When I moved to our terrace in Surry Hills I became gardening obsessed. I bought a $50 raised garden bed from Aldi and became a square foot gardening follower. I even had a hipster gnome called Chomsky.
I had numerous pots, climbing frames, crawlers and creepers. However I have a brown thumb. Two of them actually. The bulk of my harvest was made up of snails and slugs. I also harvested a heap of tiny, rock hard, green tomatoes. And one red one. And two very small, very anaemic eggplants:
The only solution to my gardening failures was to take up preserving. I didn’t have any jars, so I emptied 5 perfectly good jars of mustard, mint jelly and green tomato relish (what a great idea!). Again, not one of my more economically sound decisions. After sterlising them by boiling them in water I was good to go.
I obtained 2 different recipes. One was the faithful Country Women’s Association for relish that called for:
6lbs ripe tomatoes
2lbs onions
2lbs sugar
2 tablespoons curry
Small handful salt
Half a teaspoon cayenne
2 and a half tablespoons mustard
Vinegar to barely cover
The other was for Green Tomato Pickles. I do not know what the difference is.
Green Tomato Pickles:
1 kg green tomatoes
225gr brown onions, peeled and sliced
225gr Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped
300ml cider vinegar
100gr sultanas (optional)
1 teasp salt
1/2 teasp cayenne pepper
1/2 teasp dry mustard
225gr light brown sugar (demerara)
As it was rainy and I didn’t want to leave the house I improvised and made a blend of both recipes. And then added numerous changes:
1. I chopped up my tomatoes and covered them in brown sugar and some salt and refridgerated them overnight.
2. Instead of apples, I used the mangoes that we had overzealously bought to make daquiris with before discovering we had no blender.
3. I used mustard powder, wholegrain mustard and white wine vinegar, no sultanas and a couple of brown onions. A touch of mixed spice, banged everything together with the drained tomatoes in a pot and let it stew away for a few hours.
The result was a tasty one.
alana cooks 