Saturday, December 03, 2011

Christmas Chutney

Rinku from Cooking in Westchester is hosting this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging and this week I'm using pears.

pears© by Haalo



Apart from one recipe, all my previous dishes using pears have all been sweet so it seems a good time to redress the imbalance. It's the time of year when you're on the look out for some new Christmas cooking ideas and a recipe for Christmas Chutney over at the BBC got my attention - A mix of apples, pears and dates it is spiced with cinnamon and cayenne. I have played around with the recipe a little and as for all recipes with spice, it's best to always judge the quantity by taste.

Christmas Chutney© by Haalo

Christmas Chutney

1 red onion, diced finely
2 apples, peeled, cored and quartered, roughly choppped
3 pears, peeled, cored and quartered, cut into bite sized pieces
70 grams dates, stoned and roughly chopped
1 cup apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon cayenne
½ teaspoon mixed spice
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
120 grams raw caster sugar


Place the onion and a half cup of water into a pot and place on a medium heat. When it comes to the boil, turn the heat down so it simmers - cook until the onion has softened but not coloured.

Add in the apples, pears and dates and give the mixture a stir - let it cook very slowly so that fruit starts to soften (you don't want them to become mushy and disintegrate) - about 10 to 15 minutes.

Sprinkle over the salt, cayenne, cinnamon, mixed spice and cloves along with half of the cider vinegar - stir it well to ensure the spices are well distributed and continue cooking for another 10 minutes - or until the mixture starts to thicken.

Pour in the rest of the vinegar along with the sugar - give it another good stir to help the sugar dissolve and then simmer until the mixture is quite thick.

Divide the hot chutney into sterilised jars and seal - once cold, store in the fridge.

You can enjoy this chutney now or leave it for a week or more to allow the flavours to develop.

3 comments

  1. I adore chutneys!
    Yesterday I was in the mood so, inspired by you, I made one too.
    Pear and Horseradish!
    :-)
    Baciussss
    Brii

    ReplyDelete
  2. This sounds like a delicious chutney recipe i'm going to try out over the holidays.

    ReplyDelete
  3. nice recipe..i was used to think "chuntney is basically from indian" but just love your work..

    ReplyDelete

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