Nici Wickes: Pear & Sultana Chutney

Preserving Time!

Pear Chutney is just divine and we can have a general chat about preserving, noting that this is the season for making sauces, chutneys and jams, as well as bottling and freezing fruit and veges too. 

Pear & Sultana Chutney

This is a great all round chutney that is just as perfect with cheese and crackers as it is on roasted meats or vegetables. 

Pear & Sultana Chutney

This is a great all round chutney that is just as perfect with cheese and crackers as it is on roasted meats or vegetables. 

Ingredients:

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Time to catch up with our cook Nicki Wicks and Nikki.
It is that time of year where we need to
start bottling and jarring and jamming and preserving and rushing
because the weather is turning.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
I know, in fact, we at this stage we are
trying to preserve time. Literally, we are trying to sort
of catch the well. It isn't summer anymore, it's autumn,
and we're still overflowing with all this produce. But honestly,
I really need to kind of buck up my own
ideas too, because soon it will be over. Yeah. And
then we're into the kind of winter fair which is

(00:44):
on slimpickins, and it's a funny old time because we're
also a little bit tired of tomatoes, maybe because you've
had so many of them, and yet you know, turn
those into a little pasta sauce, freeze them, freeze that
pasta sauce, and you are going to be so happy
for the taste of summer a couple of months, let
me tell you. And pears, somebody gave me a beautiful

(01:06):
full bucket of pears from a very old tree out
Beechland's Way, and I've had them sitting around for ages.
I've eaten a few of them, but they're not particularly
ripe and they haven't really ripened up. So time to
make chutneys. You know, chutney's with pears. Oh, pear is
just great for a chutney. So look, I threw this together.
It's a really great all round chutney. It's not too finnickety,

(01:29):
it's dead easy. I took a large onion, chopped it
up finally, and it was about two hundred grams. I
did kind of weigh it for our listeners. It was
about two hundred grams. In the end of chopped onion,
I had a one kg of chopped pears. Once I've
sort of called them. I didn't bother peeling them because
I'm a way too lazy for that. So I just
chopped them up. And as I say that were quite

(01:49):
hard pears, they were exactly all that soft. I grabbed
two apples because I had those off a neighborhood tree.
I chopped out all of the brown rot from them
and chopped those up skin on. Of course, two hundred
and fifty grams of brown sugar which is probably about
a cup of it, really quite well packed. Two hundred
grams of Sultana's, although I ran out of Sultana's, so

(02:11):
I put half and half of currants and Sultana's in there,
and I wasn't sorry. Three hundred mills of apple side
of vinegar. You could use any vinegar in here. You
want to use a cheap ish vinegar. You could use
malt vinegar. I but I find it quite quite quite strong,
so I just used three just a bit over a
cup of apple side of vinegar. And then I thought, well,
what do I want to flavor this with? So I

(02:31):
went with a teaspoon of fennel seeds, a teaspoon of
ground allspice, half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper,
and a teaspoon of salt. So in that it all
went into a big pot, and you want to bring
it to the boil kind of slowly. You don't want
to go hard and fast. It will stick to the bottom.
And then I just reduced the heat jack and I

(02:51):
let it happily similar away for about an hour and
an hour and a half. The onions were soft. The
pears were getting there as well. But then When I
looked at it, I thought, it's kind of ready. If
I start reducing it anymore, I'm going to get half
a jar out of this, right, so don't wait till
it goes really thick. I then wanted to get in there,
and I wanted to kind of mash it or make
it a little bit pulpy. But I didn't want to

(03:12):
take to it with a blender because I still wanted
it chunky. So I looked on the wall where I
hang my old fashioned egg beater, and I got that out.
I thought, I wonder if this will work. Yeah, worked
a treat, kind of yeah. I had I sort.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Of him in the old hand ones, right, the old yea.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, yeah yeah, And I and I beat it until
it was just a little bit pulpy, which was great.
That sort of helped thicken it up. I'd already heated
some jars to see it sterilize them at one hundred
and fifty degrees celsius for about ten minutes in the oven,
and I pour always pour some boiling water over the
lids to sterilize them. Then I just spooned the hot
chutney into the hot jars. If you go hot chutney

(03:49):
into cold jars. You regardless of whether they've been sterized,
you're going to crack your jars. I've done that too
many times in my life. So hot chutney into hot jars,
and then I ran a knife around the inside because
it was quite a sort of thick, nice chunky chutney,
and you get a bit of you know, you get
ear bubbles in there. Those in there because they don't
look good for a start, and they take up valuable space.

(04:10):
So just run a knife around them. You can poke
those air bottles, those air bubbles out. Wipe the rims
clean and place the lids on. And then my top
tip is probably to wipe the jars clean while they're
still hot, because once it solidifies onto it, it's a
real pain. Though they're piping hot. Wipe the rims. It
is such a good tim I know, I know. Otherwise

(04:32):
you call them down because the oh yeah, it'll be
easy to handle and it's a nightmare. So you put
that little on tightly and then just leave them. And
I like to leave this chutney for about three weeks
if I can. I always have a little bit leftover
that I can use straight away. But the difference in
the taste of it three weeks after you've bottled it
is extraordinary. Those flavors are really married and all the

(04:53):
different spices have really managed to kind of do their magic.
And this sort of chutney's got enough sugar, enough vinegar,
and it'll last up for to twelve months, probably longer.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, yeah, amazing. How many jars do you get that?

Speaker 3 (05:05):
I got kind of four to five medium jars. One
of them was great, right, but yeah, so plenty. Really,
I was really surprising. Again, if you keep on reducing
chutneys and sauces and things till you see that kind
of till it's thickened, you will then end up with
billy and ey chutney. Ye, it goes the same for jams.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
You've got to remember it's a balance.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
It's a balance.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
It's a balance.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
This Oh listen to you speaking like a three week
old period.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, it's a balanced balance.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
I love your jackets.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Ah, so good. Hey, thank you. We're going to make
sure we put that recipe up on the news Talks
website so everyone can follow along at home, make sure
they make the most of the last of those summer fruits.
As we head into water I think the whend of
the season officially changed in another week and a half
or so, right, but I think all around the country
were underfeel the ear temperature dropped just a little bit.
Thank you, Nicky. Nickie Wex is our cook on News Talks.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Heb for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen
live to News Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.