Fresh tomato chutney

Autumn is definitely the time to start thinking of stockpiling food for the cold months. It's harvest time and a good opportunity to use up any excess fresh produce. I eat a lot of tomatoes - at least 500g a week - but an unexpected windfall from a veg box scheme meant I needed to use them up fast.

I've made this a few times and it always turns out well - it's simple to make and doesn't require a huge preserving pan or a thermometer. Because it is a fresh chutney, it will only keep for 6-8 weeks, so keep it in the fridge.

What you need:

250g finely sliced red onions

500g very ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped (including skins and seeds)

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

2cm/1in piece of ginger root, peeled and finely chopped

125g muscovado sugar

75ml red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

What to do: 

Prepare all the vegetables and put them in a big, heavy, non-aluminium pan. Add the sugar, vinegar and spices. Bring the pot to simmering point over a medium hob then let it simmer gently for an hour. Stir regularly. While it's cooking, sterilise a couple of jars.*

After an hour, most of the liquid should have evaporated. Now bring it to the boil to get rid of the rest of it - the mixture should turn thick, with an almost jam-like consistency. Don't take your eye off it at this stage. When it's thickened, take it off the heat and spoon carefully into the jars. Let it cool completely, then put the lid on the jar and pop it in the fridge.

Cook's tips:

Feel free to vary the spices. Fresh chilli (just one small one, or 1/2 tsp of powdered) will add some heat. Paprika also works well. If you haven't got mustard seeds, use 1/2 tsp of Colman's English mustard powder. I've also experimented with a couple of star anise, but it's a good idea to try and find them and take them out before bottling.

* To sterilise jars, wash well with hot water then dry out in the oven at 100-120C for half an hour or so. Bottle the contents while the jars are still hot. 

Quick fig chutney

Occasionally when I have overrripe fruit I try to use them up in ways that preserve them, rather than eating them immediately. Bananas get turned into ice cream and I blitz overripe mango into a pulp in the food processor then freeze the coulis in portions.

Figs that are well on the turn make great chutney. The quantity this makes is small - only a couple of tablespoons - but for one person that's plenty. It won't keep, so store it in the fridge and use within a week. It's delicious with roasted or cold meat, or some cheese (especially goat cheese).

What you need: 
2 chopped overripe figs
About 50g leftover blueberries
1 dessert spoonful of raspberry vinegar 
1 heaped dessert spoonful of muscovado sugar

What to do:
Wash all the fruit well - figs can be dusty on the skin and pick out any blueberries that are starting to sprout a soft, white mould. Put everything in a non-aluminium pan. Cook it down over a medium heat until all the juices have thickened and the fruit has broken down - about 10-15 minutes. Pour into a clean (preferably sterilised) jar and let it cool. Put a lid on and keep in the fridge.

Cook's tips: 
This is the sort of fresh chutney you can whiz up with almost anything - very soft tomatoes, wrinkly apples, squishy apricots or nectarines - just stay away from harder ingredients such as carrots, which take longer to cook. It's important to keep the vinegar and sugar in more or less equal quantities - taste as you go to ensure you have the right balance of sharp and sweet, and don't be afraid to add a pinch of salt.

Because it's fresh, it really won't keep long - it simply doesn't have the array of spices, pectin and other ingredients that go into the kind of preserve you can store long-term. 

To sterilise a jar, wash it well in very hot water with washing-up liquid, rinse well and dry out in a hot oven. If you don't have the lid, as I didn't for the jar above, cling film is fine for a cover but it's a reminder to eat up the contents quickly!

Larder larks extra - with love from the NEC

My kitchen's been a bit quiet over the past week - I've had a few meals out, you see, and in between I've either had beans on toast for supper (such a classic standby!) or cheese, oatcakes and some fruit. And I've been busy with work and also preoccupied with a couple of foodie projects on the horizon.

However, on Wednesday I took the train to Birmingham to visit the Good Food Show at the NEC. I don't go every year but I do like to browse the stalls to buy interesting foods and look at the equipment - you just need to watch your ankles as everyone seems to be trailing trolley shoppers behind them (ok, me included - how else am I to lug everything home?).

I'm a bit of a store cupboard junkie so my mission is to shop for ingredients rather than fresh, prepared foods. I always make a beeline for the artisan traders and if the stalls aren't too busy I'll talk to them to find out more about their products.

I came across these amazing flavoured sea salts - just look at the colour of the lemon one! It has a good, firm taste too. The garlic one smells incredible when you take the lid off, a whiff that smells as fresh as ramsoms in season. I tried a black one too - and it was black - it was supposed to taste of charcoal but I couldn't taste it. The salt comes from salt pans in Cyprus (I'm not sure where exactly), although the company is Swedish. You can buy from their website.

I have the usual infused oils next to my hob - chilli, lemon, rosemary, garlic - but this bottle from Casa de l'Oli was something else. They don't infuse their oils - they press the additional ingredients with the oil to extract the full flavour. The range was impressive so I tasted quite a few while chatting with the owner (a Brit with an olive grove in Catalonia - they press at a local mill there). This one contains thyme, lavender, fennel and rosemary - a wonderfully intense blend. It can be used to cook with or as a drizzle or in dressings.

I also succumbed to this lovely bottle of Womersley's lime, black pepper and lavender dressing, which is versatile enough to use in cooking as well as spiking up a salad. I tasted a fair few of these too - I found most a little too sweet for my savoury palate, but this one had a pleasing sharpness to it. (Is it me or does the bottle remind you of something posh for bathtime?)

I wouldn't be stocking up properly if I didn't come home with some chutneys, so I snapped up a pot of Mr Pitchfork's Pickles Fig Relish, which he tells me is perfect with blue cheeses, and this awesome Hot Garlic Pickle from The Garlic Farm. It's fair to say you need to be a serious fan of garlic to go for this, but you won't be disappointed if you are - there's a major hit of it in that jar.

It's not entirely true that I didn't buy anything fresh. I had a look at the stalls selling some fabulous artisan meats and cheeses but passed up on them because they'd have been unrefrigerated too long by the time I got home. I did get these giant elephant garlic bulbs from The Garlic Farm though (honestly, their stall had so many tempting goodies) - they are crossed with leeks so are much milder (you can eat the stem, apparently). I'm going to roast one tonight, halved and drizzled with some oil, to go with some chicken thighs and french beans. The other I'm going to dry on a window sill for a bit - the stall holder says this intensifies the flavour.

I also bought some very posh scotch eggs from Handmade Scotch Eggs - alas they didn't last long enough to be photographed, as I ate them for a late supper when I got home! After filling up on tastings all day it was enough.

The shopping wouldn't have been complete without some booze - this bottle of sloe vodka certainly hit the spot during a tasting at SloeMotion. They had a nice range of sloe and damson chutneys too.

I was also in the market for kitchen kit. I got a Berghoff cleaver (in the garlic photo) from their stall. I've never owned one before - they make me nervous. The seller gave me a crash course so I don't take my fingers off with it, but I definitely need practice. I was looking for a new mandoline but in among all the stalls selling fancy plastic shredders and the latest potato peelers there were none to be had.

Gripes? Well, obviously, not enough variety among the equipment retailers. @PinkDiva1970 had trouble finding a piping bag despite the plethora of cake decoration stalls. There were around half a dozen retailers of rapeseed oil, ditto producers of the ubiquitous chilli jam. And I really wanted a pint of real ale mid afternoon - lots of drink sellers, but only a Pimms stall selling to actually drink on the spot. I settled for a bottle of Becks from the NEC's own bar, priced at an outrageous £3.80. C'mon Good Food Show, you can do better than that...