Sweet, Sweet Chilli Jam

No point beating round the bush when it comes to chilli jam. The more you make, the more you will inevitably eat. It's not one of those pickles that lurks in the back of the fridge and has a sell by date that makes you feel old. It's in the popular gang in the condiment playground. The recipe was simple and made one very large (750 ml) jar and one 250 ml jar. I went to a local London market to get my ingredients which you must do or you'll be spending an absolute fortune on ingredients. I wangled all this for £9 (top right are a passionfruit that will feature in my next blog post.)

What you will need for this fool-proof recipe is:

Food processor or time to do some serious chopping

Heavy bottomed pan e.g. Le Cruset (quite important as need to cook slowly to avoid sugar burning)

• 8 red peppers, deseeded and roughly chopped

• 10 red chillies, roughly chopped

• finger-sized piece fresh root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

• 8 garlic cloves, peeled

• 400g can chopped or cherry tomatoes

• 750g golden caster sugar

• 250ml red wine vinegar

First you need to de-seed the peppers and cut into touch chunks. Then you need to put the pepper,  chills (including seeds,) garlic and ginger into a food processor and whizz until finely chopped. Then scrape into your heavy bottomed pan (I hope I have never been described as heavy bottomed) along with the sugar, tomatoes and red wine vinegar. Bring to the boil and remove any of the white scum that might come to the surface. Once bubbling, turn right down and allow to gently simmer for 50 minutes. Stir occasionally. After 50 minutes, the jam should start to thicken quite rapidly, turn the heat up a notch and continue cooking, now stirring frequently so it doesn't catch and burn (that naughty bottom, up to no good.) You should now be left with a sticky, bubbling volcano of goodness. Turn the heat off and allow to cool slightly before you ladle into sterilised jars. Put the lid on while the jam is still hot but allow the jars to cool completely before storing in the fridge for up to 3 month.  It will not make it 3 months. Far too delicious.