What do you do with 6kg of tomatoes that need using sooner rather than later? Chutney, of course.

Unfortunately the onion crop hasn’t come to much, so we bought a dozen medium-sized bulbs, and sliced them and the tomatoes into a large jam pan, then set them to reduce at a medium heat.

Now we were led to believe that it would take about 40 minutes for them to reduce down, which seemed to be about right, so we took the estimate of a further 40 minutes to thicken after we’d added the sugar, salt, cayenne pepper and paprika on faith. That was a mistake.

Every hour or so we spooned a little out onto a plate to see how runny it was, and it was only after four hours of bubbling away that it was holding together. It tasted great, but it won’t be ready to eat for another month or three at the least, while it mellows and matures in the jars.

Potting it was fun in itself. We sterilised a couple of dozen 8oz jars in the oven, then filled them using a wide-mouthed metal funnel, slipped a circle of waxed paper on top of the fruity slop and then stretched wetted cellophane over the top, secured by a little rubber band. The lids will be screwed on tomorrow when it’s fully cooled.

So what went in? Well, 6kg of yellow and red tomatoes (and a single green one), 1kg of onions, 700g of sugar, a pint of vinegar, 50g of salt, 4tsp of paprika and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. We adapted it from The Foody.

(This post was back-dated)

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