Spicy aubergine (brinjal) chutney for Christmas

Every morning in December my two older children open their Advent calendars and then jump up and down shouting out the days til Christmas. However  well you've done with present buying this is not that restful a start to the day. If like me your present list is still only half complete then why not give up the shops and try cooking up some presents instead? I would much rather be in a warm kitchen listening to the radio than shouldering my way through the Christmas throng. This year I’ve made lemon and ugly lime marmalade (it's in my book). It’s a good Christmas present for marmalade fiends as they have invariably run out of the homemade stuff by December. I've also made my some brinjal chutney. It's a rich, spicy chutney that goes well with Indian food but is also delicious in a sandwich with a good hard cheese. It makes about 5 jars.

INGREDIENTS


1 x  5cm square tamarind pulp (soaked in about 100ml of kettle hot water)

4 (roughly 750 g) aubergines (diced)

2 tsps sea salt

6 tbsp vegetable oil (mustard oil would be perfect if you can get hold of it)

3 long red chillies (seeded and finely chopped)
6 cloves of garlic (peeled and finely chopped)

1 thumb of ginger (peeled and finely chopped)

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 scant tsp fenugreek

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp fennel seeds

8 fresh curry leaves (optional)
2 whole dried red chillies

2 heaped tsps black mustard seeds

1 tsp turmeric

400ml distilled malt vinegar

150g dark brown sugar

5 clean jam jars (save up your shop bought pickle jars)

a little oil to seal the top

A couple of hours before you are ready to start making the chutney place the diced aubergines in a colander and sprinkle over some sea salt. Grind the cumin, fenugreek, fennel and coriander. Place in a bowl along with the other spices and the curry leaves. Rub the tamarind through a sieve into another little bowl using a wooden spoon. Scrape the pulp off the bottom of the sieve. You should have a good 2 or 3 tablespoons of glossy brown pulp. You are ready to start making the chutney.

Heat the oil in a large non-reactive saucepan. When hot add the aubergine and fry until soft and a little coloured. Add the garlic, chillies and ginger and fry for another five minutes before adding the spices. Fry for another two minutes then add the vinegar, tamarind and sugar. At this point put the clean, washed and dried jam jars into a cold oven with the lids off. Turn the oven on to 170ºC/gas mark 3 and put the timer on for 20 minutes. When the bell goes turn off the oven leaving the jars inside.

Cook the mixture over a medium heat until you have a thick jam like mixture (roughly 30 minutes). Stir frequently. Taste the chutney. Don’t worry if it’s very vinegary this calm down. Add a little more salt if you think it needs it. Spoon your chutney into your hot jars. Pour a little more oil over the top to seal the jars and screw on the lids. Make some labels and wrap them up. Tell your lucky friends or relatives that their chutney will be ready in a month (a perfect spicy kick for the fag end of January).

Perfect weather for forcing chicory

When salad is scarce, homegrown chicory is a great resource. Because it is grown indoors it is an ideal winter crop for fair weather gardeners who don’t like going out in the cold. I don’t mind having a break from the allotment in winter as even a quick visit to my rather exposed site means icy winds and raw red hands. This doesn’t mean I have to stop gardening. This is the perfect time to bring in your chicory roots and pot them up for forcing. This week I seized the chance of a bright morning and went and dug up the chicory plants I sowed in July. If you haven’t got chicory ready for forcing don’t despair just read on to find out what its all about and put them on your seed list for next year. I’ll leave all the sowing information until 2010. Even if you don’t want to force chicory there are lots of chicory salad ideas at the bottom of this page.

Forcing chicory

If you’ve never forced chicory and a wondering what it’s all about here’s a quick explanation. To force a plant is to make it grow in unnatural conditions (deprived of light) in order to produce faster growth (and paler vegetables). Rhubarb and chicory are both commonly forced vegetables. The chicory that probably first comes to mind is the pale yellow-tipped bulb known in Belgium as witloof, and this is the most reliable forcing chicory. But the red-flecked Italian variety, Rossa di Treviso, is the one I’ve gone for this year. To do all this you have to actually dig up a plant and bring it indoors. You may face resistance from other members of your household who think that bringing large pots of soil into the house is not a good idea. For some people (my husband is one of them) opening a cupboard that usually contains coats and finding a big tub of damp black earth is deeply disturbing and in his case, enraging. I find that serving up lots of different delicious chicory salads helps overcome this response.

