My Lime Green Kitchen

Archive for the ‘Condiments’ Category

Peach Chutney

4 quarts peaches, pitted, peeled and chopped
3 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
1 cup raisins (I don’t like them but I use them for this recipe)
2 cups chopped onion
1/4 cup mustard seed
4 – 6 Tablespoons finely sliced, peeled fresh ginger
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
4 – 10 jalapeno peppers, sliced (remove seeds if you want less heat . . we leave them in)
4 cups cider vinegar

Combine all ingredients in a pot that’s plenty large enough that it won’t boil over.  Simmer til thick, stirring real often.  It tends to want to stick if you get the heat too high or if you don’t stir it enough.

Fill hot jars, leaving 1/4″ head space.  Remove air bubbles.  Adjust lids and rings.  Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Pesto:

2 cups as full as you can fill them of washed basil leaves (mash them down and get as many as you can in the cup)
1/4 – 3/8 cup olive oil
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 T. chopped garlic
1 T. Fruit Fresh or lemon juice

In a food processor, chop/blend the olive oil, cheese, pine nuts and garlic.

Add the basil leaves and Fruit Fresh and process til desired consistency. I like mine just barely chopped up.

Put into small containers and freeze. I often freeze mine in ice cube trays but they seem to have disappeared. Once it’s frozen, dump them into a zipper freezer bag. For this batch, I filled the little 1/2 cup containers I had and then I sprayed Pam on plastic wrap and wrapped up 1/2 cup amounts.

Then the little packets went into the freezer bag.

Blueberry Chutney

4 cups blueberries
1 onion, chopped
1-1/2 cups cider vinegar
3 tsp. mustard seeds
1-1/2 cups brown sugar
3 T. chopped or thinly sliced ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
2 jalapeno peppers, thinly sliced (more or less to suit you tastes)

Add all ingredients to a large pot. Make sure the pot is large enough for the ingredients to simmer without boiling over. Simmer, stirring often til as thick as you’d like it. I simmer mine for about 1-1/2 hours.

Put into jars as you would for any canning procedure. Process in water bath for 10 minutes.

Candied Jalapenos

* 3 pounds fresh jalapeno peppers, sliced about 1/4″ thick
* 2 sweet onions, sliced about 1/4″ thick
* 2 cups cider vinegar
* 6 cups granulated sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
* 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
* 3 cloves garlic, chopped

I do not remove the seeds from the jalapenos but I slice them, then put them in a colander and rinse them, using the sprayer on my sink so it has a bit of pressure. This rinses some, but not all of the seeds away.

In a large pot, bring cider vinegar, sugar, turmeric, and celery seed to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 7 minutes. Add the pepper, garlic and onions. Once they begin to simmer again, set the timer for 5 minutes. Once the timer goes off, using a slotted spoon, remove the peppers/onions to canning jars. Fill to 1/2″ from top. You should get 5 pints.

Raise the heat under the syrup and boil for 8 – 10 minutes. Pour the syrup over the peppers, to within 1/4″ of the top of the jar. Clean the tops of the jars, and use the 2 piece lids to seal. Process in water bath canner for 15 minutes (for pints).

Want to make your own file’? My guess is that most, if not all of you got up this morning hoping I would post about how to make file’!

What’s file? It’s what us Louisiana folk put in our gumbo. It’s powdered leaves from the sassafras tree. What you may not know is that the world’s largest sassafras tree is in Owensboro, KY, which is where we lived nine years before moving to MO in 2007. Even Wikipedia says the largest tree is in Owensboro.You can see a picture of it here. I think the picture was taken in the tree’s better days. Recently I heard it’s taken a hit from the hurricane that came through and recent ice storms.

Start with leaves from the sassafras tree. Any sassafras tree will do . . doesn’t have to be leaves from the largest tree in the world! When we lived in Owensboro, we had several trees in our yard. They grow kinda wild . . almost a nuisance tree. But we moved away and I haven’t found a sassafras tree around here. This past winter I ran out of homemade file and had to buy some at the store. You can imagine the complaints I got from my family.

I asked my friend, Becky, who lives in Owensboro, if she would gather me some leaves, dry them and send them to me. I was afraid if she sent them fresh off the tree, they’d mold or otherwise have problems while making the trip here via the U. S. Mail. She did. She sent me a ziplock bag full of dried sassafras leaves. Some say it’s best to harvest the leaves in the fall right before they turn brown. I think they have a stronger flavor if harvested in the spring. I believe it’s more common to harvest the leaves in the fall because people begin eating gumbo in the fall and make the file’ fresh when it’s closer to time for eating it. I actually would make it any time I needed it if there were leaves on the tree but my preference is spring leaves.

Strip out the hard veins. You don’t have to be real particular because we’re going to sift the powder and who cares about a bit of stem . . fiber, right?

Stick all the leaves in the food processor. You could also use the blender or a mortar & pestle. Grind it till you get it the consistency desired. We prefer ours to look more like finely ground leaves than powder.

Sift it through whatever size mesh you desire.

Store in airtight jars. When it gets closer to time for gumbo (fall/winter), I’ll transfer some of this to a spice jar with a shaker top. Can you see a bit of difference in fresh ground and storebought?