Green Tomato Chutney

This recipe is a great way to use the green tomatoes that are invariably still left on your plants when you want to remove them to plant the winter vegetables. Or, as was the case for me this year, wanting to tidy up the garden before I went on my latest travels.  You can scale the recipe up or down depending on how many tomatoes you have.  The original recipe started with 5lbs (2 1/4 kg) – I have scaled it down to 1 kg of tomatoes, which gave me 10 of the 190ml jars I regularly use.

1 kg green tomatoes

3 onions, peeled (I used some spring onions that had grown too big)

700g apples, core removed

600ml malt vinegar*

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 tsp cloves

1 chilli (optional)

500g brown sugar*

250g raisins

zest of a large lemon

*the chutney is very dark in colour, if desired you could use white sugar and white vinegar

Cut up the tomatoes, onions and apples into chunks.  Add with remainder of ingredients into a preserving pan.  Boil them all together for 2-3 hours.  Put into sterilised jars and seal.