Red Tomato and Chilli Chutney (and Sloe jam)

I've been preserving things again this weekend. I started off with a wild Friday night making chutney (I know how to live!), although I might have dozed off and burnt the pan a little (a lot). I pretty much used the green tomato recipe but used ripe tomatoes, one big Cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of coriander seeds and a table spoon of fennel seeds. It only made three jars (so I wont be giving any away) but it smelt nice - I've just got to wait for two months to let it mature before I can try it.I spent Saturday shooting, well I say shooting but I mean carrying my gun around, as I shot nothing, very disappointing. I did pick lots of apples and over 2kg of sloes (I've never seen so many) so my trip wasn't completely pointless.

On Sunday night I made some of these sloes in jam (there is only so much gin you can drink). Sloe and apple jam is something I've not tried before and reading a recipe on the Internet it says to use

1 kg of apples,

500g of sloes,

1.5 kg of sugar

by the time I stewed the fruit and pushed it slowly through a sieve I had a lot less mixture so I only added the same weight of sugar. The resulting jam I'm unconvinced about, its sweet but has the same dry taste of cranberries, I'll have to have it on something nice to judge it properly (its a great colour though).

Damson Jam

Last weekend we made some damson jam.
I managed to leave work early for the first time in ages so I drove over to mum and dad’s farm to pick some fruit.
As well as picking up a massive bag of russet apples I also managed to come back with two huge bags of damsons. I love eating these raw but one of my favourite childhood memories is eating rich damson jam (that’s as solid as rock) on hot cross buns, so I thought it was about time I dug out the old recipe book and made some.

I could get just about 2.5Kg of fruit in two saucepans and stewed it down, before I read in the instructions that I’m to try and remove as many pips as possible. This turned out to be a massive task and I think I spent the best part of an hour using every appliance in the kitchen to try to find an easy way of removing them, in the end I used a potato masher to try and push the flesh through a colander and picked out any pips that may have escaped (I'm still putting a disclaimer on the jar though!).

I then weighed the mixture again and added an equal quantity of sugar and boiled it until setting point was reached (where it wrinkles when placed on a cold plate and you push your finger through it).I had some jars warming in the oven and a plastic funnel (can believe I don’t normally use a funnel!) to help get as much as possible in the jar.
In the end we made 11½ jars and if I do say so myself it tastes pretty good!

Jam making!

My weekend was cut a little short, as I had to work Saturday morning (not best pleased) but I still managed to cram a lot in. Saturday afternoon after speeding out of Birmingham I managed to get the time to go to a farm sale, something I haven’t done in years, it was good fun looking round all the tat but I didn’t feel the urge to buy anything. The rest of the day was quite social, catching up with people I haven’t seen in ages and going for a walk with my sister (which turned into a bit of a run thanks to an April shower!). On Sunday I was very productive, spending a lot of the day in the garden (weeding mostly), and I cooked some roast lamb (my dad had given us this the last time he had one killed) with all the trimmings, first time I’ve cooked in ages as I’m always back too late with my job.
As the rhubarb is running rampant I decided to do something with it and make jam (we’ve nearly run out of blackberry and apple jam). The recipe was simply equal amounts of fruit and sugar (in weight) with a bit out ground ginger. This is simmered until its all mushy then boiled rapidly until setting point is reached (it wrinkles on a cold plate). Making jam is so easy and it didn’t take long, not sure why anyone would want the supermarket stuff with all its preservatives in it.

Homemade stuff always tastes better as well!