Chugnies - Chutney Muffins

This is possibly another hijacking but I'll let her away with it this once, because she danced around here going

'Mmmmm' and

 'Inspired' 

....with a big grin on her face, which hasn't happened often enough this year.

The story starts with an over supply of chutney.  Actually it goes back further to surplus harvest from the allotment and a no waste attitude and 'must put down supplies for a nuclear winter' and .... well you get the picture.

We moved to Greece with a surplus of homemade chutney.

There is only one person in the household who eats chutney.  This year there is only one person in the household.  She's not making great inroads on the chutney.  We have tomato, orange, banana (no, the oranges and bananas did not come from the allotment, but in the spirit of no waste and putting down supplies for a nuclear winter, fruit being more or less thrown away at the supermarket, bananas at 4p per kilogram, had to be rescued and taken home), anyway where was I?  oh yeah - apple, tomatillo, apple & tomatillo, rhubarb, courgette (or zucchini depending on your cultural naming preference), plum, gooseberry, and green tomato varieties of chutney, and red onion marmalade.

In one of those "I wonder what if...." moments one day F pondered the possibility of using chutney to make savory muffins; muffins with less sugar and more vegetable perhaps. Up to that point she had been substituting jam for sugar in the fruit muffins.  Oh the joys of having cupboards full of preserves and being in lockdown.

Experiment 1 - tomatillo chutney and grated carrot.  OK but a bit vinegary.

Experiment 2 - rhubarb chutney and grated carrot, better but fairly dry.  Needs spicing up with something, or more oil or wetter vegetables perhaps.

Experiment 3 - zucchini chutney with grated fresh zucchini and grated carrot.  Now it is beginning to take shape but we've run out of eggs.

Never mind, there's a jar of Mr B's mayonnaise in the fridge. F thinks mayonnaise is vile, but it is essentially oil and eggs (well real mayonnaise is, industrial mayo could be anything).

Experiment 4 - mayonnaise, zucchini chutney, grated carrot and zucchini. Great we've nailed the texture and the taste. Lets make more of these.

Then comes the day F is contemplating the dried out corn cob languishing in the bottom of the fridge and decides to cook it and put the kernels in the next batch of muffins.

Experiment 5 - ....INSPIRED....... the vege muffin version of a plump juicy sultana hit in your bran muffin. 

That had her dancing about the kitchen mumbling 'inspired' through mouthfuls of hot muffin.

So here is it is:  the 'inspired' chutney muffin recipe (there is just one problem - she has no idea what recipe she used to make the zucchini chutney, but calls it a fairly unremarkable chutney). And it makes muffins or loaf equally well.

beat three eggs and about half a cup of oil - or use a really BIG dollop of mayonnaise (about 3/4 of a cupful).  Beat in about 3/4 cupful of zucchini chutney (or any other unremarkable, not too spicy, well mellowed chutney, avoiding the curried banana variety - that was experiment 2A but was such a taste disaster it contributed nothing to the development of the final product here presented)

Add about 350grams of grated zucchini, and a couple of medium carrots grated up.

The cooked kernels off one corn cob

1 cup of bran (wheat bran, oat bran)  Oat bran does seem to be better.

Sift in 1.5 cups of plain flour, 3 tsp of baking powder and 1 tsp Baking Soda

You might need a splash of water (or milk) if the mixture is too tight.  It should sort of gloop off a big spoon.

Our recipe ends there (but you might add paprika, herbs, cheese even) - bake as muffins (or loaf) at about 150 degrees C in a fan oven.  Of course muffins cook quicker.  It makes about 16-18, and they take about 25 minutes.  Loaf takes about 45 minutes.

Note 1: curried banana chutney is an inspired chutney on its own, a fabulous accompaniment to grilled mature cheddar on toast.  It just doesn't work in muffins.

Note 2: lots of chutney muffin recipes can be found on t'internet, but all the ones F found involved cheese.  Not that she's averse to cheese, au contraire, but can think of better uses for cheese than putting it in muffins - like eating it grilled on toast with curried banana chutney for example.

Note 3: silly woman photographed a batch of perfect muffins then deleted the photo having decided that it had no place in Tigger's Wee Blog.  You'll just have to settle for its latest incarnation as a loaf.

Note 4: a typo at one point had F calling this recipe chugney muffins. So chugnies have been invented. 😽 That makes this loaf a mono-chugney

Note 5: We've apparently run out of bran now. This one has home-ground buckwheat grits in it,  they got mixed with the grated zucchini and left to 'soak' for a while. F says it seems to have worked but it has definitely made a different flavour.