Batch 1 – Pickle
July 17, 2009 Food Related No CommentsWe’ve been getting loads of courgette’s and marrows (overgrown courgettes) and we needed to do something with the glut that would last us for a while.
So after perusing a few recipes and seeing what we had in the garden and cupboards we made…. Batch 1 of Marrow and Ginger pickle. (I’m not sure what the difference is to me pickle is anything pickled and this is full of vinegar… so that’s close, and a chutney is smooth more like a jam, ours is lumpy… so this is probably a pickle?).
I’ve said exactly what we used, feel free to change it, this is just what we had in the cupboard!
900g Marrow (overgrown courgette)
900g Tomatoes (a mix of ripe and unripe)
500g Apples (Royal Gala)
500g onion
200g Dark Muscavado Suagr
300g Demerera Suagr
475ml White Wine Vinegar
125ml Red Wine Vinegar
500g Sultanas
Thumb sized chunk of Ginger
1/2 tsp chili power (not sure if this is ground chillies or if its a mix…)
A bag of spices (all these tied up in a piece of cheese cloth).
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp black pepper corns
1 tsp cloves
What we did:
Put a large pan on a low heat with a bit of butter or oil
peel and slice the onions and put in the pan and stir.
Drop the tomatoes in boiling water, drain and peel (do a few at a time) (we used cherry tomatoes as it’s what we had available, we started peeling them but then gave up and picked the skins out later on while it was simmering), put them in the pan and stir (we turned it up a bit now too).
Chop the marrow into chunks about 1cm square(ish we had so larger ones, if it’s to put in sandwiches then maybe cut it a bit finer), put it in the pan and stir.
Peel and core the apples, chop into chunks and drop in the pan and stir.
Put in the sugar and the vinegar and give it another good stir.
Peel and chop the ginger into small chunks (ours were half cm squares or smaller) drop that in the pan, add the bag of spice and stir again.
Bring it all to a good simmer and let it simmer for a good couple of hours or so.
Stir it frequently and when it’s dried a bit so when you draw a spoon through it the mixture is thick and you can see the bottom of the pan then it’s ready to bottle (in your pre-sterilised jars).
At this stirring stage we went and watched TV and popped out in the adverts to give it a stir…. then we switched over to the BBC and forgot to pop out and stir it! so ours burnt to the bottom of the pan.
To rescue this we poured the contents into another pan, but didn’t try and stir or scrape any of the contents out, just took what came easily.
We have put that into our jars and is sitting in a cool dark cupboard for a few weeks before we give it a try.
Some people say to leave it for at least a couple of weeks, some say a couple of months! we’ll let you know how ours goes… probably slightly caramelised but hopefully not too bad!