Book excerpt: Preserving Food – A Beginner’s Guide to Pickles, Chutneys and Sauces Table of Contents Introduction Why Make Chutneys and Pickles? Tips for choosing best fruit and Vegetables Tips for Pickles and Chutney Making Chutneys Popular Chutneys Gooseberry Chutney Traditional Farmer’s Garlic Chutney Technique of Marination Using Brine Vinegars Making Spiced Vinegar Traditional Garden Pickle Traditional Piccalilli- Traditional Red Cabbage Pickles Soft vegetables – Sour Cucumber Pickles Tomato Pickle Testing Pickled Onions Sweet and Spicy Pickled Onions Non-vegetarian Pickles Traditional Pickled Wild Boar Pickled Eggs Traditional Tomato Sauce Appendix Garam Masala-Curry powder Conclusion Author Bio- Introduction Millenniums ago, when human beings were still food gatherers instead of food growers, they decided to find out some ways and means in which they could preserve food for a longer time. Winter was the time when they could not go out and hunt. So was the rainy season, especially they were living in rain forests and tropical areas. So if they found out some way in which they could preserve food, on which they and their tribe members could survive, this would make all the difference between life and death. And so through a lot of experimentation, the ideas of pickles, chutneys, jams, jellies, preserves, conserves, spiced fruit and other ways of preserving food, as well as fruit and vegetables came into existence. Today, millenniums later, there is absolutely no fruit and vegetable, which has not been turned into a pickle, chutney, jam, jelly or conserve, by some cook. Even meat in the form of venison and boar has been pickled in the east, down the ages, as well as eggs. Too many eggs, and you are worried about preserving them? Do as the ancient Chinese did. Preserve them in egg pickles. So this book is going to tell you how to make the best use of all those extra vegetables and fruit in your garden, and turn them into a valuable food source, which can be eaten later.