Spicy marrow chutney recipe

Posted by louisa on Thursday 16 September 2010 in cooking, preserving | 19 comments

Here’s the first recipe from my preserving marathon on Tuesday: spicy marrow chutney.

With all the different spices, it’s got a very full taste rather than a one-note blast of chilli heat.

It’s not the texture of either smooth jelly-like jam nor chunky like Branston — although it would be possible to make it like that – just cut the marrow a lot smaller to start with, blend the onions etc and skip the mashing stage. I did it my way because I wanted something more spreadable for sandwiches. Plus chopping up so much marrow into teeny-tiny pieces? yawn.

It’ll be amazing with ham and beef.

Spicy marrow chutney recipe

Ingredients

The last of the marrows

Posted by louisa on Monday 13 September 2010 in growing | 0 comments

On Saturday, I harvested the last of the marrows – just under 10kg in total. We’ll get some more courgettes yet – a dozen more or so at least – but they’ve slowed down their production enough that we’ll keep on top of them now so no more massive ones.

I decided to bring them in because a couple of their compadres had started going soggy (the non-soggy bits went to the chickens) and I thought it would be better to use them, not lose them.

We’ve probably had another couple went chickenward earlier in the year, and we’ve picked probably four or five marrows to use ourselves (for cakes, jams or actually as a vegetable) or give to others. It’s crazy to think we’ve possibly had 15-20kg of produce in marrows along – let alone all the courgettes we’ve had over the last few months!

My plans for these guys: chutney, chutney, jam and more chutney; and also more marrow cake to freeze – storing the marrow & summer egg glut together as one tasty cake!

Easy marrow and ginger jam recipe

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 31 August 2010 in cooking, preserving, recipes | 10 comments

After writing up the wild plum jam recipe the last week, I realised that I hadn’t written about the super easy marrow and ginger jam I made a few weeks ago.

We’ve had a lot of marrows this year – more by accident than design — too many courgette plants to keep up with. I used the early ones to make my marrow cake and misc cheesy marrow bake, and I gave some of them away – but we’ve still got maybe half a dozen to use up – so I’m jamming and chutneying like there is no tomorrow.

This jam recipe is very sweet but very easy. If you’re not a fan of sweet stuff, you might prefer to use less sugar and certainly not add the crystallised ginger.

Fixing runny/solid jam and reusing marrow & squash leaves

Posted by louisa on Friday 20 August 2010 in green | 0 comments

Just a quick heads up that over on Recycle This, we’ve had a few relevant posts this week.

Yesterday, I asked how to fix jam that was too runny or too solid – and lots of other jam related reuse/recycle questions.

And today I’m asking about reuses for marrow & squash leaves, other than just heave-hoing them into the compost. They’re so giant and tough that they seem like they might have other uses… we’ll see what people suggest.

If you’ve got any answers to either question, head over to Recycle This and tell us all about it :)

Using up the glut: Marrow cake recipe

Posted by louisa on Monday 19 July 2010 in cooking, growing, recipes | 23 comments

In my previous post about saving marrow/courgette seeds, I mentioned that the marrow I had was just going from ripe to overripe. I had no particular plans to eat the marrow – we like courgettes a lot but thought, since the variety was billed as a courgette, it would be tasteless as a marrow. I was happy just using it as a seed nursery – but when I’d stripped out the seeds, it seemed a waste to throw it in the compost. If the chickens liked courgettes/marrows, I’d have given it to them but they’re strangely fussy birds so I was left with pounds and pounds of edible flesh.

I test fried a slice and judged it to be alright – not as flavourful as its younger siblings but certainly not bad. Tough skin though – edible but tough, so that had to go. I used half of it to make a cheesy-bacony comfort food bake thing (a variation on this recipe from the Indy but with mixed cheese – parmesan and jarlsberg – because that’s all we had in and also goats cheese makes me gip) – I had some on its own last night and we’ll have the rest tonight with pork chops in a tomatoey sauce. The other half, I used to make a marrow/courgette cake.