Wednesday, May 22, 2013

People Everyday Love Papaya-Mango Chutney
....or at least I assume they do.

Today, despite a super early wake-up time and MORE RAIN, has been a good day.  I got lots of errands done, pretty much all my chores around the homestead, and some cooking.  BF is on call today so I made an easily re-heatable pasta (chicken sacchettini with sweet potato, goat cheese and bacon sauce) for when he gets home.  I also made a batch of papaya-mango chutney, one of the possibilities we have chosen for our wedding guest gifts.  We intend to chose six different kinds of preserves - relishes, pestos, sauces, jellies, jams, chutneys.....well you get the picture - and to jar them up and give them out as little thank-you for coming prezzies.  Anyway, this is one I used to make at the restaurant back in the day, and it's delish, so I thought I would do a trial run to make sure I could still pull it off.

It starts like this:

1 medium papaya, chopped; 1 red onion, minced; 1/4c lime juice; 1 1/4 c white vinegar; 1/2 jalapeno, minced; 1 mango, chopped; 2 tbsp mustard seeds; 2 tsp curry; 1/4c brown sugar.
Basically you just put the vinegar, sugar, mustard, lime juice and 1/2 c of water in a saucepan and boil it.  Then you turn it down to medium and reduce it to a syrup.  Then add all the solid ingredients.


You cook this mix for half an hour or so, pretty much until you achieve a consistency you like.  In the meantime, sterilize your jars.


Make sure they are dry and set them out to be filled.


By now, your chutney should be cooked.


So then take a small spoon and dole out the chutney into your little jars.  Cover them and make sure it's on tight.


After a while you should hear the lids POP!  That means they are sealed and should be safe for quite a while.

The batch turned out well, tasty and a lovely texture; I'm quite pleased.  Now if I can just make it last until September.....

While I was in the kitchen all morning, I couldn't decide what I was in the mood to listen to, so I clicked on the DJ feature on my iTunes and let that decide.  A couple songs in, I made a mad dash to my little laptop to stop it and start it again at the beginning of an album it reminded me of but hadn't listened to in many years.  Do you guys remember Arrested Development?  Not the show, the band, from the early to mid '90's?  Ack!  Well if you don't you really need to look them up.  I was immediately transported back in time to when they came out, memories of high school shenanigans and so on abounded.  But what struck me most was how great they still sounded, not dated, still relevant.  Check them out:



Ahhh, memories and chut-en-ies.  Happy Wednesday, y'all!

Till next time!


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