Pete and I made a batch of his chilli jam today. It's his own recipe, put together by trial and error. It was a long process, we started at 1.30pm and finished bottling at 9pm. We make this recipe a lot, and our friend Patrick is going to give us his car next week in exchange for two jars. Or at least that's what he's promised...
Pete's base recipe is this :
For each jar,
1 red capsicum (I think in the US this is a red pepper ?)
1 small apple (we used Pink Ladies)
1 long red chilli or 1 small diablo chilli
125g (4oz) white sugar
125ml (half a cup) vinegar (we used a mix of white and apple cider)
125ml (half a cup) apple and blackcurrant juice
1 large clove garlic, peeled and sliced
We started with :
12 red capsicums
8 large pink lady apples
8 red serano chillis
4 diablo chillis
12 cloves garlic
1.5kg (3.3lb) sugar
6 cups each of vinegar and juice
and ended up with enough jam to fill three large jars and 6 standard ones.
First we seeded and cut all the capsicums into strips, seeded and chopped the chillis, and sliced the unpeeled apples on the mandoline. This all went into a huge stockpot with the remaining ingredients.
Bring to a boil and simmer for hours and hours and hours, stirring occasionally...until it reaches a rich crimson colour and reduces by more than half and reaches the consistency of jam (you could test on a cold plate, but I've never been any good at telling - I just cook it until it's sticky enough for my liking). Be warned that you need to watch it near the end, because once it starts to thicken up, it tends to catch and burn quite easily.
Oh, and Pete wants me to point out that the apples have to be sliced thinly enough to disappear completely over the cooking time.
And here is the final bottled product ! :)
