Chicken Angel

The Apple-Cranberry fruit leather was so popular in Amelia’s lunch basket that we decided to make more before all the apples have been forgotten for another season. Today, it was Apple-Plum and Apple-Rhubarb. Following the same general idea, we peeled, cored and rough chopped apples added to a large pot and cooked briefly with about equal parts plums finely chopped with a sitck mixer. Once boiled, dumped into a sheet pan lined with parchment and put into the oven to dry.

We peeled, chopped and cooked the rhubarb with about half a cup of sugar before adding the apples to it. Same story, after the mixture came to a boil it was spread out and put in th oven to dry.  I’m curious to see how this one turns out.  I just saw the rhubarb at the market and decided to give it a shot.

We have three apple trees in our yard: a venerable Gravenstein, a Pink Pearl that we brought back home from a trip to Mendocino last fall and an unknown dwarf that might be another Gravenstein variety. The trees bury us; it’s a challenge to use them up before they rot. This year we’ve already dried plenty and have made plenty of apple sauce so I thought we’d try something different. Enter, Amelia’s lunch box.

• Enough apples, peeled, cored and chopped, to make ~6qts.
• Several large handfuls of dried cranberries.

Throw it all in a pot with some lemon juice over a medium heat and cook until the apples have started to get tender. While some recipes call for making sauce and then using it, that seems like more work than needed; I used a stick blender to chop it all into small bits and then dumped it out into a half sheet pan lined with plastic wrap. The mixture almost came to the top of the pan. Put it in an oven on ‘warm’ and check in once in a while. It took mine near 36 hours to fully dry out. We flipped it over once to help it dry more evenly

When it was all finished we cut it into 1″ x 4″ strips and wrapped them up in wax paper tied with a bit of string ready for a snack.

• 3# Apples, diced 1/2″, from the small tree
• 2# Yellow Onions, diced 1/2″
• 6 whole San Marzano tomatoes, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 1 cup black currants
• 2 Serrano chillies, thinly sliced with seeds
• 2 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup apple juice
• 2 cups sugar
• 1t each, brown, black, yellow mustard seeds
• 1t ground ginger
• 1t ground cumin
• 1/2t ground cayenne
• 1/4t ground cinnamon
• 1/4t black salt
• zest of 1 orange

Combine liquids, sugar and spices in a sauce pan sufficiently large to hold everything. Bring to a boil and add everything else once the sugar is dissolved. Cook down until there isn’t much free liquid left and adjust seasoning to taste if needed. Ladle into canning jars and process for 10 minutes. This chutney ought to be left alone for a few weeks to let the flavors mingle.

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