Green Tomato and Green Pear Chutney

Taking courage for the many small green tomatoes from our garden, I was spared from the many enormous green tomatoes that had been donated to us on account of the fact that I managed to ripen them.

To almost 3kg tomatoes and 1.5kg pears once prepared! (ha!...ecoutez!) I added a large spoonful of salt, 40g mustard seeds, 20g black onion seeds, 800g mixture of granulated white sugar and honey, 10g tagine spices, 10g shelled cardamom seeds, coriander powder as I had no leaves, and about one litre vinegar, for which I used some red wine left over from the party that had turned to vinaigrette and some of my very own mature dandelion vinegar!

All the ingredients were placed into my most beautiful and treasured stainless steel preserving pan that has been worth all of the £50 I spent 30 years ago. (Before that I used to make preserves in the pressure cooker but it always felt unsatisfactory!) The pretty picture of food in the making was brought to the boil, stirred often, simmered for a long time, stirred often!

When the liquid had reduced and the chutney was a wonderful dark colour, resembling a jam but not of jammy consistency it was poured into clean,dry, warm jars. Once I had ensured there were no air bubbles, clean, dry lids sealed the jars. Now to label prettily! Then to store for several months, if not longer for the winter into spring days. For Christmas we have one last jar of matured two year old Green Tomato Chutney. There was no glut last year.