A Nice Pear!

My next chutney adventure was inspired by a seasonal fruit and vegetable list I found on Jamie Oliver's website. apparently pears are in season currently and just coming out of season in the UK so now would be an opportune time to test a pear chutney. I l.ove pears and thought a sweet chutney would be good to add into the mix of the fiery tomato chutney and the pickled onions that i have already made. (Incidentally the onions were taste tested for the first time this week and blimey they are HOT!!! Good, but hot!!)

Again I picked a recipe with simple ingredients as I'm making a batch at a time and am trying to keep things just on the nice side of difficult for me! Nothing too easy, there would be no point. The recipe was made up of:

Pears

cooking apples

onions

seedless raisins

cayenne pepper

all spice

garlic

salt

nutmeg

soft brown sugar

and white distilled vinegar.

Not too difficult to source!!! Everything pretty much just gets chopped up and thrown in a pan to boil. This time I re-boiled the mixture to condense it even further, the consistency is lovely now and I'm hoping it also concentrates the flavour. I'm sure it will! I've found there's not anything too complex to the chutney production itself! I'm just trying to ensure the recipes are right.

I was really hoping the chutney would go a lovely golden colour but instead it's a deep brown which I'm guessing is the raisins at work. If anyone out there has a recipe for a lovely golden chutney (it doesn't have to be pear) I'd really appreciate a hint at it!!

On that note I'd also like to add that if anyone wants one of my recipes with quantities, please just drop me a line or leave a comment. I'll more than happily provide!!!

In conclusion though I've got 16 jars from this batch so I'm happy with the quantity...I'll just have to wait a few weeks to taste it properly by which time it should have 'matured.'

Tried and Tested - Just a quicky...

Just a quick note on last nights evening meal...

At work I spend the odd afternoon trawling through food blogs looking for inspiration and generally making myself hungry. Being on a permanent diet has it's distinct downsides! I stumbled across a foodgawker site for chocolate treats which led me to look up other ingredients I had in the cupboards and freezer. I remembered a bag of scallops that was lurking somewhere and searched for scallops...a few uninspiring recipes later I found this one for Firecracker Scallops which I tried last night.

Divine!!!

They were awesome!!!! Highly recommended.

Steak au Poivre

I had a good friend over for dinner last night and he's a picky eater...nothing exotic and he will not eat vegetables!! Well, nothing that resembles a vegetable anyway! So what to cook him? Will steak and chips do I ask? Perfect was the answer. Can I serve any veg / salad? He replies that he likes processed peas from a tin. That I can do!!!

I bought two nice fillet steaks (which is unusual because I bought them from the local supermarket and I don't rate their butchers at all). But I'm sat thinking that I might want to jazz them up a little, if I'm cooking dinner for someone I like it to be a bit special. Plus I rarely get to cook nice meals because as there's just one of me and my cat there seems little point in doing meals which are a.) fattening and b.) rich!

So, what to do with the steak? Myself and the friend are both trying to maintain a healthy ish diet and both attend the gym on a regular basis so a cream pepper sauce was out of the question.

Delia provided me with a wonderful peppered alternative in her Classic Steak au Poivre and even though I don't like frying anything...I much prefer the good old grill...it went down a storm!!

As my friend saw me putting the red wine in the pan he flinched - even that was considered too exotic for him. However he went back for more sauce to coat his chips (much preferrable to HP sauce!) and the meal was a success!! thank you Delia!!!!!

Fat Cats Fiery Tomato Chutney

So, to put off having to do any ironing I decided that Tuesday night was the ideal night to throw together a test batch of the hot tomato chutney recipe I have. It's a really simple recipe actually calling for very simple ingredients so not too expensive or difficult to put together.

Onions

Garlic

Chili

Olive Oil

Tomato Puree

Tinned Tomatoes

White Wine Vinegar

Demerara Sugar

Salt and Ground Black Pepper

Easy!!!

Now I don't know about you but I like food with chili in to noticeably have chili in it so I doubled up on the quantities for chili and used green finger chili's instead of the recommended red chili.

All of the ingredients get thrown in to the pan and the chutney is boiled furiously then simmered until it sets to a good consistency. The pan I had was slightly too small and the result was a hob and tiles smothered in red gloop which was spitting out of the pan like a volcano!!!

Luckily for me (!) I had a friend visiting (thank you Rachel) to help me taste test half way through the boiling...we came to the conclusion that the chili was maybe a bit too subtle for the chutney to be labelled 'hot' so I added two more chilli's at this stage...so now there was triple the amount of chili in the chutney than the recipe actually called for!! As you can imagine, once boiled down further and when it was done and ready to be spooned into jars the chutney is now fiercely hot!! I LOVE IT! However, the jars are going to have to be labelled Fiery Tomato Chutney rather than Hot Tomato Chutney as a warning to those who prefer their heat to be a little more subtle!

Still, it tastes great, looks good and I'm very happy with the way the first batch turned out!!!

Let me begin with a confession – this is my third attempt at a food blog! I have recently been inspired though by a number of other food blogs which have put mine to shame so I’m hoping that third time is a charm and I may actually be able to produce something that looks half decent!

I’ve launched a business…”The Fat Cat” making chutneys, pickles and luxury sauces! I’ll be selling my wares at village fetes and hopefully at some evening parties run and hosted by friends! (In conjunction with two other friends who also have various items to sell). We haven’t got the ball rolling just yet – in fact I’m just testing out a number of chutney recipes and pickled onions. I’ve bought all of the jars so there’s no going back now! They are currently littering my house so I feel now that I have to fill them!

So far I’ve managed to successfully make Delia’s Chili Jam and a Spiced Apple Chutney…both were received well by the guinea pigs in my office. In fact I’ve had requests for more of the chili jam, although this won’t be coming for a while yet until I get the rest of the chutneys tried and tested. So world domination one chutney at a time!!!