With the late summer fruits starting to ripen on the trees (and fall off in the wind), this recipe is great for using up a glut of apples and plums. I actually used the last of last years frozen stewed plums from the freezer, and some windfall apples. The relative quantities of plums and apples can be easily altered within reason.

Click here for the Plum and Apple Chutney recipe in more detail.

Recipe Costs

£1.35 900g plums (PYO cost)
£0.80 600g cooking apples
£0.33 450g onions
£0.50 50g fresh root ginger
£0.14 50g raisins
£0.15 1 tbsp mustard powder
£0.08 2 tsp ground coriander
£0.05 3 cloves garlic
£0.43 275g demerara sugar
£0.45 600ml vinegar

£4.28 Total (£2.13 without buying the plums and apples)
£1.90 per kg of relish (£0.95 without buying the rhubarb, one seventh of the cost of similar at tesco.com)

I thawed out my frozen plums first, although this was probably not necessary, this recipe is great in that all the ingredient are chucked in a preserving pan and brought to the boil.

Apples are peeled, cored and chopped up, size is not crucial as they will be reduced to a pulp during the cooking process.

Onions are peeled and finely chopped, they will remain reasonable firm in the finished chutney so its important not to leave them to chunky.

This recipe uses ground coriander, which I like to make freshly from coriander seeds, my stone pestle and morter make short work of grinding these up. Mustard powder, garlic and ginger adds extra taste to the chutney. The ginger can be grated, or chopped finely as I've done here, a tablespoon of mustard powder is added using my ever useful measuring spoons.

Demerara sugar adds sweetness to the fruit, you may want to increase the amount by 75g if you use more plums, or you can make a sharper tasting chutney by reducing the amount to 200g.

I used some home made spiced pickling vinegar to add depth to the taste, you can buy this commercially or just use malt vinegar.

All the ingredients are added to the preserving pan and brought to the boil.

The chutney is then simmered until it is thick, a good guide to judging the correct consistency of chutney can be found in this blog post about green tomato chutney.

This batch of chutney took several hours to reach the correct thickness when it was then potted in steralised jars. I'll leave it to mature for a few months before eating, it should last for over a year in a cool dark place.

Recipe Timings

30 minutes Preparation
120 minutes cooking
20 minutes potting

image source wikimedia commons

1. A plum or gage is a stone fruit tree in the genus Prunus, subgenus Prunus, most fruit sold as plums is of the subgenus Prunus Domestica.

2. Blackthorns (sloes), greengages, damsons and apricots are all botanically categorised as plums.

3. Dried plums are known simply as prunes, although the prune is actually a distinct type of plum.

4. Plums and prunes are known for their laxative effect.

5. The famous Victoria Plum was found in 1840 as a seedling in a garden in Sussex.

6. Experts were able to identify over one hundred individual varieties of plum stones on Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545 and was raised in the 1980's.

7. The word plumb, as used in carpentry, derives from the Latin for lead, referring to the lead weight used at the end of a plumb line.

8. TV presenter Angela Rippon wrote and illustrated the 'Victoria Plum' childrens books.

9. Umeboshi (Japanese pickled plums) were thought by the samurai to combat battle fatigue.

10. Plums can be made into wine, and both jam and chutney.

Having a small boy in the house we regularly resort to rewarding good behavior  to get through trips to the supermarket, car journeys etc. (bribery). We've managed to train him to be pleased with an apple at the end of the supermarket shop (it has to be of the bright red variety), but when shopping in the town centre he's caught on to the fruit snacks sold in the local health food shop.

These are also a favorite on long car journeys, although feeding a small child with an energy giving fruit bar when you want them to sit still is probably a mistake. I'm all for supporting the local shop, but at 57p a time I'd rather find an alternative.
So I was very happy to find a recipe for fruit leather in the wonderful River Cottage Handbook No.2: Preserves by Pam Corbin. 

The recipe can be applied to any combination of fruits, and even suggests using tomatoes for a savory snack. The process is very simple, but does tie up the oven for a long time, I had to stop half way through to use the grill and then returned the drying fruit once the oven had cooled down again, I can't see this is a problem.

This recipe is taken from the River Cottage Handbook No.2: Preserves.

See here for the apple and plum leather recipe.

Recipe Costs
£1.34 1kg cooking apples (peel, chopped and cored) (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£1.58 1kg plums (stones removed) (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£0.60 Juice of 2 lemons
£ 1.98 300g honey
£5.50 Total (£2.58 without buying the fruit)
£22 per kg of leather (£10.32 without buying the fruit- about half the cost of the equivalent)

We  still have plenty of cooking apples around, and I dug a tub of stewed plums out of the freezer, these had been in there 2 years so needed using up!

The fruit was stewed and the forced through a sieve creating a smooth puree

In went a whole jar of honey, I'm not sure if this is essential for the consistency of the finished product, or just for sweetness. It would be good to know as it does seem like a lot.

The puree was spread out on greaseproof paper, my ever useful Silicone  Spatula was perfect for this, I'd also used it for pushing the fruit through the sieve earlier.

The recipe implied that after a certain period of drying in the oven the leather would peel off the paper, I couldn't get it to do this even after 24 hours, resorted to loosening it with a quick dip in a bowl of water. I had to re-dry the leather in the oven for a short while after doing this.

The resulting leather is amazing to play with, strong, flexible sheets  which you can roll up and cut with scissors. The small boy turned his nose up at them, probably because it didn't come in a bright wrapper, but I'll persevere. I've been enjoying eating strips as a mid afternoon snack and have also chopped up some small bits to add interest to the morning musili.

Recipe Timings
15 mins preparation
30 mins simmering
15 mins pureeing and spreading
24 hours cooking

Taste Test

Not as sweet as the commercial variety, although this is probably down to the amount of plums used in the recipe. The texture is lovely and chewy.