Today we tried a new recipe that showed up in the local paper. Partly because it looked interesting but largely because it used some of the veggies in our garden. In fact, where do you get green tomatoes if you don’t have a garden?
It’s a Turkish recipe for green tomato and celery relish and is served with fried haloumi (we just happened to have a chunk of haloumi cheese sitting in our fridge). The recipe for the relish is:
- Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a pan and fry 1 finely chopped onion and 2 finely sliced cloves of garlic for 5 minutes or until softened.
- Add 300 g of cubed green tomatoes (we added one red one because we ran out of green), 1 stalk of celery (we used 3 since ours are tiny) sliced, 2 tsp of capers and a cinnamon stick (we used a sprinkle of powder as we don’t have the sticks). Cover and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes has softened slightly and released a bit of juice.
- Add 3/4 tablespoon of honey, 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon of allspice, simmer uncovered for 10 minutes
- Cool to room temp, season with salt and pepper
- Before serving, scatter with 1 tablespoon chopped dill
Now, fry up some haloumi (dusting lightly with seasoned flour first) and serve with the relish.
The tomatoes, celery and dill came from our garden, the rest from the cupboard.
It’s almost impossible to ruin fried haloumi so I wasn’t too worried about the edibility of the recipe, but not being a huge relish/chutney fan, I wasn’t overly excited either. But it was fantastic. A nice sweet and sour fresh addition to what can be a bland piece of cheese. I suppose it should be a side dish but with a slice of my home made ciabatta, it became our dinner.
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 