New Pan !!!!!

This is the lovely new pan that we bought this morning from Lakeland. Ive always wanted one and as this year we have had a glut of plums, probably about 50 lb Andrew gave in and treated me :). So today we have made apple and plum chutney. The house smells lovely. But we only started it at 6pm and its needs to simmer for 5 hrs - so guess we are in for a late night.

Andrew chopped the plums apples and onions and insisted if I was to blog he wanted proof that he had helped.

Here is the recipe - that I pinched off The Cottage Smallholder blog

Cottage Smallholder Plum Chutney Recipe:

• 3lbs/1350g wild plums/damsons/eating plums
• 1lb/450g of apples (cored but not skinned). Chopped fine. Cooking apples are best but eating apples would do at a pinch.
• 1 lb/450g onions chopped fine
• 10.5 ozs/300g dried apricots (chopped at least into eight)
• 7 ozs/200g dried raisins (chopped into four)
• Half lb-1lb/225g-450g of soft brown sugar, depending on how sweet your wild plums/damsons/eating plums are. We’d usehalf a lb of sugar for eating plums but used 1lb for this batch as we were using wild plums (these are very tart like damsons).
• 2 large cloves of garlic chopped fine
• Half tsp of cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp of allspice powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1and a half pints/750 ml of white wine vinegar
• 1 small hot chilli
• 2 tsp of balsamic vinegar
• 5 juniper berries
• 10 black peppercorns
  ,

Method:

1. Stone the plums and if big enough cut into slices.
2. Chop the apples, onions, raisins and apricots.
3. Place all ingredients in a large heavy bottomed saucepan and bring slowly to a gentle boil. Turn the heat down immediately and simmer very gently (tiny bubbles just breaking the surface on the lowest heat) for at least five hours until the mixture has broken down and thickens.
4. Stir from time to time and more towards the end. If your simmering point is higher than ours, your chutney will be ready sooner. Take a peek every half hour or so. The chutney will thicken as it cools.
5. When ready pour into sterilised jars and cover with plastic lined metal lids