Blood, sweat and tears.....

Last week I ordered one of these, (see pic below) it's a modern day version of an old classic rotary bean slicer. I was hoping it would be here in time to slice all those beans picked yesterday, sadly it wasn't, so I had to do all the slicing by hand. I would have used my food processor but I buggered that up last week!

I should have waited really, I was getting a tad bored with the slicing and was pretending to be a top chef! That chef turned out to be Gordon Ramsey because I sliced the top of my finger off and boy did I swear, yessiree bob I surely did. It bled a fair bit too.

But being the trooper that I am after it stopped bleeding I just carried right on I did! Be assured that no bits of finger or other nasties are in the batch of runner bean chutney I made today.

I have to say it was a very laborious task and took most of the day, with the finger throbbing like a mad thing and me knocking it every so often and looking at the knife gave me cold sweats.

The recipe for the longest attempt at pickling in the history of mankind is as follows

RUNNER-BEAN CHUTNEY (Nigel Slater)

Makes one large and one smaller Kilner jar

onions 2 medium
malt vinegar 150ml
allspice berries 8
coriander seed 1 tsp
yellow mustard seed 1 tsp
runner beans 750g
English mustard powder 1 tbsp
grain mustard 2 tsp
turmeric 2 tsp
cider vinegar 150ml
granulated sugar 200g
salt 1 heaped tsp
tomatoes 250g
cornflour 28g

Peel and finely chop the onions, put them into a medium-sized saucepan with the malt vinegar, allspice, coriander and mustard seeds. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

String the beans, removing the stalks. Thinly slice each bean, cutting diagonally to give fine shreds about 4 or 5cm long. Bring a pan of water to the boil, add the beans and cook for a full minute. Drain and set aside.

 Mix the mustards, turmeric, sugar, salt and half the cider vinegar in a small basin.

 Dice the tomatoes then add to the vinegar and onions, stir in the beans and mustard mixture then add the remaining cider vinegar. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes, stirring regularly. The beans should be tender, but still bright in colour.

Remove 2 or 3 tbsp of liquid and use it to mix the cornflour to a paste. Stir gently back into the beans. Leave to simmer for a minute or two until the mixture has thickened slightly.

Ladle into warm, sterilised preserving jars and seal.

I also made another batch of strawberry jam

I'm off to put my feet up, it's been a very long day and I'm knackered, I just knocked the bloody finger again which is making it very hard to type and made me go rather clammy.

See ya's