Planning on the Pickle and Chutney front

Pickles and Chutneys play an important part in the life of my household primarily because they are in use all year long but also because they help make the most of leftover meat and cheeses and give more life to those items which on their own can often look quite unpalatable but which are taken to new heights by the addition of some pickled onions/shallots or a dab of picallili or home made ketchup. You also get a taste of summer from each spoon, and far more flavour in every bite.

Although primarily most of my preserves are geared for what I call "The Putdown" my store for all my preserves a lot of them are specifically put down so that I have a greater choice of ingredients to choose from at Christmas which gives my cooking repertoire legs and more scope.  It also gives me greater quantities of things to use throughout the year rather than buying one jar of something off the supermarket shelf paying an absolute arm and a leg for it and it not really pleasing your palate.

I have some simple rules when it comes to pickles and chutneys and numero uno is that I always leave for about six weeks before opening a bottle.  That is everything except pickled cabbage. That we use more or less straightaway.  Chutneys also keep quite safely for longer than a year.  Just check that the bottles are intact and are not showing any additions or that the vinegar has gone watery in which case ditch those bottles. However normally vinegar and sugar combinations cure food beautifully. I make more than one batch of preserve if it is something that we potentially use all year round and if I am testing a new recipe I make the one batch.  If we like it, it gets added to the core list the following year.  This way you weed out the recipes which work for you and those that do not.

The following is a list of basic items that I like to be able to put down each year for my family's use.  In no particular order:

Pickled Eggs

Pickled Onions

Pickled Shallots

Onion Relish

Onion and Garlic Jelly

Tomato Ketchup

Pickled Cabbage

Brown Sauce

Apple chutney

Pear Chutney

Pickled Cucumbers

Pickled Gherkins 

Pickled Baby Beets

Pickled Beetroot slices

Picalllili

Plum Chutney

Christmas Chutney

Chilli jelly

Chilli sauce

Chilli jam
Five Spice Peaches
Peach and Chilli Chutney
Spiced Pears
Pickled Orange Rings
Spiced Pickled Clementine Rings
Chinese Plum Sauce

Mustard wholegrain

Mustard smooth

There are of course many more things but these are the core basics that I aim for in any one year.  Sometimes you are very dependent upon what is available as to what you make and so there does have to be some flexibility therein and sometimes you just don't get to make things.  

Making preserves of any kind used to be the norm in British households as there were not the shops or supermarkets but there were lots of core ingredients available in season and you made the best of that season.  If you wanted things because of budgetary constraints you either went without or made them.  Most households made them as a good base store of food got your family through very cold winters and kept infections at bay.  I believe that doing what little you can on the preserving front helps.  Having a stocked pantry certainly helps accentuate meals or adds flavour and interest to them.  Also for me having things on hand means that I can on the spur of the moment decide to make something out of something I already have to hand.  I have also found out that the more you know about an ingredient and like its flavour the more you want to cook with it. I intend to use the 'Greengrocers reduced section quite a lot in this coming year and make what I can with whatever I comes my way whether that be tomatoes turned into bottled tomatoes which can then be added to stews or make pasta sauce from or bottles of pasta sauce.  Now to start work on the calendar and slotting in weekly and monthly tasks for the year. I also need to have a sort out with some of the dried fruit in the pantry.  Some of it can be turned into mincemeat (used a lot in puddings throughout the year) and also chutneys and if you have any dried apricots you can turn them into dried apricot jam.  Yummy.  

Right back to the plotting and planning.  

Catch you later.  

Pattypan xx