I've been continuing to try to work my way through the ridiculous quantity of feijoas that we've suddenly come into. So far I've made two apple-feijoa crumbles, a batch of chocolate-feijoa friands, and a feijoa custard tart. I have a bunch of other feijao recipes queued up as well. But, for today, I decided to give this chutney a try.

It was certainly... interesting.

Recipe as written called for a truly terrifying amount of both vinegar and sugar. I tried it with half the amount of vinegar and no sugar at first. But it tasted a little flat, so I decided to add some of the sugar called for in the recipe and adjust from there.

I actually started with only 1/3 the quantity of sugar called for. I felt like that was being quite conservative. But, having tasted it, I think it probably could have done with even less. I'd probably cut the sugar back to just 50g (1/6 the amount called for in the original recipe) next time.

I also added a few more seasonings after tasting it several times. I think the seasonings helped. A lot. But, I have to admit, this is still not an amazing recipe. It's fine. It's not bad. It's just not great either. All-in-all, I think I'd rather do other things with my feijoas.

Update: I have since found another, very similar, feijoa chutney recipe. Similar enough that I strongly suspect it to be the basis of this recipe. (I suspect the RNZ version to be the newer variation because the author notes that she has tweaked and adjusted it to her tastes over the years and also because the cookbook that I found the other recipe in appears to be an older, hand-typed affair.)

The two recipes call for most of the same ingredients in roughly the same proportions. The main differences appear to be that the cookbook version calls for twice as many onions as the RNZ one and 1/3 again as much sugar (although, I only ended up using ~1/6 the amount of sugar called for in the RNZ version to begin with)! It also quadruples the cayenne, adds ground cloves as an additional seasoning, and calls for 48x the salt! And while I did feel that the RNZ version was somewhat lacking in savouriness (hence my doubling of the salt plus the addition of several salty umami-boosters), I'm not sure I'd go so far as to increase the salt nearly 50-fold. That seems somewhat excessive.

Anyway, I don't intend on actually making the cookbook version of this chutney. I found the RNZ one disappointing enough. And I don't feel that extra sugar, onion, salt, and spices are going to magically make it better. I'll save my ingredients and do something else with my remaining feijoas. That said, I did think it was interesting and wanted to make note of the similar (possibly source) recipe.

Feijoa Chutney

Adapted from RNZ

Ingredients

• 1kg feijoa pulp
• 500g onions
• 300g dates
• 200g raisins
• 400-500mL malt vinegar¹
• 1/4 c. tomato paste
• 50g brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp. curry powder
• 1 Tbsp. ground ginger
• 1 Tbsp. garlic paste
• 2 tsp. Maggi liquid seasoning
• 1 tsp. dark soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cayenne

Directions

1. Purée the feijoas with the onions, dates, raisins, and vinegar (or blitz in a food processor).
2. Stir in the tomato paste, sugar, curry powder, ginger, garlic, Maggi seasoning, soy sauce, salt, and cayenne and bring to a boil over medium heat.
3. Reduce heat to low and continue to simmer, stirring often, until mixutre is heated through and desired conistency is achieved.
4. Adjust seasoning to taste.

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¹ The original recipe called for a whopping 1L of vinegar. I cut this back to 500mL in my rendition. That said, I think it probably could have stood to have been cut back even further. I might try it with just 400mL next time. This would make the vinegar a little less overpowering and hopefully make the chutney a little thicker as well. ^Back