food hits and misses

My parents have planted a vegie garden, and from the size of the produce, they seem particularly talented at growing zucchinis. These are seriously the biggest zucchinis I've ever seen, and they're beautiful and firm the whole way through.

With a surplus of zucchinis, the plan was to take the excess over to my Dad's mate Old Keith so he could turn them into relish. I don't know what happened to change that plan, but Mum ended up making a batch, then sending me home with a jar of her relish and four gigantic zucchinis to make another batch myself.

I had a look at the recipe and found out it was pretty much identical to most zucchini relish recipes online. The biggest difference being the amount of zucchini, sugar or capsicum. Old Keith's recipe is on the lower end of the sugar range, but a bit light on for capsicum in my opinion. What really stood out as a problem was that this recipe, the same as all of the ones I saw online, refers to cups of zucchini and onion. I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to judge how many cups you can get out of a given zucchini. What I know now, though, is that ten cups of zucchini is around 1.5 kilos.

Here's the recipe, avoiding cups, and tweaked to suit my taste preferences.

Zucchini relish

1.8 kg zucchini
900g onion
4 capsicum
7 tbspn salt
4 cups sugar
800 ml apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tbspn mustard seeds
1 1/2 tbspn dill seeds
2 tspn turmeric
1 tspn cracked pepper
4 tbspn cornflour

Method

Grate the zucchini and onion. Seed and roughly chop the capsicum. Place in a large bowl and sprinkle salt over the top. Leave to sit overnight. Wash and drain well, then place in a large saucepan. Cover with vinegar and add sugar and spices. Bring to boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Combine the cornflour with a small amount of the liquid to form a smooth paste. Stir through the relish and continue cooking for another five minutes. Bottle in sterilised jars, invert for 5 minutes, then store in a dark place for a couple of weeks to allow the flavours to develop. Will keep for up to a year in properly sealed.