Because of our very mild November I’ve had to wait a bit longer this year but generally its fine to do your digging up after the first frost. First dig the roots up carefully. Then trim the leaves down to the roots. Shorten the roots to about 8-10cm. My plants are smaller than other years so I didn’t have much shortening to do but I am still optimistic that I should get some leaves from them.

I don’t have a potting shed so I did my potting up by the kitchen sink but the kitchen table would be fine too. First I got some fairly deep plastic plant pots. Then I filled the pots with old potting compost. I used the handle of a wooden spoon to make holes in the soil and popped the lopped chicory plants in so that just the stub of leaves was showing. I gave them a quick water and put them in a cold, dark cupboard. Then I covered them with an old tea towel as I my coffee sacks seem not to have survived our house move. Old coffee sacks are very useful for storing potatoes and covering chicory and coffee bean sellers will usually sell you their old coffee sacks very cheaply. I get mine from the Monmouth Coffee Company. When the danger of children rootling through cupboards looking for presents has passed I’ll move them to a warmer cupboard. When this happens the heat will cause the chicons to swell and bulb up in about 2-3 weeks (I'll post some pictures). The chicories in the cold will take much longer and by gradually bringing my crop in from the cold I stay in charge of growth. If you have limited space, lay the roots down in damp sand and pot them up as you need them.

Eating your chicory

The bitter, crunchy leaves of raw chicory need strong balancing flavours - rich and creamy cheeses such as goat’s cheese or Roquefort are perfect. The latter is particularly good in the bistro salad mainstay of walnut, chicory and apple. Chicory also stands up well to strong tasting, oily chunks of smoked eel or fish. Salty crispy flavours are another good foil for chicory - crisp squares of bacon and the soft yolk of a poached egg and frisée form another classic salad combination. Sweet sharp juices such as lemon, pomegranate or blood orange combined with creamy nuts such as hazel or walnut work well, as do the tart sour-sweet tastes of balsamic or sherry vinegars and capers. The peppery leaves of rocket and watercress contrast very successfully both in colour and taste. To make the most of chicory’s rigid form you can use the individual leaves of pale Belgian chicory as an alternative to toasts for holding dips such as Swedish prawn skagen with dill in a creamy dressing.

Blanched dandelion, caper and rocket salad

With the bitter taste of dandelion and the peppery taste of rocket, this salad is a good match for smoked mackerel or hot-smoked salmon fillets. If you want to get fancy try growing the striking looking red-ribbed dandelion, with its dark red spine edged by green foliage.

Serves 4 as a side dish

for the dressing

3 tablespoons of single cream

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 teaspoon of finely grated lemon zest

sea salt and pepper

for the salad

2 blanched heads of dandelion (make your own by putting a flower pot over some dandelions for a week)

a small bunch of rocket, approx. 100g (flowers too, if possible)

1 tablespoon of capers

Whisk the salad dressing ingredients together and set aside. Wash the salad leaves carefully and dry them. Leave them wrapped in a napkin or paper towel in the fridge until you are ready to assemble the salad.

Arrange the rocket, dandelion and capers in a bowl. Pour over the creamy dressing. Sprinkle with rocket flowers if you have them.

Other chicory family salad combinations

Witloof, Roquefort, slices of pear (or apple) and toasted walnuts.

Crisp green apples cut into thin slices, chicory, watercress and Stilton.

Raddichio, blood orange segments, goat’s cheese and toasted walnuts.

Slivers of smoked eel, baby beetroot or slices of larger beets, chicory and watercress.

Raddichio, toasted walnuts, goat’s cheese and pomegranate seeds.

Dandelion and sorrel.

Frisée, crispy bacon, poached egg and chives.

Chicory, beetroot, orange segments and walnuts.

Beetroot, chopped fine herbes (ideally parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon, but parsley and chives will do too) and endive

Chicory, boiled waxy potatoes, shallots and parsley

Or try, X. M Boulestin’s (the early 20th Century food writer) Salade Carmen – chicory, celery and beetroot in a French dressing made with cream and lemon juice instead of vinegar.

