Curry Ketchup.

I love the Internet and I am fully aware that without it I wouldn't be able to enjoy half the stuff I enjoy. I have a mom and grandmas who cooked and kept wonderful gardens and of course they are an inspiration to what I do whether it's in cooking and baking or gardening. That being said, a lot of the recipes I use and information I get about that stuff is from the Internet. I think it's an amazing resource and inspiration. I can be looking up something and end up stumbling upon an amazing new blog or site or finding a recipe for something I've never heard of.

As much as I love and use it, not everything is on the Internet! I recently had a conversation with a friend who visits Belgium a lot and she told me about curry ketchup. I had never heard of the stuff but thought it sounded amazing. It's a popular condiment in Germany and Belgium and is used similarly to regular ketchup and with sausage dishes. I knew I had to try some!

Around the same time this ketchup talk went down, I had a lot of tomatoes in the garage. When we were in Montreal, I couldn't resist buying a bushel from a vendor at Jean-talon market. They were half the price I paid for them here in Toronto and looked wonderful! I thought this was an excellent idea but I was also sort of burnt out on canning tomatoes and made a deal to split the bushel with Amy R. Most of the bushel had been canned and processed but there was a huge chunk of them remaining and they wern't getting any younger if you know what I mean. I picked up a few bottles of wine and made a date with Amy to make ketchup...curry ketchup!

I wasn't able to find a canning recipe for this stuff online so this would be a test kitchen style job. We recorded the results and now it will be added to the Internet! Voila! That is how it all works.

Spicy Curry Ketchup

Yields 8-500ml jars.

8 lbs of tomatoes

3 med. yellow onions, diced

1 tbsp olive oil

4 cloves garlic--made into a paste

6 small fish peppers (or more to taste)

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp dry mustard

1 tsp Hungarian paprika

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp salt

2-1/4 cup brown sugar

1-1/4 cup red wine vinegar

3 or 4 tsp of your favorite curry powder

hot sauce to taste (we used Valentina)

Clean and core the tomatoes and add them to a large, heavy bottomed pot. Cook them until they break down and make a sauce. This will take an hour or more. While this is going on, you can sweat the onions in a large pan with the olive oil until they are clear.

When the tomatoes are ready, put them through a fine sieve in batches (depending on how large the sieve is) to separate the seeds and skin. You can also use a food mill for this. Return the sauce to the cleaned out pot and add the seasonings, garlic paste, peppers and cooked onion. Blend with an immersion blender to smooth out the onions.

Cook down until the sauce is thickened like ketchup. This takes awhile--make sure you have a lot of wine.

While the ketchup is reducing, sterilize jars and prepare water for a water-bath canner. When the ketchup is done, fill jars and process for 30 minutes.

*Note--The spices in this recipe can be adjusted and changed to your liking. Experimenting is encouraged. I think it's important to have a good quality curry spice for this recipe. I purchased mine at the Brick Works Chef's market from Whole World Trade Ltd. and it is really great.

Free canning label templates at Apartment Therapy and iDiY.