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).

Rainy Weekend

What a wet week so far! Been soaked to the skin loads of times at work but never mind!
At the weekend Claire and I tried to pick some sloes when we went for a cold walk across the fields. Unfortunately there was none about at all; they’re related to damsons and plums and it’s been a bad year for those as well. The frost must have got the blossom back in the spring.
We didn’t manage to pick more than a handful so we decided not to bother and to strain some sloe gin that’s been sat waiting for about four years instead!
We strained it using a funnel and some filter paper which took a while but the resulting liquor tastes amazing!
I don’t think it will last long, its the perfect winter warmer after being in the cold all day.