Apple Chutney

The season has well & truly changed, the long, mild days of summer are but a distant memory as we turn our thoughts to chunky knits & wonder when to put the heating back on.

With Autumn comes a whole new season of produce, not just pumpkins & root vegetables but also apples & pears. Apples are a particular favourite of mine, they lend themselves to both sweet & savoury uses, not to mention, they make cider (probably the best alcoholic beverage ever, in my opinion).

Whilst we all know I’m a fan of cake & you’re probably more used to the sweet stuff around here, this is probably my favourite ever recipe for apples (again, other than cider). If you’re still craving something sweet though or simply have apples coming our of your ears, then check out my Autumn Apple Cake here.

I love cooking & baking with the seasons, using ingredients when they’re at their very best but every now & then I find myself craving the sweet fruits of summer in the middle of a cold, grey winter or even fancying a slice of Christmas cake come spring. This is how I got into preserving (plus, I really love jam).

My favourite thing about preserving though is that it’s an excellent way to use up anything that you’ve got too much of in the kitchen, you can chuck it all in a pan along with some sugar or spices & suddenly you’ve made something amazing! That’s exactly how I came up with this recipe, I’ve made a few minor tweaks to thing’s like the sweetness & chunkiness & now I can’t survive the winter without my apply chutney.

Never has a slice of cheese been crowned with such glory as with a dollop of this stuff. It’s sweet, fruity, tart, chunky, everything that good chutney should be. I’m so proud of this one that I often make far too much of it with the full intention of potting it up & keeping them for gifting at Christmas (I’ve not had any complaints thus far either). This is where my love of chutney really began.

With a fridge that is consistently full of cheese (& cider) I somehow feel as though having chutney in the house makes it far more acceptable & sophisticated to eat half a block of mature cheddar for a meal. Once the weather does get colder outside though, my top tip is to jazz up a simple cheese toastie with a good layering of this apple chutney, warmed through, crispy on the outside & oozing in the middle, it’s my absolute guilty pleasure (you can thank me later).

APPLE CHUTNEY

Ingredients:

• 1.5 kg apples
• 750g light muscovado sugar
• 250g currants
• 250g sultanas
• 2 large onions
• 2 tsp mustard seeds
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp salt
• 700ml cider vinegar

Method:

• Finely chop the apples & onions
• Place all of the ingredients into a maslin pan or a large heavy bottomed saucepan & set over a low heat, stirring until all of the sugar has dissolved
• Once dissolved, bring the mixture to the boil before reducing the temperature to a medium head
• Simmer the mixture for 40 minutes until most of the liquid has cooked out & the chutney has thickened & become pulpy (don’t worry if there is still a little liquid left in the mixture)
•  Leave the chutney in the pan to cool before potting into clean, sterilised jars