Figchutney

Christmas is coming closer and closer. Holly time 
I really do like this time - if only it wouldn't be such stressfull at work. All the "end-of-year"-stuff that had to be done before Christmas. 
This year I did not even had the time to make a stop at the christmasmarket of even going to the city.

Luckely I don't wait till the last time to go for presents, I kept my eyes open trought the whole last 5 month, made it much quiter and easier around

Once when being at a congress in "Murten" (city in the middle centre of Switzerland) and using the free afternoon to walk around in the little, cute center of the city,  I entered a little store with all kind of special spices, gravys, snacks, mustard from Texas -wow! I was immediatly caught about the variousity and I knew that I would find some presents - and not even planing it before.    - That's the way I mostly get a present. The unexpected ones are the best.....

This year I had the idea to make a homemade present for every couple sitting at the decorated table, placed in front of theire plate.

The idea was pretty easy found, a chutney. 

I bought all the needed ingredients and filled the kitchen with a great spicy-sweet-taste in the air.

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Figchutney

Cooking time: 40 Min. incl. cooling down

Ingredients:

2 Persons

For two Glasses (400ml)
8 fresh Figs or dried ones
1 knob piece of ginger
1 garlicknob
300 g Onions, chopped
80 g tried apricots
2 Cardamons
1 Tbsp. oil
1 staranis
70 g sugar
2 Tbsp. whitwine vinegar
250 ml red wine (or if you prefer balsamico)
Salt
fresh grounded black pepper

Direction:

1 Rinse figs, pat dry, peel and dice. Peel and chop ginger and garlic. Peel the onions. Dice along with the apricot. Crush cardamom pods.

2 Heat oil in a pot. Fry ginger, garlic, star anise and cardamom. Add onions and apricots and cook about 3 minutes. Pour vinegar and wine. Let simmer all together while stirring for about 15 minutes.

3 Add Figs and cook for a further 3 minutes, mix or puree everything trough (not if you desire chunchy bites). Allow Chutney to cool a little bit  and season with salt and pepper. Immediately fill in jars and seal. 

The chutney with fresh figs will be good for about 2 weeks, stored in the fridge. The chutney stay's longer good if you use dried figs. 

It is especially good with vegan meat and cheese.

Saffron-Tomato-Chutney

Hmm, my mouth watering when I see fresh picked Cherrytomatoes. Unfortnuatly my Cherrytomatoes on my balcony are a little late. To be truth, only 2 Tomatoes are ready to eat. The rest still green. Hopefully they will turn red soon.

Well till then I go to the city local little farmerstore, where you can serve yourself and pay by weight putting your money into cashierbox. Well this little store counts on their buyers not to cheat.

While having a stop over there today, they had fresh picked Cherrytomatoes and I immediatly had to buy an amount of them. Some I wanted to use in my daily salad or for Crostinis and I knew as well what I wanted to do. A Chutney. The bought ones are defently too sweet for me. And with selfmade I can regular the sweetness.

With this Chutney recipe, using no big amount of sugar and with no additional fruits, it's just what I wanted.

A similar Chutney I tried a few weeks ago at the local vegan / vegetarian restaurant. Well of course they didn't what me to give their recipe, but I asked and they told me that they use saffron and just spices and little sugar.
And now with having fresh Cherrytomatoes I wanted to try it myself. My first try was to strong of the spices. The second try cames out just perfect. Glad about that!

This defently going to be the most admired Chutney of mine!!

 

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Saffron-Tomato-Chutney



4 portions

Ingredients:
1 big piece of ginger
200 g Cherrytomatoes
Olivoil
250 g Pelati-Tomato (can, bottle)
2–3 tsp Chilipowder
4 pinch Saffron strands
1 tsp. Safran powder
½ Tbsp. sugar
salt

Direction:
Finely chopp the ginger. Cut the cherrytomatoes into quarters. In a pan preheat the oliveoil and add the chopped ginger and roast a short time, then add the canned pelatitomatoes and cook it up.

Add the spices, sugar and quartered cherrytomatoes and taste with salt. Cook it up once and fill in glasses and let it cool down.

Three strawberry stuffs (Jam, Chutney, Vinegar)

A few weeks ago I went together with my sister and her little son to the strawberry field for harvesting them. I harvest 4 kilo - a lot I have to say. It's been a great and hot day and after being finish I was sweeting!
Afterward we went making pictures for her son's ID. It's been hard work making him to smile and sit straight - but my sister got good nerves ;)

Being back at home I put the strawberries in the basement, instead of preparing them for what I wanted to do, I grabbed my book and some for my sister and cycled to my sister into the garden, chilling and looking for her son, while she's making strawberry jam.

We plaid and then my sister gave me a bikini and I was sitting together with my nephew in the baby swimming pool playing. I left as the sun went down and my sister had to leave home. But befor leaving I picked some of the mini Melonplant who were grewing in her compost.

I prepared the strawberries the other day and this is what I made:

NOTE: I know the post is late for strawberry season, but I wanted to post it, when the strawberry-pepper-vinegar is done, sieved and filled into a glasbottle.

 

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8 glasses of strawberry jam
2 small glasses of strawberry chutney
pre-prepared a strawberry-pepper-vinegar (will be finished in 2-3 weeks)
some of the strawberry I just chopped and frozen in and
some I puree and  froze in
AND of course some I just ate right away - so good!

