Mirror Shards and Mangoes

First of all, I want to thank Melinda for commissioning a wonderful telling of The Snow Queen from Vanessa Woolf. It was a delightful watch/listen and a brilliant way to mark both one year of lockdown and one year of this cooking group. So three cheers for Melinda for being brilliant and kind and creative and so thoughtful to have our anniversary marked in such a gorgeous way.

Secondly, thank you to everyone else in the group for all the wonderful recipes over the last year and for giving us such great food for thought. Also for everyone's honesty when they weren't doing so well and kindness in responding to others who were struggling. It's made a huge difference to know that this welcoming, non-judgmental forum was here, especially with added yumminess.

This weekend I made Mango Chutney, which was a first for me. The husband has been grumping for some time as the mango chutney he loved seems to have disappeared from all our regular shops and every other kind he's tried has been a crashing disappointment. To that end I started leafing through my cook books and came across a recipe from my Granville Island Market Cookbook which seemed straight forward and devoid of hard to get ingredients. The recipe in the book made 1.4L of chutney which is a tad much for two, so I halved the quantities as follows:

• 2 large ripe mangoes, peeled, seeded and cut into small pieces (or as big/small depending on the texture you want) 
• 1/2 small red pepper, diced
• 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
• 180g brown sugar
• 60ml white wine vinegar
• 30ml grated fresh ginger
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 2 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Put all the ingredients in a pan on medium heat and simmer for 45 mins to 1 hour. Once all the ingredients are blended and cooked, pour into a sterilised jar/jars and allow to cool. I found this amount fitted nicely into one good sized jar. It was quite runny when I jarred it, but it thickened up a bit when it cooled and had been in the fridge over night.

The verdict from the husband this morning was that it was "bloody sensational". Coming from a connoisseur of mango chutney, I'll take that for the win. 

That's it for now, I hope everyone has a good week