It’s that chow-chow time of year
The tomato vines are laden with green tomatoes…
…the brassica beds are filled with plump cabbages and…
…the onions are ready to be lifted. Put them all together and it’s time for me to step up the pace to fill the larder for winter and next spring. Or more precisely, it’s time to make chow-chow (a type of cabbage, onion, tomato and pepper relish).
I used the first of my two main chow-chow recipes, which meant cleaning, slicing and dicing a couple of large cabbages, a pound of green tomatoes, a couple of large onions, and four peppers (two red, two green, these were bought in). As always, it’s vital to salt the vegetables first and then leave them for four hours to draw off excess water that would dilute the pickle.
After the pickle had boiled for 10 minutes, I carefully added the drained, rinsed and drained vegetables and brought the chow-chow to the boil again. It was bottled in hot, sterilised bottles, sealed and left to cool.
The end result: eight 2lb jars of chow. The four of us eat half a jar at one meal, particularly enjoying it with roast pork and roast potatoes. It’s also excellent on home-made hot dogs (actually sausages in buns). I’d prefer to make larger batches but that would take a larger hob or cooker than we have, plus larger pans. Instead, I’ll make a batch or two a week over the next few weeks until we have at least 30lb put away. I also have a variety of other pickles, chutneys and relishes to make, so it won’t be long before the larder cupboard is groaning at the seams again.
I’ve been following your blog for some time now and have very much enjoyed the insight it has given me into a life so different from my own urban existence here in Bristol.
In recognition of this I have decided to share with you a Brillante Weblog award I received from Almost Mrs Average (she of the Rubbish Diet). Details can be found on my blog.
PS Thanks for the selection of essential blogs you published in response to the Observer article. It should fill us newcomers in on your background.
Yum, chow-chow for chow time looks gooood.
That looks very good – sounds great with a roast dinner, will have to try it!
Looks great – I know what I’ll be doing the next time the veg box man delivers a cabbage. Thanks for writing such a great blog! Sal
Wow, those pics look great! I moved from Italy to Scotland (near Glasgow) 3 months ago and I sure miss my daddy’s garden and fresh products. *sigh* Will be back visiting soon, you have a lovley webhome.
& I thought chow chow was a southern U.S. thing! I like it on beans.
Pedlars in India used to carry boxes of goods around the houses of the Europeans. The chow-chow box contained a hodge-podge or mixture of things: “a mass of mingled objects, good, bad and indifferent”. And so it is with the relish chow-chow. (Quotation from Chow-chow: Being Selections from a Journal Kept in India, Egypt, and Syria; Amelia Cary, the Viscountess Falkland, Hurst and Blackett, 1857.
The Oxford English Dictionary describes chow-chow as “a mixture or medley of any sort; e.g. mixed pickles or preserves”.
Chow-chow was also known as Indian pickle in Victorian times. Mrs Beeton’s recipe for Indian Pickle is similar to some chow-chow recipes.
I’ve also come across Victorian recipes for pickled lettuce, which were very similar to chow-chow but using lettuce instead of cabbage. (I haven’t tried making this yet.)
I suspect that chow-chow, along with other dishes such as fried chicken, biscuits and sausage gravy, were taken to the US from Europe, redacted according to the ingredients to hand, and then popularised as American staples. Fried chicken can be found in old Scots cookbooks, soda biscuits can be found under different names in many parts of Europe, and sausage (or lard) gravy would have been a peasant fallback just about anywhere.
What I find particularly interesting is that dishes that went to the US often disappeared in their countries of origin, only to reappear later as US imports.