Red Onion Relish

I’ve always got a couple of jars in the pantry with red onion relish. Easy to make and it keeps very well. Serve it with cheese and crackers, or my favourite, with roasted veggies on Turkish. They also do nice stirred through a quinoa salad and are a huge hit with hamburgers. 

I’ll add some to through the bread next week, having a taste for French Onion Bread.

Red Onion Relish:

5 red onions, halved then finely sliced

3 tablespoons neutral oil

2 tablespoons brown sugar

5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds (optional)

Put all the ingredients in a thick bottomed pot on medium heat. The trick is to go slow and long, stirring occasionally. You might want to add a little water, to keep it from burning too quickly. 

After about 50 minutes, the onions will be nice and syrupy.

Spoon into jars and keep in the fridge, or use the proper canning technique for pantry storage.

How about these very cute appetisers? 

A spoonful red onion relish in the middle of a quartered piece of puff pastry. Add some goats cheese (I had some leftover feta on hand). Into the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden and you are ready for a party. 

 

Not much to it, but the result looks fancy. 

Rosella Sauce

Rosella’s, they’re as pretty as their namesakes, both do well in our garden. The birds we already have, now I desperately need to plant some as well. A small bag of rosellas from a local grower just got turned into Rosella Sauce. It’s absolutely delicious, very aromatic and colourful.
There are many ways to use rosella fruit. Cordials, jams and jellies the obvious ones, but we only very rarely use those, so I don’t find them worth the trouble. On one site I saw them be called the tropical version of cranberries. So I made it into a sauce. If I could get my hands on more I would dry some of the “petals” for my tea blends.

Rosella Sauce:
Roughly cut up your rosellas (seed and all) stick them in a thick bottomed pot with 2 large table spoons of sugar (for roughly 500grams of rosellas). 
Cook for 20 minutes, by then it should be very syrupy. The seeds have plenty pectin to thicken it up. 
Taste, I like mine a little tart, add more sugar if you like. Stir until the additional sugar has dissolved.
Run through a food mill to sieve out the seeds and rougher bits 
Pour into clean jars, I had enough for two smallish jars. 
Keep in the fridge, this recipe doesn’t use enough sugar to make it reliable for canning.

The taste and scent is very close to rhubarb. This would make a lovely crumble pie.
I’ve used it through yoghurt, with roasts or like jam on toast. 

Or a rainy Sunday brownie...

More mango

I tried out two more recipes for mango:
A Mango & Apricot Pickle, the tamarind gives it a nice tang, I did a double batch.
The second was an Indian Mango Chutney, beautiful spices. The nigella seeds do not only improve the taste, but also give it a nice visual aspect.

Both were easily made, it took me to digging in the garden for fresh ginger and turmeric as well as making a good dent in my garlic supply.
I worked with fresh green chillies, the red ones are all infested with fruit fly at this time of year...

I promised my neighbour a jar, but held back. Because... I wasn’t too impressed with the outcome...
Nevertheless, I bottled both batches and set them aside. Pondering what to do.

A week later, we came back from swimming lessons. It was 17:30, Friday night, all were hungry and tired. And the general mood was going down with every minute the rice was cooking to go with the awaiting curry.
I ended up opening a jar of the mango/apricot and spreading it lightly on a bit on a wrap. Sliced in strips they did a great job as a pre-dinner snack. But wow the taste blew me away. A week of resting, improved the taste so much!

Next day with lunch I opened a jar with the Indian mango chutney, same thing!
A tablespoon spread out on a wrap, with strips of cucumber and capsicum,  baby spinach and some grated cheese. Lunch was a highlight.

Mango Season

It’s that time of year again, my favourite, mango’s madness! 

Grafton has a lot of mango trees, the last town along the East coast while going south. And they’re not only in orchards and backyards, you’ll find them in many public parks as well. A good reason for many traveler to swing of the highway for a mango picnic. 

Thriving in paddocks, they create a perfect shade (and snack) tree for livestock. At the height of the season, unpicked these trees will create on big fermented mess on the ground, making some streets a messy slip-and-slide crawling with ants.

With fond memories I think back to our first freshly picked mangoes in Queensland, where we lived close to the Australian mango district of Bowen. Like paradise, mangoes everywhere!  I remember drunk and disorderly parrots, too drunk to fly. And pigs swaying in the paddock totally out of it.

And I’m not the only mango addict.

Having used up all but one of my 15 jars with mango chutney I made last year, I’m trying out a couple of new recipes to restock the pantry.

Today I did a Pakistan Green Mango Chutney, a double batch using unripe mangoes and adding some chopped up turmeric for extra colour.

 Doing it the right way, the jars will last outside of the fridge or freezer. A thorough hot wash, filling, and finishing them off in a boiling water bath.

This recipe turned out really well, thick and chunky, slightly sweet with a nice spicy bite. Perfect to use instead of mustard on a cheese and salad sandwich, or alongside a curry, with salads and naan.

Tomorrow when a couple more mangoes have ripened I’ll try out a Mango & Apricot Pickle, darker and sweeter and perfect as a dip. I’ll let you know how that one turns out.

For those in the Grafton area, without their own tree. A small orchard on the corner of the Pacific Highway and Four Mile Lane sells them for $15 a box.