Green Tomato Chilli Jam: hot and sweet!

This green tomato chilli jam is not green, due to the gour (a natural unrefined cane sugar)

As you can see, I left the seeds and skins in

There are quite a lot of recipes for tomato jam out there, and I got so confused trying to read them all that in the end I just did my own thing, and it turned out just fine: set, sweet and spicy. I wanted to keep the ingredients list as simple as possible as I needed to make sure this didn't turn out too much like green tomato chutney. I made enough for just one jar as this was a bit of an experiment and I wasn't sure of any of us would like it. As it happens, green tomato jam has a great flavour somewhere between gooseberry and plum but also hot because of the chilli, and I now wish I had made more! My original intention was that this should go with savoury things like cashew nut cream cheese, or pakoras, but because the chilli is not too overwhelming it's a nice sweet spread too with just that little bit of heat for a Winter's breakfast. My husband discovered that it also goes very well with our home-made hemp seed butter on crackers. If you have some green tomatoes hanging round your kitchen that are reluctant to ripen, this is a funky way to use them up.

500g green tomatoes

500g gour or soft light brown sugar

1/2 a nag bhut chilli (or more of a less fiery type; you decide)

1 tab lemon juice

a splash or two of water

• Roughly chop the tomatoes and mince the chilli. If using gour, break it into small pieces.
• Heat them gently in a thick-bottomed pan- add a splash of water if you need to stop them scorching.
• When they are looking softer and juicier it's time to add the gour. Stir well as it dissolves and melts. Add the lemon juice at this point, too.
• Bring to the boil, stirring constantly, until it reaches setting point. You can tell by dropping a little into a cup of very cold water. If it clumps together the jam will set when cool. It doesn't take as long as you might think to get to this stage, so be sure to test it regularly.
• We thought there wasn't quite enough chilli heat, so after bottling in a sterilised jar we stirred in 1/2 tsp red chilli powder; better to do it this way round than add too much chilli at the beginning and risk making your jam inedible.

There's only one word for it...