Our festive apple and tomato chutney recipe was discovered by happy accident last year during a Christmas-time visit to one of the cheesemaking families we work with. Discover how this moreish seasonal spread came to be with the help of another one of our craft suppliers, and the cheesy companion we’ve baked to go with it…
One of the most rewarding parts of the relationships we have with craft food producers – aside from baking with the exceptional ingredients they supply us – is the wealth of ideas and inspiration that emerge from our regular and always-fruitful meet-ups.
We made one such visit last November when we stopped by the home of cheesemakers Simon and Tim Jones (who supply us with Lincolnshire Poacher cheese for our Ham & Cheese Croissant). The brothers served us a delicious chutney with a lunch of cheese on toast and potage purée bonne femme (recipes here). With the savoury creaminess of the cheese, the satisfying crunch of the toasted bread and the dairy-enriched potage, the sweet yet slightly sharp notes of the chutney brought the meal together and balanced it all out.
When we inquired about the chutney recipe, a handed-down notebook that’s been in the family for 60 years was brought out, containing handwritten instructions for “Aunt Tot’s Pickle”, a green tomato and apple chutney. “It’s not our aunt but our dear friend, Phoebe, who is 85 and has worked for us for 50 years. Tim was just a year old when she started.” said Simon. The simple recipe’s key ingredient is time. “It needs some weeks to mature, so if you make it a couple of weeks ahead, it will be perfect for Christmas,” explained Simon.
It was then that an idea was hatched: what if we could make it to be available in our bakeries this festive season?
We turned to another one of our family-run partners, Tea Together, who have made our jams and marmalades for longer than we can remember. Using traditional copper pots and seasonal ingredients, they make preserves the old-fashioned way: with good produce and a touch of patience. We knew they would be the perfect partner to do justice to the chutney recipe, which, because of its simplicity, requires the finest ingredients and a skilled hand to be cooked just right.
But you can’t have chutney without a good savoury biscuit to eat it with. Or at least you can, but where would the joy in that be? Almost at the exact same moment that we realised we had to create an accompanying savoury vessel for the sweet chutney, the Lincolnshire Poacher brothers got in touch to tell us about a strong 50-month-aged variety of their cheese and we wondered if we might be able to use it in one of our bakes.
And so the final chapter of our chutney story takes us back to the beginning. What we came up with are our Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese Biscuits - the most cheesy, intensely savoury crackers using Lincolnshire Poacher 50 that happen to go perfectly with the original recipe for Aunt Tot’s Pickle. The only thing missing is a slice of cheese – and a glass of port, perhaps?
You can pick up our Green Apple & Tomato Chutney and Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese Biscuits in our bakeries and online throughout the festive period. And if you fancy making the chutney yourself, you have just enough time to mature it until the 25th – check out the original recipe here.
