A Novel Chistmas Chutney
As some of you will know I foolishly set myself a challenge the other day – to make a chutney from ingredients that just simply oozed Christmas. The idea was to go to the supermarket, think Christmas and see what I put in my basket. Well you’ll be pleased to hear I have done just that!
In our local supermarket, as I think is the case in most, the fruit and veg are right there as you walk thorugh the door. Now I went up and down the veg isle – Christmas, Christmas – nothing spung out at me, except of course I picked up a few onions and some ginger as I knew these were bound to feature. Walking to the fruit on the other hand was a different story. Nearly everything on display seemed to yell Christmas at me, so I stood doing my rabbit in headlights impression, much to the annoyance of the other shoppers as i was centre isle. There were figs, dates, pomegranates and nuts galore, and then my eyes alighted on a bag of pears. Pears you say – and whats that got to do with Christmas. Well they were simply amazing. They were the most beautifully ripe blush pears and looked just like exquisite Christmas tree decorations. In fact if they weren’t so heavy they would have beaten anything you could buy at the Christmas Shop.
So pears it was going to have to be, but what to put with them. Well believe it or not right next to these gorgeous items were bags of the plumpest cranberries you’ve ever seen. Strangely, and probably much to the consternation of my faithful American readership they came from Latvia – no I had no idea either, but that’s what it said on the packet. Right then, pear and cranberry, that would certainly make a lovely festive colour for the chutney and the flavours would complement beautifully the autumnal sweet spices, but what to set it apart from the rest. It came to me in a flash – walnuts and you cna’t get more Christmas than that. So with all my ingredients in the basket along with some additional chillies, garlic and cider vinegar I made my way to the checkout with high hopes.
Now there is nothing I like better than a bit of experimenting in the kitchen and this was going to be really good for a giggle. More often than not I will have a browse through some old cookery books to get a few ideas on which to base my concoctions but this one was going to be straight off the top of my head. If you want to see what happened just press play on the video below!
This is how it looked just as it came to the boil. Aren’t those colours amazing. Everything about it just seemed to scream Christmas to me, don’t know why?
And here is the finished chutney. I haven’t put the labels and frills on it so as you can see the fabulous colour it has ended up.
The reipe as usual is in the recipe section of the website under the chutney section. Alternatively, you can just click here to go straight there as it were – lol!
