I do pick them out when I have that type of tomato.  Otherwise, I leave them in.

Lower heat a bit and cook, uncovered, over medium heat at first and then, as the chutney thickens, on increasingly lower heat for about 1½ - 2 hours or until chutney becomes thick.

Stir occasionally at first and more frequently as it thickens.

Pour chutney into sterilized jars while still boiling hot, putting a metal teaspoon in each jar to keep it from cracking.

Remove the teaspoon and screw the lids on tightly and turn jars upside down until they are cooled.

When the jars are cool, you can turn them upright and the vacuum seal will pop in, keeping the chutney fresh for months in a cool dry cupboard.  If the seal doesn't pop back in, store the jars in the refrigerator.

If you are giving it as a gift, by all means, make and print a pretty label.

Enjoy!

Want to continue to enjoy the season’s bounty all year long? Have a look at the wonderful Preserving the Harvest recipes we have for you today.

Cool Condiments

• Chow Chow Relish from Magnolia Days
• Homemade Hot Dog Relish from Juanita’s Cocina

Fabulous Fruits

• Apricot Ginger Jam from Happy Baking Days
• Banana Jam from Killer Bunnies, Inc
• Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream from Gotta Get Baked
• Blueberry Lemon Basil Jam from Daily Dish Recipes
• Candied Watermelon Rind from What Smells So Good?
• Fig and Strawberry Jam from Jane’s Adventures in Dinner
• Mixed Berry Rhubarb Jam from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Mulberry Jam from Curious Cuisiniere
• Quick Peacharine Chutney from Shockingly Delicious
• Pineapple Upside Down Cake Freezer Jam from Cookin’ Mimi

Other Outstanding Recipes

• Fireweed Jelly from The Foodie Army Wife
• Flavoured Butters from Small Wallet, Big Appetite
• Gravlax from That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Vivacious Vegetables

• Corn Cob Jelly from Blueberries and Blessings
• Deep South Dilly Beans from Eat, Move, Shine
• Fermented (Sour) Pickles from Growing Up Gabel
• Fire Roasted Salsa from Peanut Butter and Peppers
• Hot and Spicy Giardiniera from The Messy Baker
• Hot Italian Giardiniera from Healthy. Delicious.
• Jalapeños en Escabeche (Pickled Jalapeños) from La Cocina de Leslie
• Oi Kimchi (Korean Cucumber Kimchi) from Kimchi MOM
• Refrigerator Dill Pickles from Country Girl in the Village
• Spicy Sweet Tomato Chutney from Food Lust People Love
• Traditional Escabeche (Pickle) from Basic N Delicious

Spicy Tangy Sticky Kumquat Chutney

When kumquats are in season, may you be blessed either with a tree that produces the little orange orbs or a generous neighbor with one. This chutney is sweet and spicy with just the right amount of vinegar bite to make it spoonable over everything, from chicken to pork chops to fish.

When I was growing up in Texas, kumquats and their non-related look-a-likes, loquats or Japanese plums, were common in backyards.  We weren’t fortunate to have our own but neighbors and relatives were more than happy to share.  Over the years, I have bought them when available but never have I seen them as plentiful or as inexpensive as here in Egypt.

It must be the season because I bought a bag of more than two pounds or one kilo for about 50 cents in American money.  And, boy, was I delighted because I had just the recipe I wanted to adapt for them from, once again, my new favorite cookbook Fried Chicken and Champagne.

Spicy Tangy Sticky Kumquat Chutney recipe - Click here to print

Ingredients
About 2 pounds or 1 kilo kumquats
1 1/2 cups or 355ml orange juice
1 1/4 cups or 295ml rice wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper or red pepper flakes
2 in or 4cm piece of cinnamon stick
1 large, thick thumb-sized piece fresh ginger
4 cups or 900g sugar
1 large fresh chili pepper

Method
Wash your kumquats and remove any stems.  Finely slice them, removing any large green seeds. 

Pile them in a bowl and cover them with the orange juice.  Push them down into the juice a little if necessary.  Cover the bowl with cling film and let marinate overnight in the refrigerator.

The next day, peel your ginger and grate it finely into something that saves the pulp and the juice, because you’ll want to use both in the next step. 

In a large saucepan off of the stove, add in the kumquats, rice vinegar, red pepper, cinnamon stick, ginger and sugar.

Stir until the sugar is dissolved and pick out any large green seeds you might have missed.

Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn the fire down. Be careful at the beginning because the sugar really makes it bubble up. You do not want this to boil over!

Cook until it thickens to your desired consistency. The original recipe had some interesting instructions about bringing it to the boil and turning it down three times, so I did this, only to realize that I wanted the sauce to be more like a chutney.  Boiling only three times left it very runny.

I abandoned all that up-flame-down-flame and just gave it a steady very low boil, stirring every few minutes, until it was pretty thick.  Remember that once it cools, it will thicken even more so stop before you can stand a spoon in it or it will be too thick cold.

Meanwhile, mince your fresh chili, discarding the seeds if you don’t like things too spicy.  My pepper wasn’t very hot so I serious considered adding two.  Then I remembered the crushed red pepper and thought better of it.  But you can judge for yourself.

Once the chutney is almost thick enough, add in the minced pepper.  Stir and cook just a few minutes longer.  You want the pepper to retain its color.

Turn off the fire and remove the cinnamon stick.  It’s done.

While it cools, take your helper out to play with the handful of leftover kumquats.

This was divine with bacon-wrapped, pan-fried chicken breasts, as well as pork chops. (YES, I FOUND PORK CHOPS IN CAIRO! And they were, despite reports to the contrary, cheaper than steak.) I don’t have any clean empty jars or I would have bottled the chutney boiling hot, like I did with the pepper sauce here. Instead I stored in Ziplocs in my fridge.

With bacon-wrapped chicken breasts. Oh, man!

Pan-fried pork chops!

If you are a lover of sweet and sour and especially if you are also a lover of orange marmalade, this is the chutney for you. If you like things extra spicy, you might also want to try my nectarine kumquat habanero chutney!

Enjoy!