As I said in my last post, it’s all about the courgettes at the moment! The four or five little plants in my raised bed have loved this crazy weather and are producing courgettes faster than is humanly possible to eat them!

I make a courgette chutney every year and always use this recipe from BBC Good Food.

There’s some deviation; I like to use fresh chillies and dried Kashmiri chillies, sugar can be dark brown or light brown or muscavado depending what’s in and the apples are whatever’s in the fruit bowl. Oh and this year I added a few raisins. They’ll plump up in the jar and will add an extra texture. A non-measured handful went in.

The recipe will make four or five jars. I once tried to make it in bulk which was a disaster- I had 19 jars of inedible sour pickle after my bulk batch disaster. Such a waste…

Speaking of jars, I’m a stockpiler. I don’t get through many jars in a year so I keep them all. I have a shelf just for them! I also reuse pretty kilner jars which have had body scrub in them – a couple of good scrubs, a hot wash in the dishwasher and sterilising in the oven gets rid of any exfoliating grains!

If you’re suffering from courgette glut there are far worse things to make than this chutney. It’s so versatile:
• It is great with a good mature Cheddar, ooh and Lincolnshire Poacher!
• Put it in the base of a cheese tart before you add the eggy mix and cheese and you get a built in layer of chutney
• Add a dollop to bolognaise sauce or chilli- it adds great depth to the flavour

My one piece of advice though is to let it mature. Eight weeks minimum if you have the will power. It tastes so much better for it.

I think courgette cake will be on the menu soon, but I’d love to hear how you deal with you garden gluts too.