This is a great recipe for using up a glut of damsons and green tomatoes, both of which I find can take you by surprise at this time of year.

I had for years wondered why we always produced masses of green tomatoes, usually blaming myself for not planting them out early enough, or the weather for not being sunny enough. While I'm sure these factors come in to play, I recently found out that a lot of people locally have the same tomato blight problem as we do, and while chatting about it had found out that a local market gardener has given up growing tomatoes outdoors. He had come to the conclusion that an increase in the amount of fields of potatoes in our area had caused such an increase in blight that it wasn't worth bothering.
I'd be tempted to not bother myself next year if it wasn't for recipes like this one, and the classic green tomato chutney.
They're a staple in our store cupboard and one we wouldn't go without.

Like a lot of people we always seem to get a glut of courgettes at this time of year, actually most of them are more worthy of being called marrows. We're also overflowing with cooking apples, and the tomatoes are looking like we're going have to pick them green before the dreaded blight makes it's annual visit.

All of this points towards using this excellent recipe based on the one Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall calls glutney on his river cottage blog. The beauty of Hugh's recipe is in it's adaptability, as long as you use 3kg of marrows / courgettes / pumpkins / tomatoes / apples the actual quantities are interchangeable.

Some time ago when in Manchester I was tempted into buying a large box of fresh mangoes. I paid  just £3 for a beautifully packaged box of seven small ripe mangoes, complete with tissue paper wrapping and tinsel decoration. When I got home I froze them planning to make mango chutney.

Mango chutney is not something I've tried to make before, although we consume enough of it as we tend to have a curry night every few weeks.
There's a good selection of recipes on the internet, including a sweet version with raisins on bestrecipes.com.au, and one with lots of chillies at top-indian-recipes.com. One problem I ran into, which also happened when looking for lime pickle recipes, was that the Indian use of the word chutney tends to refer to preparations of fresh ingredients rather than a method of preserving.

Preserved lemons are a common ingredient in North African, and  especially Moroccan, cuisine. You can actually use them in many dishes - anywhere that would benefit from a bit of citrus flavour.  I've put together some ideas in this blog post about what to do with preserved lemons.

They're very easy to make and it costs very little to make a large jar full, especially in January and February when the new crop of imported lemons enters the UK. 

I used up some of my bargain car boot sale limes on making lime chutney, but have been searching for a spicier Indian style lime pickle recipe. The problem I've been coming up with is that most of the recipes involve leaving the pickle in full sunlight for several days, fine if you live on the Indian sub-continent, but a bit more difficult during your typical English summer.

In the end I had to go with one just to try it out, this is an interesting recipe as far a pickling goes in that it doesn't contain vinegar or oil, the preserving is presumably done with a combination of the acidic lime juice, salt and sugar. I'm still looking for a recipe for an oil based lime pickle as I still have a few limes left (now safely stored in the freezer)

We've been eating a lot of carrots recently. Partly through trying, as much as possible, to eat seasonal vegetables. At this time of year this results in a lot of coleslaw, which isn't a bad thing especially with the addition of fresh chives from the garden.

It set me thinking that there must be a way of using carrots in a chutney, after some searching it seemed that a lot of people were trying to replicate the classic M&S Wensleydale and caramelised carrot chutney sandwich. It's a few years since I had one of these, but I do remember them as being particularly good, Wensleydale goes very well with a sweet chutney.
There was a good looking Indian recipe at indianfoodforever.com which I'll have to try another time. I decided to have a go at this recipe for Carrot and Almond Chutney from the Chutney Recipes Blog, as I was intrigued by it's description as angel hair jam.