Everyone seems to be handing over apples from their garden at the moment. It’s clearly past the point where they celebrated the arrival of first fruits and hit the “what do we do with them all?” stage.

As one of the early examples of late Victorian town planning, every house in my area was planted with either an apple or pear tree and such is the luck of the draw that we got the pear tree, an over large, under-fruited centennial. I’m guessing that most of the pear trees were taken out because they’ve never really been as practical, as useful as apples. Maybe we would swap it out if only it weren’t the most marvellous sight in the Spring with all of its blossom.

Given a choice of fruit tree, I’d prefer a plum tree. there are lots of good plum recipes, and who doesn’t love a good plum crumble or clafoutis.

Pears can be tricky.

But whether they’re over or under ripe, or that scarce resource, perfectly ripe (around 1 hour in a fortnight and then you can’t pick them all in time) a chutney works well with pears.

Initially I thought that this would be more of a sweet but bland chutney, the kind to pick up cheese on a cracker but in the end a heavy hand with the spices led to something else entirely. We used this as a substitute for mango chutney – a sweet chilli spice with a hint of aniseed.

Ingredients

• 200g demerara sugar
• 200ml cider vinegar
• 100ml perry (pear cider)
• 1 star anise
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 2 red onions, chopped
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 10 firm pears, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces
• 2 red chillies, halved (and deseeded if you prefer)
• 50g sultanas

Method

• STEP 1Put the sugar, cider vinegar, perry, star anise, cumin, red onions and ginger in a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
• STEP 2Add the pears and chillies and simmer for 40 mins until the liquid is syrupy and the pears are just cooked. Stir in the sultanas, remove from the heat and leave to cool, then spoon into sterilised jars.