The following makes a mustardy vinaigrette that goes very well with chicory-based salads:

Whisk together:

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 tablespoons olive oil

sea salt and pepper

Braised chicory

Cooking chicory well so that it is soft with caremelised juices takes care and patience. You will need an hour or so to get the chicories perfectly cooked through. Depending on what kind of vessel you use you may also need to add a very small amount of water. If you find the chicories too bitter you may feel you need to add a little sugar.

1 chicory per person

butter

lemon juice

sea salt

1 tsp of sugar (optional)

Remove any tired looking outer leaves and give the chicory a quick wipe with a clean tea towel. Thickly butter a heavy pan or any nice bit of earthenware that can go on the stove top. The chicory should fit snugly into the pan. Dot a little more butter (1 teaspoon per chicory head) on top and the sugar if you prefer things a little less bitter. Cover with a piece of buttered parchment paper and the lid. Cook over a low heat, turning the chicories every 15 minutes until the chicories are tender and a pleasant golden colour. If they look like they are catching, add a very small amount of water. After about an hour test the chicories with the point of a knife to make sure they are tender all the way through. Squeeze over some lemon juice and season with salt.

Dreaming of an Indian vegetable garden

The idea of spending a year in a far off country is one I've been trying to realise for quite a while (without success). Its not the idea of traveling around that appeals to me, its the thought of settling down for a bit, living a different life and getting the chance to cook and grow vegetables in a completely different climate. If growing your own produce changes the way you cook then I can only imagine what growing the produce of another continent does to your understanding of that continent's cuisine.

For now I'll have to settle for growing another country's vegetables on my plot. Ever since I came across a display of vegetable seeds beside the till of a Brick Lane supermarket (a jumble of packets for growing methi and mustard leaves, snake

beans, and pointed gourds) I have been thinking about growing my own snake squash and lablab beans on the allotment.

This year I've finally decided to do it prompted by the book I've started writing with chef Sriram Aylur who's restaurant The Quilon, specialises in a modern, fresh tasting take on Southern Indian coastal cookery.

Before I start growing Indian vegetables on the allotment I thought I'd better get some expert advice. To do this I cycled down to the Spitalfield's City Farm. Situated just behind Brick Lane, the farm - a tangle of sheds, animal enclosures and polytunnels is home to Shetland ponies, donkeys, sheep, pigs and chickens but it'a also where you'll find a gardener of great skill and inspiration, Lutfun Hussain.

For the past 1o years Lutfun has run a gardening group, The Coriander Club. Lutfun is from Bangladesh where there is a long tradition of female gardener cooks. She noticed that many members of her community were finding it hard to source the vegetables they had grown up with and were also finding the transition to inner London living a hard one. The club provides a link to a more rural life as well as masses of the fresh vegetables most often used in Bangladeshi cookery. It seems Lutfun can get almost anything to grow (although she did admit to a failure with henna). As well as kudo (bottle gourd), the Coriander club grows mooli and mustards, snake gourds and naga chillies (the hottest in the world), aubergines, amaranth, chichinga, ribbed gourds, garlic and okra.

Her garden produces food in every season. It is a place of beauty through out the year with abundant marigolds in summer and tulips and cyclamen in Spring.

Lutfun's enthusiasm for her garden was equal to my own. We had much in common as gardeners. We happily swapped lists of the vegetables, fruits and flowers we grow. I have gratefully taken away her recommendations for plants I can grow on the allotment and plan to return with some globe artichoke seedlings for her in the Spring. I also learnt a good tip from her on how to grow coriander that won't run to seed (plant the seed in autumn so that the plant overwinters). The Coriander Club published its own cookbook this September (available at the farm) which also has lots of tips on how to grow Indian vegetables. I will be returning in spring and summer to watch the polytunnels fill up with shield sized gourd leaves and giant pumpkins.

I've put the idea of a real Indian garden on hold. I can still dream that garden, where I would work beneath a hot sun and grow bright flowers, ripe green chickpeas, perfumed yellow mangoes, guavas and finger bananas as well as vegetables unknown to me with strange shapes and stranger names; but for now the intense flavour of those Indian grown vegetables will have to remain just that, a dream.