A friend of mine made some delicious chutney and brought some over to me. It was absolutely fantastic – although it contained ‘just a little bit of sugar’. Obviously, I don’t normally eat sugar, so I’ve had to ration myself with it. But with my mad spree of baking over the holidays, I thought maybe I could come up with a paleo version of chutney… Could be fun. Considering I’ve never made chutney before. The closest thing I’ve come to that would be making Bacon Jam (which was amazing!). Chutney, however, I thought was going to be time consuming… luckily, I’m a lazy cook, so this is a speedy recipe as far as chutney goes.
Of course, having made chutney, I needed to make some crackers as well. Although I imagine the chutney would be delicious on baked sweet potato or whatever. It’s good in small doses – as even though it’s sugar-free, it’s pretty sweet due to the fruit.
Would make a fantastic gift for someone though.
Sugar-free Nutty Winter Chutney and Gluten-free Crackers
Ingredients
Chutney
Crackers
Instructions
Chutney
-
In a large heavy saucepan, heat the tablespoon of oil up while you chop up the red onion. Cook the onions gently until they've softened (about 10 minutes or so). Throw in the minced garlic and ginger and keep cooking until well-combined. While this is cooking, start chopping up your dried fruit into small chunks.
-
When the onions start to brown, start adding the fruit: apricots, raisins and figs. Keep stirring until everything is well mixed.
-
Then pour over the honey and vinegar and toss in all your spices (DON'T add the almonds yet!).
-
Cook gently for about 30 minutes while stirring. At some point it'll get super sticky, this is when you want to add the water. I used 50ml, but you may need more, or less. You want to keep the chutney moist. After about 30 minutes, it should be less liquidy and more solid. Now throw in the almond slivers, stir to combine, then leave to cool.
-
When it's cooled, put it in pretty jars to give as gifts or one big jar to use yourself. Store in the fridge!
Crackers
-
Preheat the over to 170*c
-
Grind up the flax seed if you haven't already. Beat the eggs well. Throw everything except the sesame seeds into a food processor and process until well mixed. Add the sesame seeds last - so they don't get too smashed up.
-
Lay a piece of baking parchment on a baking sheet and empty out the dough onto this. Smear it so it is about 1/2 cm thick all over. Use a spatula and get it a bit wet to ease the spreading. Once it's all evenly distributed, use a sharp knife to make cut lines to the size of cracker that you want. This will make it easier to separate after they are cooked.
-
Baked for about 30 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave the biscuits in there while it cools.
-
Using a knife, break them apart. Store in a tin! Eat with chutney! And cheese, if you fancy.
