Recently, a friend gave us a bag full of home-grown kiwi fruits. We put it in our under-stairs cupboard, out of site and out of mind. When we rediscovered it yesterday, we had about thirty fruits all in need of immediate attention.

After a bit of web searching I noticed several recipes for kiwi chutney that sparked my imagination and so set to work processing the fruit. Initially I tried peeling them but that was far too time-consuming. Working on the basis that all the off-cuts were going to be composted, thus not entirely wasted, I hit upon a quicker method: cut off the bottom and squeeze out the centre into a bowl. Some got a bit messy but, being fairly ripe, this method worked well for most of them.

Alas, I cannot give you is my exact recipe for kiwi chutney. I did not have quite the right ingredients for any of concoctions I had found on the Internet and so took a very improvised approach. Wine vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper and a few dried chilies as a base. Chopped apple and red onion to add some bulk and then lots of kiwi flesh and a couple of handfuls of raisins to finish it off.

After an hour or so of cooking, it had rendered down into an ugly but tasty chutney. Initial tasting suggested I may have been a bit too generous with the chili component but I think it will make an excellent fiery accompaniment in small doses. Breakfast calls, so time to find out.

Technorati Tags:

kiwi fruit

chutney

composting

recipe

selfsufficientish