Dear Friends and Family, this year, as always, I am ignoring your Christmas lists and will be making you a variety of homemade gifts. Since my skills mostly lie in gardening, cooking and crafting, you’d best keep your fingers crossed.
Firstly, before I share this recipe, I feel that I ought to point out that this is not a ‘cheap’ way to do Christmas presents. The cost of the ingredients and materials for all my makes have, in all probability, cost the total of my gifting budget. However, I like to think that people will appreciate the thought and effort that have gone into them more than they’d appreciate an Amazon gift voucher.
My family have always loved to completely stretch themselves at this time of year and try out new recipes for chutneys, cakes and puddings. We pull out all of our favourite craft and cook books and browse through the pages before sharing our ideas. It was with utter joy that my brother recently presented my Mum with a copy of Kirsty Allsopp’s ‘Kirstie’s Christmas Crafts‘ that he’d found in a charity shop. We’d loved this programme when it was on Channel 4 and were delighted to find some great inspiration within the pages of this book. It really is a charming festive read.
After mulling over its pages with a cup of tea I was positive that I didn’t have the time, or the skill, to break out the sewing box and create the amount of festive bunting that I would require for everyone so, I decided on Boxing Day Chutney.
The very next day I started collecting jam jars. Now, the recipe says that it makes about five 200g jars. Ignore it. If you look at the recipe carefully you’ll notice that there is over 3kg of fruit and vegetables and about 2 litres of liquid. Oh! How I wish I’d noticed this! I had a huge pan almost over-flowing with chutney. It was like the pot in Grimm’s ‘Magic Porridge Pot’ story. No matter how long I left it on the stove for there was no way that I was going to reduce it down to five jars. After a couple of panicked phone calls to my Mum I ended up with about 16 jars of chutney and will be eating chutney until next Christmas. Or gifting it any time I’m invited somewhere for dinner.
Here’s the recipe if you want to make your own. Just halve or quarter it if you want to make smaller amounts.
Boxing Day Chutney Recipe
Ingredients
1kg dried apricots
175g pitted, chopped dates
450g raisins
600ml orange juice (about 8 oranges)
900g chopped onion
900g peeled, cored and chopped cooking apples
340g cranberries
1.2 litres cider vinegar
50g fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon mixed spice
Zest of two oranges
1 kg white sugar
Method
Put the dried fruit in a large bowl and pour over the orange juice so that the mixture can absorb the liquid: it should take about 20 minutes.
Put all the other ingredients except the sugar into a large pan and bring to the boil.
Allow to simmer until the onions become transparent and the cranberries start to pop. This should take about 5 minutes.
Add the marinated fruit to the pan with the sugar, stir well and bring back to the boil.
The liquid should start to thicken quite quickly: you do not need to wait until you can make a channel through this chutney, as with traditional ones, it just needs to be thick enough.
Once ready carefully ladle the chutney into hot, sterilised jars and seal.
Green-fingered Mum 
