Oct 29, 2008

Woman takes family chutney recipe to the publicBy Jill Doss-RainesThe-Dispatch.com

North Carolina — Five years ago, Margot Walser took her annual chutney canning operation to Raleigh to teach her daughter and two friends how to make the 50-year-old family recipe.

The laborious, two-day process of purchasing and cutting up ingredients, washing jars, cooking and bottling the seven-fruit chutney was becoming too much for the 70-something Walser to continue. So daughter Carolyn W. Johnson was the last hope to keep the family tradition alive.

“At the end of the second day, I said this was my first and last time doing this,” Johnson said. “Nobody could appreciate everything that goes into making that chutney.”

Fast forward five years, and Johnson has come up with a new way not only to keep the family tradition alive but also to share it with more people than the usual set of relatives and friends lucky enough to receive one of the 60 jars Walser bottled each summer for 35 years.

“I told mom we were going to professionally bottle this,” Johnson said.

And they did. This August, 74-year-old Walser led a 10-man crew in hand cutting, cooking and bottling her famous chutney at Bobbees Bottling Co. in Louisburg. The result is 650, nine-ounce jars of McNulty Chutney, which is being marketed publicly at several specialty shops, such as the Bob Timberlake Gallery and Tastings in Lexington and other shops in Raleigh, where Johnson lives.

The mother and daughter even have a Web site to hawk the chutney at www.mcnultyschutney.com. This was the first summer Walser has not made it in her home in 36 years in anticipation of taking the product global.

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