Masterchef kiwifruit challenge - Part one

Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in.  In this blog entry I'm taking on the Masterchef kiwi fruit challenge.

A lady in my pub trivia team was lovely enough to bring a plethora of kiwi's along one night last week; I was the lucky recipient of about twenty little specimens of this brown and furry on the outside, green and tangy on the inside fruit.

Kiwi fruit is really good for you; it's very high in vitamin C.  However, I've never had kiwi as anything but a snack all by itself, where you either cut it in half and eat it with a spoon or cut it into slices and remove that furry skin in little rings.

As I um and ahh about accepting these lovely fruit; not knowing if I can manage to eat that many kiwi fruit before they go off; and not wanting to waste any "BG" suggests that I take the "Kiwi fruit challenge".  By suggest, I really mean her wish is my command, so of course I must go forth and produce food and a blog entry to fulfill this brief.

I cast my mind back; to the memorable episode where Mindy won herself the immunity pin in Masterchef.  Admittedly, it was in a raw food challenge against some top sushi chefs, however they were required to select a 'star' ingredient to feature in each of the courses.  The sushi chef guy selected kiwi fruit.

I now have an excuse (oops I mean a reason) to take the kiwi fruit and produce something worth blogging about.

I start off by consulting with my good friend and much lauded oracle; "Google Chef"... She's got recipes for absolutely everything. I am actually cooking from a recipe I found on the net; the recipe was vegan by the ingredient list as is.  I guess that's a bit of an 'invention/creativity fail' however, I also think it's a great opportunity to show that you can get really delightful and unexpected results from different ingredients if you're just willing to try something a bit different.

The first thing I did was weigh my kiwi fruit to see how much I had.

I forgot to rotate the image again, sorry.

I'm just thinking of your health and well being by making sure you flex your neck while sitting at the computer.  If you can't be bothered flexing, I have about half a kg of kiwi fruit on that scale.

In addition to the 500g of kiwi fruit you will need.

1 banana, 1(large) brown onion, 3tbs lemon juice, 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, allspice, nutmeg and cardamon, 1 dessert spoon salt, 1/2 cup white vinegar.

Prepare the kiwi fruit by removing the skin and dicing them.

By this time I'm a tad skeptical of this recipe... a kiwi fruit, a banana and some onion in a pot?  sounds like a "someone walked into a bar joke" to me right now.  But I persevere.

Banana ready to be prepared.

The instructions to this recipe are very straightforward, I'm actually surprised to learn how easy it is to make a chutney.  This is my first time making one and I'd always thought they were complicated!

All you do is chop up the fruit and vegetables, then take everything in the ingredient list and throw it into a large pot over medium heat.

Starting to cook chutney

Give it a stir, and once it boils then turn the heat down to a gentle simmer.  The recipe says to simmer for 1 hour, until everything is cooked down to a jam like texture.  I keep an eye on it every few minutes, giving it a stir to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot.

The finished product looks like this:

Yours may be less sideways.

I'm the first to admit that a jar of chutney doesn't look like much; really this just looks like a jar of chutney.  I made some onion bahji's for dinner to try out with my chutney. 

The kiwifruit chutney was tangy and delicious! I've discovered that it's great with onion bahji's, cauliflower pakoras and just regular old bread.

So... if you find yourself in a situation with stacks of kiwi fruit you don't know what to do with and you like tangy chutney give this one a go.