According to Mike, our kiwi fruit crop this year could number up to 2000, in comparison with last year’s very modest production. The crop in 2017 was also huge, so maybe our friend Elizabeth is right, that this might be one of those plants that produces well only every second year.
Hard to capture the large numbers on, er, ?film? as they aren’t hanging too far below the heavy pergola beams, but they’re quite dense under that side of the pergola. The other half is covered by the male plant, so nothing much doing there. (But I know what you’re thinking) The problem is that they’re not fully ripe yet, and it will be another 5-6 weeks before these ones are sweet and juicy enough to enjoy fresh, and by that time the comendrejas/possums will be right into them, too. Kiwi Fruit chutney is pretty good, and as we eat a fair bit of chutney, Mike made a small test run batch today:
I once wrote to our children “Interestingly, here in Uruguay (May 2002) we have been given a lot of tomatoes recently, and your own father has taken to making chutney. In my childhood it always seemed to be man’s work. However one time your father went out into the field and left one pot cooking for me to finish and put up in jars. But unfortunately I forgot it was on, and let it burn! I discovered when making a replacement batch that there’s nothing hard about it at all. Yet making chutney always had this male mystique about it.” and though I have no doubt it was true, I do not recollect that incident. As my own father’s role was chutney chef, and I don’t really remember Mum making it at all, I follow suit, naturally! It’s not that I’m anti chutney making, or anything, and I’m sure I can make ‘chutney’ as well as any man; but well, it’s like barbecuing food, it’s man’s work.
The Padman families ate quite a bit of chutney, and for most of my teen years everyone’s favourite breakfast was poached eggs on toast with a layer of chutney under the egg. These days that combination has absolutely no appeal to me whatever, but I understand that cousin Andrew’s family still hoe into it regularly, though maybe not frequently.
Now if I’m cooking some meat and want a bit of a spicy sauce to go with it, I take some onions, saute them, throw in some fresh garlic, some chillis, finely chopped fresh if you have them otherwise a small tin – add some finely diced fruit including a peeled granny smith apple and a mandarin or two, saute all these together then add a little vinegar (rice vinegar’s nice) perhaps a little soy sauce, a little curry powder, add in that bit of 1-2 day old tomato puree from the day-before-yesterday’s-pizza, add S&P to taste, or as they say in modern cookbooks ‘adjust seasonings’ . When it’s all reduced and thickened a bit, I’ll serve it with whatever meat I’m cooking. This is of course pretty much ‘chutney’, but since I don’t actually make chutney myself, I call this a ‘salsa’