Chutney Part I

Chutney. So we went to stay with some friends and their kitchen garden was overflowing and my host said what do I do with my unfeasibly large marrow and I said I know, let’s make chutney. The Olympics were on. It was wall-to-wall women’s weightlifting which seems to be a riveting triumph of hope over reason intercepted now and again with archery which we all found fascinating and remained glued to whenever we could. Tearing ourselves away from the screen was hard but the chutney carriage was about to leave and I was holding the reins so off we went to the village store and cleaned them out of malt vinegar and raisins and brown sugar. Leaving the Koreans to win the gold medal, again. Gymnastics when we got back but my hostess and I were absorbed in our own world of mega- pickling so we didn’t look back.

An afternoon of peeling, spooning, chopping, slicing. Blissful hours of stirring and weeping at the onions and licking garlicky fingers and stirring the brown soup as though this were the elixir of life, which indeed I think it could be. Progress was slow – the hob was not too hot but who cared, now it was gymnastics and what better excuse to remain indoors hooked up to a screen than the need to keep an eye on one’s latest and dearest project. Eventually a narcotic aroma of brown sugar mixed with vinegar, spices and fruit curled out of the kitchen and up round the house so that even the boys playing with their handheld devices in rooms with the curtains closed were forced to lift their noses and go aaa as though they were taking part in a Bisto ad.

Next the bottling. In the motley recesses of my host’s pantry, we found kilner jars by the dozen with just enough foxing on the glass to lend the entire endeavour a satisfying frisson of shabby chic. The unfeasibly large marrow had whittled itself down admirably and with its friends the currants and the onions, it snuggled down into a mere eight jars which we then had to label, which of course is the best part. I decided to vary the labels. After all, you never know who you are providing for and this is chutney to be given away. Slogans seemed a good idea and another joyful afternoon in front of women whirling around on parallel bars and men doing implausibly high flips in skin-tight leotards was passed coming up with all the suitable (and unsuitable) chutney legends I could think of. My favourite was “Because you’re worth it”. “Vorchsprungdurchchutney” was another. In the context of the Olympics and their mission statement, “one world, one chutney” also seemed remarkably appropriate.

A few months later and now the credit crunch is crunching and the city boys are blanching and the eco-warriors are telling us to watch our carbon ps and qs. And all I can say to that is that there in my friends’ kitchen during a damp but sporting August, we came up with a solution to at least a few of our problems. What else uses waste product, preserves for the long haul, requires little or no energy input and is utterly completely delicious? One world, one chutney. Amen.