INGREDIENTS
6 lb plums or peaches, stoned if freestone, otherwise cook whole.
3 lb sugar,
6 lb vinegar (cider vinegar complements the peaches well)
and assorted spices which I vary from batch to batch.
The original recipe suggests 1 tsp cayenne, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1 tbs cloves, 3 dessertspoons salt. I usually skip the salt, and for one batch I used cinnamon, ginger, cardamon and lemon verbena; the batch on the stove at the moment I've substituted star anise for the cardamon hoping for a slightly more "Chinese" flavour.
METHOD
Simmer fruit in vinegar until soft. Cool a little and push through a metal colander to remove any stones and any larger bits of skin. Return to saucepan, add sugar and spices, boil gently until thickened. (Could take a while.) Bottle in sterilised bottles, filling all the way to the rim. As it cools it will shrink down a bit.
I've made this using whole fiddly little cherry plums and also with stoned freestone peaches. The slight resulting difference in fruit quantity doesn't seem to matter. Out of curiosity I weighed some freestone plums and the stones I'd removed from them. 1 kg stoned plums had 125 g of stones. Not really major.
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