Here are the recipes:

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Strawberry Jam



Ingredients:
1 kilo chopped prepared strawberrie s
500 g gelling sugar or 1 kilo sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

Direction:
In a big pan cook the strawberries together with the sugar and lemon juice till it thickings. Immediatly put the jam in hot washed glasses, close well and put them up-side-down on a wooden plate and let cool down.

For the best store them in the basement at a cool place before eating.

 

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 Strawberry Chutney



 

 

Ingredients:

250 g strawberries

2 Onion

80 ml vegan whitewine

120 g gelling sugar (3:1)

2 Tbsp. sweet Chilisauce

1 Tbsp. oil

 

Direction:

Peel and chopp finely the onion. Shortly wash the strawberries, cut the green away an dice into quarters.

 

Put the chopped onion in a preheated pan with the oil and roast till translucent. Add the strawberries, shortly roast them then add the wine, season with the chilisauce and stirr in the gelling sugar.

 

Lightly cook for almost  5 min then fill in hot sterilizated glasses and seal well. Let the chutney cool down and store eather in the refrigerator or in the basement.

 

Enjoy it with your grilled tofu or other stuffs

 

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Strawberry-Pepper-Vinegar

almost half a liter

 

Preperationtime: about 20 min

2-3 weeks till completly finished

 

Ingredients:

250 g trimmed strawberries

2 Tsp. whole pepper, finely mortared

50 g sugar

1 dl vegan redwine

2 dl red winevinegar

2 Tsp. Aceto Balsamico (italian dark vinegar)

 

Direction:

Mash the strawberry with a fork or cut finely. Fill it in a big glas with a wide throat.

 

Mortar the whole pepper. Together with the sugar and redwine cook it up, turn heat off and stirr in the vinegar. Pour it over the mashed strawberries and seal the glass well.

Store the bottle or glass in a dark and cold place for 2 - 3 weeks. During this time parttime shake it.

 

After the week, wash out hot a glassbottle and let it dry. Meanwhile sieve the the strawberry-vinegar throuh a geleetowel. Fill in the bottle and close well.

 

Tipp: Well sealed in a cold and dark place the strawberry-pepper-vinegar will be fine for 6-8 month.

 

 

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Roasted Cauliflower soup

I saw this image on How Does She’s Facebook page today and it couldn’t be more accurate.

 

Yesterday such nice and well temperature over zero nearly getting into warm and today the same dark and cold day again as we already had enough. Lately I hears some news that last year around this date it already getting into springtime, but this year springtime seams to be far aways. I really can't stand this cold days anymore. 

 

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Well this soup may take you some time to cook but it's worth it, cause it's roasty taste is just that good and you will be glad for doing it so. I for mine really liked the taste.


roasted cauliflower soup with roast-y onions + rosemary


 

serves: makes a large batch

soup:
1 large head of cauliflower, trimmed
1 lb yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed (I use yukon because of the waxy/creamy quality)
2 cooking onions, papery skin removed
1 sprig of fresh rosemary (mine was particularly lush, so perhaps 2 normal sprigs is advisable)
2 tbsp oil
salt and pepper
juice of 1/3 of a lemon (like 2 teaspoons)
5-6 cups vegetable stock

Topping:
toasted bread with some of your favorite oil and herbs

Direction:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Remove the core from the cauliflower and chop it into rough florets. Place the florets into a 9 x 13 glass baking dish.

Chop the potatoes into pieces about half the size of the cauliflower florets and toss them into the baking dish as well.

Chop the onions into rough 1-2 inch pieces and toss them into the dish. It doesn’t matter if the layers stick to each other.

Remove the leaves from the rosemary sprig and chop/mince them up. Sprinkle the rosemary over the vegetables in the dish. Liberally salt the vegetables and season with pepper to taste. Add the oil and toss the vegetables until evenly coated with the oil, herb and seasoning.

Roast vegetables for about an hour, flipping and tossing them here and there with a metal spatula/spoon to promote even browning. When done, remove from the oven and squeeze the 1/3 lemon over the hot vegetables (I just drop the lemon into the warm pan when I’m done so that it can release some oil too). Using your metal spatula, toss the vegetables with the lemon juice, scraping the browned bits off the bottom.

Once the vegetables are cool enough for you to handle, start blending them in batches with the stock.

Purée until smooth and pour into a big soup pot. Continue blending in batches until you’ve used up everything. Heat the large soup pot full of purée over medium heat until it boils. Add more stock or water to thin the soup out if necessary and adjust seasoning to taste.
Serve hot with the topping.

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Sweet Pepper Chutney

 

Ingredients

450 g red, green and orange peppers
900 g bramley apples
675 g onions
900 g tomatoes
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 lt pickling vinegar
250 g fruit sugar

How To Cook

Wash the peppers and cut them in half. Then remove the stalk and any seeds and chop the peppers finely.

Peel, core and dice the apples, then finely dice the onions. Wash and dice the tomatoes and place in a large preserving pan.

Stir in the paprika, cayenne pepper and ground black pepper, mixing well, and then stir in the vinegar and bring to the boil. Allow the spiced appleas, onions, tomatoes and peppers to simmer for about 45 minutes until softened.

When the fruit and vegetables are ready, spoon in the fruit sugar, stir until dissolved and continue to simmer until desired consistency is reached.

Pour into warmed jars, cover and label. Store in a cool dark place for at least three months before using.