Chutney!

Today, I has mostly been making chutney - to psych myself up for another afternoon of marking plagiarised assignments. I have been attempting to eat more fruit but had ended up with a bag of apples and pears that were not going to be eaten any time soon. So, I thought, I'd have a break from jam and make some.

I ended up combining a classic chutney recipe with a pear chutney recipe by someone called Peggy.

Here's the combined ingredients - the ones I focused on, anyway:

500g pears and apples
1/2 large red onion
300ml vinegar (bog standard, none of your fancy white wine, cider, honey vinegars)
250ml honey
100g sultanas
several splashes of lemon juice
4 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 grated nutmeg
shake of salt

First of all, chop the fruit, having peeled and cored it.



Add the finely diced onion. Heat it and mash it a bit.



Add the vinegar. Heat until it boils and then simmer until everything is tender. Open the windows, get the extractor fan on and shut the kitchen door, unless you are a devotee of Eau de Vinegar.

Having simmered, chuck in the rest of the agreements and simmer for another 15-20 minutes. Or until you have hung out the washing, scraped the labels of the jars, Milton'd them and then warmed them up...



...in preparation for spooning the results into the jars.



I spilled a fair amount as I was doing this. It tastes pretty good.