It’s not been a great summer here in London and already, although autumn doesn’t officially begin until the 22nd, autumnal weather has arrived; conkers fall to the ground from the huge horse chestnut trees on Twickenham Green, and the days are closing in. There’s been a lot of rain and cool temperatures all through ‘summer’. We’ve had bursts of hot sunny days, but in typical British style, temperatures fluctuate madly and one day it can be 28°C and the next day plunge below 20º, and a few days later soar up ten degrees again overnight. It’s quite hard to adjust; there’s never time to get used to one temperature. Clearly my tomatoes suffered too.

I’ve grown tomatoes on and off for many years, but in recent years I’ve done it mainly for the grandsons as they love to watch them grow and pick them when they’re ripe. Freddie (9) and Ben (6) came to the local garden centre with me in the spring and each chose a couple of plants, which went into large pots full of good organic compost. Bell peppers and a jalapeño chilli plant were chosen too.

I gave them lots of TLC, giving them a good dose of organic plant food each week. They did well. Lots of yellow flowers came that duly turned into tomatoes – mainly small cherry varieties. They were picked as they ripened and enjoyed, sometimes going straight into little mouths, though there were never enough ripe ones at one time to fill a bowl. Then the weather became more persistently cold and wet; the sun rose later and went to bed early, clearly as despondent with the chilly wet weather as I was. Despite being nestled in a protected and sunny part of my garden, the green tomatoes stayed green. We’d passed the point of them being able to ripen to bright red or yellow.

‘I’ll have to make some Green Tomato Chutney,’ I said to the boys the other day. ‘Yuk!’ they cried. ‘Won’t green tomatoes taste horrid?’ ‘No,’ I said, and then told them how my dad used to grow lots of tomatoes each year and always gave me the green ones at the end of summer to make chutney. ‘By the time we’ve added apples and sultanas, vinegar and lots of spices, some sugar, it will taste delicious,’ I promised them.

Yesterday, at the end of a sunny though cool day, I picked the unripe tomatoes. I then dug out my old Katie Stewart book, The Times Calendar Cookbook (published 1976), which was once my cookery bible. It’s so well used and so badly splashed, I wondered if it had become a health hazard!

I weighed the tomatoes and there was just about the right amount to make half Katie’s recipe. So a shopping list was made for this morning’s trip to the supermarket.

I did wonder whether to use malt vinegar. It’s been a long time since I’ve bought the malt kind, which is reminiscent mainly of holding hot packages of fish and chips as a child, wrapped in newspaper (I’m sure it wouldn’t be allowed today!) and malt vinegar being generously shaken over them. So I investigated a bit, looked online. And sure enough, every green tomato chutney recipe I looked at used malt vinegar. So no changes there. In fact, I didn’t change the recipe at all apart from putting in a little more cayenne pepper (¼ teaspoon rather than halving that amount) as all the family like a nice hot chilli kick to our food.

Jars were taken from a kitchen cupboard and sterilised; the large pan I use for marmalade and chutneys dug out from the back of another cupboard. The ingredients were gathered together and weighed. I was ready to go . . .

Green Tomato Chutney – Makes about 1.75 kg (4 lbs)

• 225g onions
• 900g green tomatoes
• 300g cooking apples
• 110g sultanas
• 1 heaped teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon mustard seed
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 300ml malt vinegar
• 225g soft brown sugar

Prepare the onions first. Katie recommends chopping them (I chopped everything reasonably small) and simmering in boiling water for 5 minutes before adding to the other ingredients. She says vinegar can have a hardening effect on onion so it’s best to soften them first. Once this is done, drain and set aside.

 

Wipe clean and cut away any bad parts on the tomatoes, then chop. I chopped fairly finely – about 1cm cubes. Put them in the preserving pan.

 

Now peel and core the apple (I needed just one large one) and chop into similar sized pieces to the tomatoes. Add to the pan.

 

Chop the sultanas a bit and add to the pan with the spices.

Pour in half the vinegar and stir. Bring to a boil (the vinegar won’t cover the other ingredients) and then simmer very gently, with a lid, for about 30-60 minutes. You’ll need to stir frequently to prevent it sticking. Katie said to simmer for 1-2 hours but I think as I was only making half the amount and cut my tomatoes, onion and apples quite small, it didn’t need nearly this amount of time and was done in about 30 minutes. It should all be pulpy and soft; all the vinegar absorbed.

Now dissolve the sugar in the rest of the vinegar and add to the pan. Bring to the boil and cook gently without a lid. This time it did take about an hour for it to cook down into a thick, soft mixture, with all the vinegar absorbed. Again, stir fairly often to prevent it sticking to the bottom of the pan.

 

I realised too late that I forgot to take a photo of the finished chutney before putting it in jars, but it should be nicely thick.

Have some sterilised jars keeping warm in the oven. Once the chutney is ready, transfer to the hot jars. You can use a funnel if you have one, but just spooning it in worked okay. I used quite small (150ml) jars and managed to fill seven. Put a circle of greaseproof paper on the top of the chutney immediately and then a lid, which you should tighten straight away. Leave to cool and then put labels on.

Katie recommends storing the chutney ‘for a few months before using’. A Waitrose recipe I found online (whose timings were closer to mine) said to wait a month. My son who turned up as I was putting the chutney into jars, exclaiming at the gorgeous smell as he came into the house, had a small taste on a teaspoon and declared that he wasn’t going to be able to wait a month to eat it! I had a taste too. It was delicous and I liked the slight hot hit from the cayenne pepper, but if you don’t like hot then put in less or leave it out. However long you wait to enjoy it, do store it in the fridge once opened and before that in a cool, dry cupboard.

Well, I will try to wait a little while to let the chutney’s flavours develop, but it’s going to be a great accompaniment to some crusty bread and cheese at lunchtime over the next few months, or served with cold meats, as well as making a nice gift to a few people.