Embrace preserving with Gill Meller and his recipe for bean and apple chutney

I’ve always been fascinated by any form of preserving. To take something living and prevent it from dying — stopping time, rot. I’m in love with its ancientness and importance.

No other form of cookery embodies the symbiotic relationship we once had with nature and the seasons. Preserving was a beautifully resourceful craft, born out of necessity, out of humble respect and out of a temporal understanding of our environment and what it took to survive within it. I don’t make this chutney to survive (things have changed), but I can take part of the summer deep into winter, in a glass jar.

Ingredients

• 500g runner beans, stringy veins removed, and cut into 1cm pieces
• 1kg Bramley apples, peeled, quartered, cored and roughly chopped
• 500g ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 onions, roughly chopped
• 150g sultana
• 2 tsp coriander seeds, bashed
• 1 tsp caraway seeds, bashed
• 2 cardamon pods, bashed
• 350g light brown soft sugar
• 500ml cider vinegar
• 1 tsp fine sea salt

Method

Put all the ingredients into a preserving pan over a medium heat. Slowly bring the mixture up to the simmer, stirring regularly until the sugar has dissolved.

Reduce the heat and simmer the chutney for 1½–2 hours, stirring every so often to stop it sticking to the base of the pan. The chutney will thicken as it cooks; you’ll know it’s ready when you can draw a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a path behind it for a few seconds before the chutney collapses back down. Be extra-careful it doesn’t catch and burn at this point. Remove the chutney from the heat and spoon very carefully into sterilised jars. Seal with the lids and allow to cool.

Store in a cool, dark cupboard for several months before eating — although you can eat it earlier, if you like.