Notes: you will need a large boiling pan; the pan of a
pressure cooker works well. You will need to sterilize
your jars first; look up how to do this (Milton is the
fastest/simplest way).
Ingredients
1 kg (approximately 10 large) tomatoes, skinned, de-seeded
and coarsely chopped
5 pears, peeled, cored and coarsely chopped (I sliced each
pear length-ways into four after peeling, which makes them
easy to core)
4 medium onions, finely chopped
6 celery stalks, very finely chopped
3 red chillies, very finely chopped (but not deseeded,
let's give this some kick)
1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tbsp paprika
250 ml water
1 litre red wine vinegar
200 gm light soft brown sugar
1 tbsp salt
Method
Put the tomatoes, pears, onions, celery, chillies, yellow
mustard seeds, paprika and water into a large pan and boil for
20 minutes, or until the pear goes soft.
Add the vinegar, sugar and salt and simmer for a few hours
or until the volume has approximately halved, skimming off any
scum that develops.
Spoon the mixture into four sterilized jam jars; I made a
temporary funnel from a piece of greaseproof paper to help
with this (see first picture above).
Put the lids on the jars but with very light hand pressure,
so that they are not sealed; you want air to be able to
escape.
Wrap each jar around the base and three sides in a single
sheet of tabloid newspaper folded in half (see second picture
above).
Empty and clean the large pan and place the jars in it so
that the not-wrapped sides are outermost; you are going to all
this effort to stop them bashing against each other or the
bottom of the pan.
Fill the pan with cold water to just below the lids of the
jars.
Slowly bring the water to the boil; you want to make sure
the glass in the jars has sufficient time to conduct the heat
evenly, or stresses in the glass will build up and cause
cracks.
Boil for 20 minutes.
Use a tongs to lift out each jar by its lid and then oven
gloves to grab the body of the jar; you might need help from
an assistant to do this.
Wearing the oven gloves, or maybe using a tea-towel between
your hands and the jar, tighten the lids on all the jars.
Put the jars back in the hot water; the paper will be mush
by now but try to arrange it so that the jars have some paper
between them.
Using hot water from the tap (to avoid a temperature
difference again), top up the water in the pan so that it is
above the lids of the jars.
Boil for a further 10 minutes.
Leave the whole thing to cool down and remove the jars.
Clean the soggy newspaper from the jars and label them with
the name of the contents and the year; they should keep for
two years.