Recommendations
Plum chutney with Rutte Oloroso Sherry Cask Jenever 7 Y.O.
The jar holds a chutney of quartered dried plums, Amsterdam onions, garlic, red chili, bay leaf, plum jam and port, reduced for an hour and then brought to room temperature, with old cheese and bread alongside. Set against it is a jenever that has spent seven years in an oloroso sherry cask and sits in the same dried-fruit register as the chutney.
From the shelf
The bottle
Rutte Oloroso Sherry Cask Jenever 7 Y.O. comes from Rutte in Dordrecht and is number three in a series of four jenevers matured in sherry casks. It is a jenever of 38% vol in a 70 cl bottle, matured for seven years, from the first batch. The description gives no precise malt wine share and we therefore do not state it. For the designation jenever, the law requires at least 30% vol and at least 1.5% alcohol from malt wine; seven years of maturation is exceptionally long for jenever and far above the one year that is required for an age statement.
The combination
Why this works together
This chutney is a cheese course in itself: dried prunes and prune jam provide a dense, almost caramel-like sweetness, the port brings matured fruit acidity, the red pepper and the garlic a sharp underside, and the Amsterdam onions sour and sweet at once. Next to aged cheese with its salt and its crystals, that becomes a plate with many sides. A jenever that fits alongside has to come from the same corner itself, and this one does: seven years in an oloroso sherry cask yields exactly the raisin, prune and nutty notes that are in the chutney. The malt wine underneath gives the grain-sweet roundness that catches the cheese salt, and the 38% ABV clears the cheese fat. Because the cask and the plate share the same flavour family, they reinforce each other instead of fighting for attention.
At the table
The dish
- For 4 people
- Ready in 10 minutes, plus 1 hour simmering down and 1 hour cooling
- Type cheese course
What you need
- 250 g dried pitted prunes
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 red chilli
- 340 g sweet-and-sour Amsterdam onions
- 2 dried bay leaves
- 3 tablespoons plum jam
- 150 ml tawny port
- half a teaspoon of salt
- 300 g mature cheese
- bread or crackers
- 1 large or 2 small Weck jars
How to make it
- Cut the plums into quarters and chop the garlic finely.
- Remove the stem from the red chilli, halve it lengthways and cut out the seed ribs with a sharp knife.
- Put the plums, garlic, pepper, onions, bay leaf, jam, port and salt in a heavy-bottomed pan.
- Bring everything to the boil, turn the heat low and let the chutney reduce for 40 minutes with the lid on the pan, then for 20 minutes without the lid.
- Take the pan off the heat and fish out the red pepper and the bay leaves.
- Divide the chutney among the Weck jars and let it cool to room temperature in about 1 hour.
- Put the chutney at room temperature on the table with the old cheese and the bread.
In the glass
Serving
Pour this jenever at room temperature into a tulip glass, filled to the rim. Seven years on oloroso is the whole story of this bottle and it only opens up around 18 °C; cold shuts the cask away. Keep the glass small and top up after a piece of cheese with chutney, so that you taste the cask alongside the plate and not before it.
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Wij verkopen geen alcohol aan personen onder de 18 jaar. NIX18